SPRING 2025

Click for INTERVIEWS | POETRY

Cover Art: Thomas Burke, Dallas Dystopia

Note from the Editors:

Welcome to the All-Poetry issue of The Westchester Review, this year launching at the start of National Poetry Month, at a time when the arts are under attack. It is more important than ever that poets and other artists resist outside forces with their creative work. One of the ways to come together as a community is through the reading and sharing of written works. 

In this issue we present 31 poems by 23 poets, three of whom share their ideas through illuminating interviews with our readers Michael Quattrone and Jay Ward. Phylisha Villanueva, the current Westchester County Poet Laureate, exudes her love of poetry and performance in conversation with Quattrone, and we are fortunate to have a video of her performing her percussive “Sub Umbra Flores,” which is from the Belizean flag, and means “under the shade I flourish.” Quattrone also discussed revision and “soulwork” with John Murillo. Ward spoke to Phillip B. Williams about his novel Ours, imagination, and writing between the genres of poetry and fiction.

Many of the poems in this issue have subjects that travel in and out of time, mention the weather, and are aware of trains in the distance. Or all three. We like the lyricism of experiences, grit, and unusual interactions such as “Reading Dylan Thomas While My Children Watch Mary Poppins, I Get a Phone Call.”

We are inside the Rothko chapel, assisting a Royal, experiencing a boutonniere spinning on a turntable, and learning the rules of a game called “tightroping.” 

It’s a balm in a destructive time like this one in America to share poets writing about love in similes of the tax season, sandwiches, and Spy v. Spy. We also share profound expressions of love, grief, and atonement.

We were saddened to hear in February of the death of Yvonne Zipter, whose poem “Hum” (Fall 2021) we adored. 

We are grateful to you, our readers, for giving us your attention in this distracting time. Let the words of this issue’s poets bring you respite and regeneration.