EDITORIAL MENTORSHIP 

Mentorship Recipient
Leland Seese

Recipient Reflection: 
Leland Seese

On "Missouri River, Great Falls, Montana, February, 1929" by Leland Seese

by ​​Jason Harris

So much life is around me and I am grateful for it: a jackhammer is breaking up concrete down the street from my home; children laughing and screaming and playing tag on the playground between my home and the jackhammer; a plump robin on an old wire fence on the windowsill before me. The robin's song, layered between the metallic drum of the jackhammer and the small voices of the playground, remind me that I am not alone. Not even in sadness. Not even with grief trying to find an open window of me to climb through. I am writing this on the eve of my uncle’s funeral. His passing set me back emotionally, but not down. I feel a gut of guilt because I know that I should be sad, but I am not. It is hard to be sad for an uncle who I believe would rather happiness and joy and gratitude fill his absence and the memory of him. For having lived alongside him as child and adolescent and young adult, I can only dig up memories of him filled with love and safety and grace. These pleasant memories keep the locks on the windows latched.
 
It is with this same emotional grappling that I was left feeling after experiencing Lee’s poem — “Missouri River, Great Falls, Montana, February, 1929” — for the first time. I was moved at Lee’s ability to write about his mother’s life — from adulthood, to childhood, to elderhood. One of the first revisions I suggested to Lee was to revise the poem’s title. Originally, the poem was titled “Heirloom.” There was something tender about the original title, but that tenderness was overshadowed by the poem itself. The current title was once a part of the poem itself but was repurposed to encompass not only a tenderness but an intimacy between the speaker and the subject of the poem — whose memory I believe deserved not only tenderness but intimacy as well. Working with Lee was organic. It was easy. Not because I had all of the answers, but because Lee trusted his artistic vision and allowed the poem to answer the questions we posed to one another in our editorial meetings.
 
A poem about death that doesn’t feel like a poem about death is an open curtain on a fairweathered day. I am privileged that Lee has opened that curtain and let the sun land on me; on us; on you. 

Jason Harris

Jason Harris is an American writer and teaching artist. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor for Gordon Square Review. In 2020, he became a Graduate Poetry Fellow of The Watering Hole. In 2021, he served as the Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence at Twelve Literary Arts. To read more of his work, you may visit his website: https://jasonharriswriter.com/. His Twitter handle is @ecopoems. ​