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This piece, for me specifically reminds me of how much of a mess things can be, but still have beauty in it. There are so many object places on desk, the floor, and the sides, and for some reason I find comfort to that. The picture in general, seeps creativity. There is no emotion to evoke in the art because that’s not the point that it’s trying to prove. The point is that it’s trying to show the life of an art student. As I was looking through the book, there were so many pieces that we great don’t get me wrong; however, the fact that there was so much going on in the piece, it was also in black and white. It could’ve been colorful, which would have made every object illuminate more, but it wasn’t. And that’s what is so great about it. I always find myself attracted to blank things in general, because I know there is more to it. I also picture life as in that way, so I think that’s why is resonates so much for me. This desk has paintbrushes, paintings, books, paint, etc. Instead of it being an organized desk, no, no it’s an art student’s desk. That leads to how it represents Élan. As a writer, I myself like to messy, but only because it sparks for something for me. If everything was so clean and cut, you do not have a lot to work with it. That’s how Élan is. Élan works with the strangest writing pieces and art pieces, and that’s what makes us so unique. The community grows off of creativity Elma Dedic, Co-Marketing/Social Media Editor

An art piece from an edition of Elan that has stuck with me is “Untitled” by Janai Dawkins in the Fall 2016 Online Edition. Personally, I like very abstract art, something that makes me look more than once and all around to try to figure out just what’s going on. This piece, although it’s abstract, has a focuses center, a distorted figure. Calling it focused and distorted is a contradiction, but I think that’s just what the art piece is trying to accomplish. The dark, swirled figure is set against a bright and active background, colored blue with the sun packed into the corner, greens and flowers decorating the frame that encases the figure. It’s really up to the observer what the piece means, to answer the questions that the art raises. Questions I asked when first seeing this image were: who is the figure? Why are they framed? Where are they? Why are they distorted? These are all questions I could pose and answer in my writing. I see writing and art as cousins. I think art is one of the best stepping off points from the creation of a written piece. For me, I like to write poetry from art. The term for this kind of poetry is ekphrastic. Poetry is a snapshot of emotion. This can be said for art as well. Art is still, yet full of movement. It is a moment paused to be examined and understood by the viewer, just as poetry is meant for the reader to take in. Taking these aspects and making them meet creates an even more extensive impact. One of the most important things in Elan is the making of powerful, creative work. All the work displayed is meant to encapsulate the reader/viewer and bring them out with their own takeaway from the pieces. This is a goal of Elan. The art and writing in each issue come together to create a deeper meaning, to get across the importance of art forms that come out on the page. Lindsay Yarn, Digital Media Editor

George Saunders, one of the most famous and prevalent fiction writers of today, is a man who uses his past and experiences along with events happening in the present to influence his writing, and create short stories which have a certain feeling to them that is uniquely his. My favorite story by him that I believe conveys this very well is from his most recent book, The Tenth of December, is titled Sticks. It would definitely be considered micro-fiction since it is only two pages long, although I chose this one in particular because I felt like it was so beautifully crafted and got so much across in such a short amount of time. I know, from working with this specific genre before, that it can be hard to really make a story meaningful, have good transitions, create a well-developed takeaway, and not lose the heart of the story all in two pages.  The story itself is told from two children’s point of view, technically in first person collective (we) looking at their father and his digression through his life. The entire piece revolves around their father who begins by every year decorating for different holidays and slowly begins hanging arbitrary things that prove to almost be a cry for help after the death of his wife. One of the things I loved about this story, and that I believe to be uniquely George Saunders style was the syntax and the grammar in the piece. George Saunders always does such a good job of not only considering the content of a piece, but the craft as well. In this story in particular, the capitalization was key to show further depth of emotion. For example, words like “Death,” “Mom,” “LOVE,” and “FORGIVE” were all capitalized which I think gives them special meaning in the story, making them not only just nouns but very specific and important objects that, although, are universal ideas, still maintain individuality in the story. I also noticed that the passing of time is also very well-done. I know that often times it can be very hard to use transitions and make the passing of time clear, but by utilizing the decoration of the “stick” Saunders gave very clear indication of shifts during the story. Because there was not really a definitive plot, it was easy for him to just jump around and really speed up and slow down when he wanted to. Overall it was a beautiful story and, although short, gave insight into human nature and the cruelty of life, which George Saunders is often known for. -Lexey Wilson, Junior Editor-in-Chief

Teri Grimm is a local writer, residing in Jacksonville, Florida, with her family. She received her BFA in poetry at the University of Omaha and her MFA at Vermont College. Grimm has two collections of poetry published as well as having her writing appear in other literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. Personally, I was not all too acquainted with her writing before coming to Douglas Anderson and being introduced to her by the writing teachers. From the get go, the fact that she was a local writer made her more accessible to me because she was here in my town. She didn’t live in New York City or Chicago or in a remote cabin in the woods; she is where I am. Out of the poems that I have read of hers, the one that has continued to stick with me is Magic Lantern. The progression of her images is so natural and the language is attainable. I don’t like to read poems where the language is so over my head that I don’t know what on earth is going on because it takes away any connection that I could have made with the work and the speaker of the poem itself. Grimm’s language allows for me delve into the poem itself. Magic Lantern, specifically, poses philosophical ideas and questions of identity and the significance of life, but not in the way that is too overwhelming. The images themselves are grounded, so that the poem isn’t this abstract piece that I couldn’t grasp onto. Images like “he’d show glass slides of the Taj Mahal / or lovers kissing in a Venetian gondola. Familiar / scenes too and after flickering black and grey.” These are some of my favorite lines from this poem solely because I can see what the speaker is talking about. I can feel the awe of the Taj Mahal and I can feel the romance of the lovers kissing in a gondola. I am with the speaker. How she ends this poem is what stayed with me the most. The poem is structured as a single longer stanza with long lines and then the ending line is on its own and is shorter than the rest. “But that was before I knew better.” Through the latter half of the poem, Grimm explores ideas of being this almost ethereal person and having this kind of light to her, so that “the world could see me better.” The language, again, is beautiful and captivating in itself, but the last line is what got me. It switches the speaker’s tone into something more reluctant and questioning of the world and themselves. Before the speaker is hopeful, maybe even a little jovial, but then the last line allows for the speaker to become someone more cautious and scared almost. Grimm’s writing has allowed for myself to be okay with taking these turns that aren’t entirely expected because typically, I am careful with my writing, I am in my defined comfort zone. But with Grimm, she turns the poem, like all good poets, so that it isn’t what you expect. Read Magic Lantern here: http://teriyoumansgrimm.com/poems.html -Winne Blay, Junior Managing Editor

From first glance, Jamal Parker is a very successful young writer. He has been champion to a number of poetry slams, worked as an editor in different publications, and is a Douglas Anderson graduate. A lot of his work, written and in the literary community, involves speaking through the perspective of being a Black man and pushing the achievements of Black people. I personally connect to this aspect of Parker as a writer, as I too often write about the being Black and what the Black experience is to me. Parker has judged for a poetry competition for the Campaign of Black Male Achievements and is a member of the Black Boy Fly collective, an artistic performance team. Just from reading the titles of Parker’s voice, I get a feeling that he is an unapologetic voice who is more than willing to ask questions and interrogate to get the answers. As I read his poem “and in this nightmare a white supremacist tried to kill me,” I felt tension throughout the entire piece. It felt like straining, like not knowing what was going to happen, falling apart because of it, then coming to an open end, still unknowing, yet learned. A technique Parker uses is imagery. The last lines (“his intentions are as bold as burnt crosses on Sabbath morning”) are stunning. This image is very strong on its own. Although the poem is full of tension, this image is the most packed and uses masterful language. Continuing to search through Parker’s poetry, I noticed he often ends his poems on assertions. Poems are very short and compact. It begins, develops, and concludes a story usually in a small number of lines. This can make poetry harder to chew as it is so much in so little time. Sometimes a poem needs to cram, to set things against each other in a tight space to create friction. I believe Parker is very efficient at giving just the right amount when it is needed. He explains the contents of his poem then crafts an assertion at the very end to get that right amount of direct and compact. This plays out in his poem “Last Monday.” In this poem, Parker describes what it’s like to be a Black student in a classroom of ignorance. Throughout, he shows his feelings of injustice and anger through short language and tone in lines like “like my brothers and I aren’t soon to be buried there” and “like she’s chewed on the word before.” He ends “College is where I discovered, being an activist in a classroom setting is actually holding my mouth quiet—” which speaks to the frustration the speaker is feeling, the final assertion, external and internal anger. What makes Jamal Parker a masterful writer to me is his need to dive into personal experience. His work is full of clear voice and emotion that show how unafraid he is to show himself through writing. -Lindsay Yarn, Digital Media Editor

After getting the chance to be an audience to Billy Merrell at a previous Elan Alumni reading as well as seeing him at Writer’s Fest in 2016, I’m excited to see what he brings to the table at this year’s Writer’s Fest. Reading through his poems have been an emotional experience, but one that I’ve enjoyed greatly. It takes a level of vulnerability and acceptance towards opening up to be able to write intimately and personally. This is something that took me three years at Douglas Anderson to finally do, but it was a freeing feeling once I finally opened up. I got the same feeling from reading Billy Merrell’s “Canon,” a poem I felt I had some secret connection to through my existence as a writer, as someone who looks onto the work of others in order to give myself the ability and the might to write on my own. I admire the way Merrell not only brings this connection into the piece but makes it specifically personal to himself through the listing of specific poets. Another admirable aspect of the poem is its beginning, the very conversational tone it takes on from the start. I think much of this comes with the topic of the poem and how open it is to different types of readers to connect. The topic of the poem, self-acceptance, makes the conversational tone seem intimate. There’s an emotional understanding between speaker and reader. I really enjoy reading poems saturated with emotions and experiences that feel very personal to the writer or the speaker themselves. That’s what it was like when reading “Cannon,” a saturation. I felt discomforted in the best way possible. Another powerful poem by Merrell is “Folding Sheets,” from his collection Talking in the Dark. This poem describes the moment between a mother and son in which they carry out an everyday action like holding sheets together, but the closeness that comes with doing so. I’ve recently written a lot of poems concerning the relationship I have with my own parents, so this one caught my attention. This poem focuses specifically on a single moment. It’s layered with many different images, the same object and action shown in different ways, symbolizing different things. I love that Merrell does this, that he makes this moment so vivid that I picture myself there. One line that stuck out to me the most is “And then the air underneath is undone/like hands just after a prayer.” This line, beautifully unique, felt like a breath of air. This moment feels very traditional and devotional. It shows the love between a mother and her son, how much it can be appreciated through such a simple thing. Knowing that Billy Merrell comes from Douglas Anderson, that he returns to share the art he has continued to produce with much vigor and talent, is inspiring. It strikes down the fear of losing this passion after leaving a sanctuary such as DA. I look forward to being immersed in the art with all the writers next month. -Kinley Dozier, Senior Managing Editor

My biggest fear is waking up on a Monday morning, with warm sunlight seeping in through my paneled window, the sound of birdsongs coming in through the ventilation and realizing that someone that I love or have loved, is gone. The idea of that imaged latches onto my insides with bird claws and doesn’t let go until I find something to distract myself with. That’s where Keiona Wallace’s “Return Date: 5/11/1974” really hit me. With her sour story on a man who returns home from war, different than from when he left and the aftermath of the different feelings his wife has to go through. This is the  type of story that forces me into perspective of my own fears. The main character didn’t lose him, but at the same time she did and I can’t seem to wrap my head around how you’re supposed to cope with that. It reminds me of holographic figure. The person is there, they look the same, they sound the same but the smell is gone. The smile has dimmed and there’s something in the person’s eyes that make you uneasy. Those are the type of stories that make Elan what it is. The ones that dig down into your core and bring something out of you, something that you can grasp onto and look at with wholesome eyes. The type of artwork and writing that makes you lose your breathe and take a step back wondering how someone so young could do so much. Without literary magazines like Elan, people would still be stuck in a idiotic whirlpool mindset that you have to a certain age to produce something as fantastic as Keiona did. People like to blame things one experience. My grandpa in particular preaches on a day to day basis that I can’t know anything about the world because I’m not old enough. He, as do many others, believe that unless I’ve lived for fifty years I’ll always be shallow and naive. Elan proves people like him wrong. You can’t sit down and write about things like this unless you know. What people like my grandfather fail to realize is just because I haven’t been through a divorce, doesn’t mean I don’t know what heartbreak feels like. I learned that when at the age of two when my parents never came back. Or that because I don’t pay mortgage, I don’t know how to be responsible. I learned that age the age of twelve when my grandmother was getting to overwhelmed to raise a 9th kid. I’m seventeen and me, along with almost everyone else in my generation have more through more crap in one year than most people go through in their entire lifetime. Elan allows people to display that, it allows for all of those talented artists being shooed away into a closet to step out and show everyone what it means to be a writer. What it means to be an artist. - Sierra Lunsford, Website Editor

Two bodies pressing against one another, grabbing hold of their clothes, and resting their heads together. This painting’s background is screaming with colors: pink, white, purple, yellow, green, blue, and brown. At first glance, I thought this piece was possibly a Madonna and child painting. The elegance of the woman, her eyes steadily watching me, felt like a raw declaration of something. The second person, their face covered with a drape as if they service a bigger purpose than to show facial expressions, is clinging to the woman. The closer I looked the less it became about mother and child, and more about intimacy. Élan editions are about intimacy with writing and art. The vibrant lines of color are formed into straight lines, bar almost, and with only two holding back the people in the painting by their shoulders. The lines could’ve gone through their faces, or their necks, but the fact that they overlap their shoulders feels protective. I think of being captivated, blocked by something else. I’m a believer that sometimes not writing can leave a person blocked, but reading can trap someone in another word. Sometimes when I read poetry I don’t even feel like a human being, I don’t realize my brain is processing literature or that I’m reading the words right off of someone else’s thoughts. I think sometimes we forget that when we read someone else’s work – poetry or fiction or nonfiction – and look at someone’s visual art, we are literally peering into someone else’s heart and I think that’s beautiful. The woman’s body, who I originally believed was a version of the Madonna, is full of swirls. Her twists and spirals even inch onto her wardrobe, continuing in her hair and under her chin. The person hidden next to her has no swirls. She’s painted with splashes of paint, bright and almost angry looking and it makes me think that perhaps her love is not only blind but raw too – hence the title piece Young Love. This person, blinded by the blue drapes, is also another shade of the clothing they wear. Maybe this is a stretch but the blues could symbolize love can feel blue sometimes – the blindness of love affairs. Pieces that make me think are my favorite and just looking at the painting for one minute made me think of so many different intents. Are they being held back by love? Is the theme intimacy or sorrow? What are the woman’s eyes saying? Are they hugging each other or not? Just like the written pieces in each Élan edition, the artwork is also chosen with the intent of intimating the minds of our readers and pushing them to want to understand. To me, Élan means engaging the brain and this single art piece did that for me. This piece represents Élan with its colors and endless possibilities of interpretation. It invokes my interest just like each art piece in this book. - Valerie Busto, Creative Non-Fiction/Fiction Editor

Whenever I feel like I have come to a point where I have “run out” of things, ideas, themes, I turn to visual art to try and find inspiration. I do this thing where I am constantly writing about myself and what is happening in my life and, in turn, feel as if I am continuously writing about the same things over and over again in the same exact ways with the same exact language. It feels like I am stuck in my own writing. Going to visual art allows me to disconnect my personal life from my writing and take on the voice of the subject or artist or to interact with something other than myself in my writing. I will write pieces that I would have never thought about writing or even thought of in general because of pulling my inspiration from something else, something intended to make the consumer feel some sort of visceral reaction. Both writing and visual art make their consumers think and go further into each piece than what is first seen. It’s amazing. I can look at the same piece of art endlessly, but still continue to find something else about the it. There is always more. Élan takes both art and writing and uses them so that a kind of symbiotic relationship occurs within the book itself. There is writing that has to do with the art and art that has to do with the writing. Each feed off the other. In the 2017 Fall edition, an art piece titled, Fruit on Wheels III, is one that I find myself going back to consistently and doing nothing more than just looking at it and trying to piece together a semblance of the story of what is happening in it. Who are the two men? What are they doing? Where is it? Why was the artist drawn to capturing this moment in time? What did the artist want people to get out of it? In all honesty, I am not entirely sure as to why I am drawn to this piece. There’s a story or something deeper lying in every piece of artwork, and I will most likely never truly know what the artist intended to say with this piece, but I can piece together what the art is telling me. It tells me anguish and hard work and determination and exasperation and aspiration and just-getting-by and this-is-life-and-it-is-okay. I think it is partly because I am who I am and that I write what I write. I don’t do super crazy fiction stories or fantasy or abstract. I do grounded and realistic and in your face and there is more to what I am saying. That’s what I felt from this artwork. On the surface, you understand what is most likely happening, but you keep going further and further into the work itself and the smallest aspect of the art means something. Writing from this piece would be me removing myself in the sense that maybe it isn’t a personal narrative that I am telling, but instead, someone else’s narrative that I am telling with personal conviction and connection. - Winnie Blay, Junior Managing Editor

Whenever my eyes used to come across “Milkmaid” by Eryka Goldsworthy, it struck a familiar chord. I’d find myself staring at all aspects of the painting, the way the wood contains small looped circles and the bread reflects the light coming from the window. I believe that this painting resonated with me because it focused on a small action, something simple, a snapshot of milkmaid. The inspiration for this painting had to have come from the oil painting by a Dutch artist in 1658, also called “The Milkmaid”. The biggest differences between the two paintings is notably the setting. The painting done by Eryka is much more modern, the milkmaid is pouring milk in ceramic bowl on the edge of a stainless-steel sink. From the hues to the Milkmaid’s expression, there is no question that the painting is organic. It illustrates an overall feeling of home coming from a creator. I believe that any entrepreneur, cook, farmer, writer, painter, can relate to feeling radiated by the painting. Writing takes places first in the home and when I look back at my earliest memories, some of my writing took place while watching my mother cook in the kitchen. Paintings like “Milkmaid” exhibit a feeling grounded in the roots of any culture. Writing involves reaching into memories to explore more about oneself, whether it was a good or bad period in our life. It is a good feeling to know that the emotions behind a piece are true, and they can be true to anyone. One of my poems describes how I used to watch my family work at the back of a restaurant, elbow grease and all. I think that “Milkmaid” resonated because it reminded me of an actual memory at a very young age. Paintings that take me back to a certain point in life inspire me to create something from nothing. Personally, “nothing” is a state of mind or a plateau for an artist.  Creating something out of nothing is when my best ideas take place. Last year, “Milkmaid” pulled me out of a plateau with writing that I was going through and inspired me to create a creative nonfiction story about the milkmaids of Colombia. I have found myself always writing about small actions in my daily life, mostly because it amazes me how differently I can experience them. The Elan literary magazine publishes nothing but organic work. Our paintings like “Milkmaid” exhibit a profound candid expression. The action of the milkmaid is a lot similar to other pieces that Elan publishes, it makes writers like myself reflect on a memory to create something memorable. - Evelyn Alfonso, Poetry Editor

Of all the beautiful artwork published in Élan, the piece that resonated that most with me is probably Slow as Molasses by Isabella Gardner. Not only are the aesthetics of this piece incredible, but the different meanings that could be behind it, how it connects to the pieces on either side of it, and how it connects to Élan as a whole are all amazing. How this piece looks visually on the page is both intense and beautiful. While it’s drawn completely in black and white, the contrasts between the woman, the wall behind her, the bee, and the molasses dripping from her head allows for a lot of interpretation about light and color, even without those being present in the piece. The details of the woman’s lips and eyes allow for a lot of interpretation about what’s happening in the work; while the bees, which are often seen as symbol for discovering personal power, and the woman’s facial expression, which looks somewhere between self-discovery and pain, she’s also drowning in molasses, something incredibly sweet. Despite bees having stingers, the woman looks as though she’s being awakened as she’s being drowned and stung, and despite its ambiguity, the piece allows for a lot of personal interpretation. I personally see the work as a representation of how we often drown in our own vices and pleasures. The piece also pairs incredibly effectively with the pieces around it. Altar Serving by Jaclyn Berry explores a girl finding pleasure in a time of intense emotional pain and stress, and Recipe for Baked Potato by Noland Blain explores themes of suffocation and the painful, unhealthy aspects of something delicious. As well as being one of the most thoughtful and beautiful pieces we’ve ever published, I think part of the reason it stands out in my mind is how it complements the writing and brings out themes in all three of the pieces that may not have been clear without the pairing I also feel as though this piece epitomizes the message of Élan. We try to select pieces for our books that we feel are not only thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing, but also pieces that invoke an emotional reaction in the reader and that explores themes deeper than what’s merely on the surface. This piece allows for a vast amount of interpretations, is beautiful on the page, and totally fits in with the theme of the entire spring 2017 edition. - Oona Roberts, Senior Layout and Design Editor

As the Junior Art Editor of the Fall 2017 issue of Élan, one of the pieces I reviewed that resonated with me the most would be “Wind Up Boy”. Stylistically, one can see how it can catch a viewer’s gaze. The artist very masterfully creates a face for the portrayed character, immediately drawing attention to the rest of the piece and its meaning. The color scheme and the position of the boy also work to add a layer of depth to the message. To fully understand the striking aspects that the artist is able to convey in this piece, it must simply be seen through its original medium, as I do not believe a recreation of it through words will be able to truly illustrate its traits. Though the meaning may vary for others viewing the piece, I believe the most resonating intent to be pulled away is the idea that this boy keeps having to wind himself up again to function. However, considering how his key is in his back, I am led to believe that it is someone else he depends on to turn this key for him. In this, he is unable to motivate himself to be productive unless another he relies on keeps him standing and walking forwards in a thoughtless, mechanical manner. When all of the turns of the key are used up, the boy simply falls again in exhaustion. He possibly contemplates never standing again. In this, I believe specific image can strike many viewers in a meaningful way. I find this piece to not only be well done, but to be carrying universality as well. I believe the reason this piece is so intriguing to me is because I feel I can relate to the boy in this period of my life. As an upperclassman in high school, I realize the looming responsibilities following graduation and the possibilities of further education. Not only is there a decision to be made, but there are also obstacles of others expectations for you and the thoughtless mistakes of your past holding you back. Currently, in preparation for college, I have found myself swamped in activities inside and outside of school. This is done in order to further accomplishments that may be listed on my college applications. Often times, however, after I work so hard on something with no immediate result, it can become exhausting to continue. Whether it be a supportive friend or a good coffee, I find that I am often in need of something or someone to simply wind me back up. This way, I can again continue on my way towards the future I want by using the mechanical methods the key dictates. Though I realize it is an exhausting way to live, I still continue towards my goals in life. In a sense, this piece reminds me of this struggle and the fact that it is possible to move through it. Though exhaustion follows all your ventures, it is rare that you are left without anything to help one continue moving forwards. The artist of “Wind Up Boy” ironically demonstrates it as she clearly worked tirelessly to create this image of giving up, reflecting an emotion she must have felt before or during the creation of this piece of art. This piece can then, through its universality, possibly be able to reflect the states of artists submitted into Élan. Without the ability to be wound back up again and to continue work, we may not have made it as far as we have today. -Kathryn Wallis, Junior Art Editor