This5_Trope anthology issue comes on the heels of some
editorial change at the magazine and a several month hiatus, which
is ended, hereby, now. Hence this, which offers us an opportunity
for a retrospective look at what the magazine has become and what
it's been. Consider this a sort of fulcrum, pivot, point of balance.
These are fifteen tracts sampled from the annals of 5_T
by Gary Lutz and myself, a way of saying thanks to you—our
readers—and thanks to our contributors; a way of saying
look at all this shiny fibrous work. We hope you consider this
an incentive to go back through the stacks and see what else is
here, is in the past, what else is here for you.
—Ander Monson, Editor
Mike Neff, the founder of 5_Trope and of the larger, hosting
universe of Web del Sol, envisioned 5_Trope as a journal
of literary art that did not report the world or embellish it
but instead usurped it entirely. Extreme writing was what he was
after, and when he appointed me editor, I set out to find fiction
and poetry in which thrilling acts of language, of extravagating
syntax, were equal to his vivid vision. With contributors ranging
from veteran practitioners of spectacularity to new arrivals with
fresh startlements, 5_Trope became, and under my editorial
successors continues to be, a democracy of crucially beautiful
agitated utterance.
—Gary Lutz, former 5t ed & contributing editor