Nothing beats a good rebirth, and Perihelion proves it as the issue comes up high and hardy, lyrical and skeptical, trailing its burial shroud and bristling with spring's seductions. No better season for the fresh work you'll find in this issue and no better reason for reading it than these poems, all chock full of the light that ruins what it touches, illuminates what it must, enters and changes us:  "Abrupt, static & of a neighborhood,/then tame as a rocking horse" (Speaking with the Skull); "Evening rested its warm heft/like the young beast/unyoked and susurrus" (Adam Among the Animals); "All our years the vultures were made of chiseled stone" (I Grant You That); "I can see from the rash in your navel/that you've hooked your tube to the mother-drug" (The Charisma of the Doctor).  These are among the poems in this issue that must kill us in order to save us.
      So, while Perihelion has been steeping in its past lately—from the high jinks, site jacks and legal smack downs of its origins on the internet frontier (one of the very first "e-zines," it appeared on Web del Sol, first birthed by Mike Neff in 1996) to the bumpy, falling-down days of its multiple (and often clinically cranky) editors, to my tenure (also somewhat cranky) from 2001-2006, wherein I put my taste on the line and was thrilled to showcase so much terrific work (visit the Archive), to today's resurrection of Perihelion, of which I am well pleased.  Perihelion will continue bringing to light the most exciting contemporary poetry out there with the help of my new poetry editors, Jonathan Weinert (who is also the new webmaster / designer of the magazine) and Adam L. Dressler (who, as review editor, will continue in brilliant high-opinion mode on his own and through the reviews he selects for publication).  
      In honor of its resurrected state, the new Perihelion has a new web address all its very own (www.perihelionreview.com). Of course, Perihelion continues as a publication of its mother ship, Web del Sol. 
      Put your finger to its wound: Perihelion lives.

—Joan Houlihan
March 2008