From the Editors

From the Editors The sun is shining and it looks as ifspring has finally arrived: a "new beginning," as the redundancy goes, and yet, winter is not really that far away. Its memory is a presence that still determines what we wear each day, subjecting our lyricism to the pragmatics ofweather. This issue ofthe Rocky Mountain Review encompasses these feelings as well. It represents a beginning: our first thematic issue, a way of experimenting with a subject and its many perspectives across cultures and across time. At the same time, it links us to the past, the recent one, the one we still remember , through its focus on the use of memory in literature. We acknowledge the excitement at the approach ofthe new millennium but we are also experiencing a need to stop, remember, and review. Literature is not removed from this process. Many writers around the globe have responded to the need to express some sort of remembrance, a part oftheir history or that ofothers that may serve as a way of capturing the evanescent while preparing for the new. We hope you enjoy the articles we have selected to showcase this theme, and find in them those little nuggets ofwisdom that bring sunshine to our souls. Spring notwithstanding, grass is not growing under us! We would also like to invite you to be part ofour next thematic issue. For the Spring 2000 issue, we will focus on "Anachronisms and Neologisms in Language and Literature: The Creation ofNew Wor(l)ds." As teachers and lovers oflanguages, we thought it would provide a forum to examine how they have helped in the formulation ofworld views, or served as reflections of the new. We hope you are inspired by this and send us your submissions by November 15, 1999. Perhaps our most exciting project has been, and still is, the E-Review. Its electronic format allows for a more versatile presentation ofour increasingly interdisciplinary research than that ofthe printed format (and for a fraction ofthe cost!), and we are more and more fascinated with the medium. We encourage you to explore its offerings on the RMMLA web site (http://rmmla.wsu.edu/rmmla/), and familiarize yourselfwith all the new sections. We are very proud to be on the cutting edge ofscholarly electronic journals while preserving the high standards ofour printed publication. October seems far off. We still have two seasons to span before we meet in Santa Fe. Still, like spring, we are starting early and see the sun shining as well on that particular window. Every day we add information about it to our web site, and soon we'll include the program copy. These are truly exciting times for us at RMMLA and we hope you will want to share in them too! Ana María Rodriguez-VivaldiRachel Halverson SPRING 1999 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 9 ...