<p class="ql-align-justify">For the author, writer and observer isolated as all of us were, the year's challenges quickly led to a pressing task to carry on a conversation of great urgency, though with pen and paper. Question was not only how to survive the pandemic itself but also how to cope with the changes it invoked, address the racism that surfaced, and deal with the realities and unrealities of an election taking place in an arena that moved between the real and virtual, the personal and the official, all the while seeking to separate truth from fiction, stay safe, and survive while holding on to her own equilibrium, frequently sending her, like so many, to turn to the natural world for sanctuary, refuge, and reprieve.</p><p class="ql-align-justify">It seemed that poetry would be a particularly suitable conveyance for setting forth such a discourse and chronicle, poetry with its spontaneity, compactness, and figurative language to take readers there as spectators of recorded events and leave them to their own conclusions as they read <em>Fear and Promise, Remembering 2020.</em></p><p><br></p>