American Chordata: Magazine of New Writing Issue One, Spring 2015 | Page 15

N OTE

Joseph Brodsky uses the word “chordate” a few times in his curmudgeonly-but-worth-it 1992 book Watermark. That’s more-or-less
how we found the name of this magazine, though we approach the
idea a little differently. When Brodsky refers to the atavistic “chordate” he’s referring to more than just the category of animal with
some type of spinal or pre-spinal column. He’s speaking, I think,
to the evolution of agency, attention, and experience, and the chordate core of the human brain; organisms emerging in water (he
calls water the image of time) into awareness, metacognition, and
the recognition or formation of beauty and meaning. Pretty cool.
AC is also interested in the phylum chordata’s categorical inclusivity, and its ties to the ideas of structure and developed intelligence.
Deliberate respect for the plurality of human experience. Chordata,
a phylum that includ