The 2024 print issue plays with concepts of collaboration. For the first time in Tab Journal’s twelve years, the Creative Director has paired with another designer, Jessica Oddi, to create the visual language of this print issue. The bold visual backgrounds demonstrate a painterly process of two artists in the same space mark-making on one canvas together.
These visual elements become front and back partners of each poster–sheet–page. The conversations between this design and the poems themselves (text and voice) amplify the definition that this printed issue is at once a singular object and two interdependent parts, like a door hinge or a pair of pliers. One component cannot operate without the other. Pairs are categorized as twos or duos of parts, people, or ideas, but pairing carries the complexity of layers. The pairing of wine and cheese embodies two objects with their own distinct processes, standards for quality, time for aging, textures, and experience of taste. In medicine, theragnostic refers to the pairing of diagnostic biomarkers with therapeutic agents to provide treatment matched to an individual. In a kinematic pair, each of two physical objects imposes constraints on the movement of the other. Pairing risks the mismatch, invites the unintended connection, and suggests what is left out by quantitive limits. The goal for this issue is partnership, conversation, and celebration of the depth and complications of useful pairings.
Paul Brooke: Grotto of Neutrinos
Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen: Tenebrosity
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: I always want to leave you at night
Xander Gershberg: Registry [Train to Krakow], Registry [Willi Tannenbaum] and Registry [Travels]
Anton Lushankin: Innuendo
Katie Manning: Dear Shadow
Adesiyan Oluwapelumi: Fractals
T.W. Sia: You will never lose family
Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen: Situations of a Bird and Two People
Denise Duhamel: Poem in Which I Contemplate Loneliness Through a Peephole and Poem in Which I Contemplate Imposter Syndrome
Reuben Gelley Newman: [Two toads devolved in a cello brood] and [Two nodes divulged in a mellow mood]
Cyn Kitchen: When Leaving, Again
Jerry Lieblich: in and of, how, not what, and for wind today a wind
Raymond Luczak: My Ghost Boy and First A-S-L Sign Me-Learn What | My First ASL Sign
Sandra Marchetti: Friday, 1:20
Andrew Mauzey: The Moon Enjoys a Performance
Kimberly Ann Priest: in memorium
Susan Rich: Heartscape/Cityscape
T. W. Sia: In the clearest sketches after memory
Emily Velasquez: Book Review of “Promises of Gold / Promesas de Oro” by Jose Olivarez
Special Issue: California Coastal Commission Poetry Contest
Every year, Tabula Poetica selects finalists for the Coastal Poetry Contest for K-12 students hosted by the California Coastal Commission. This year, Chapman University students in Tab Journal Editor Anna Leahy’s MFA poetry writing class served as the mid-level judges. Tab Journal is thrilled to share the poems of young Californians as part of this collaboration with the community and Annie Frankel, the Public Education Program of the California Coastal Commission. You can also view the winning art and poetry selections at the California Coastal Commission’s website.
Kindergarten–1st Grade
Lorenzo Ripoll: Leopard Shark
Alexandra Chapman: Monterey Bay
Elliot Cheng: Crab
Neya Seelan: Paradise
2nd–3rd Grade
Ivan DeVries: Friends by the Bay
Dylan Bingham: The Shores and Tide Pools of Hazards
Olivia Fike: Water Blue Flows
Amorette Filemu: Ocean Waves
Julian Zatt: Boogie Boarding
4th–6th Grade
Nya Wang-Jethi: Anthozoa
Adelyn Haskins: Kelp
Manting Liu: World Beneath the Waves
Siona Pedrocchi: Whale Song
Poppy Sargent: Skies of the Bay
7th–9th Grade
Radhika Shah: lines in the sand
James Corman: The Great Blue Heron
Emma Quintero: i wish in saltwater billows and gritty gold
Six Silva: There Aren’t No Borders Here
Garrett Wong: Ode to the Sea
10th–12th Grade
Emilie Vu-Nguyen: Two Heartbeats
Bianca Robak: Far and Below
Claire Scanlan: Orchestra of Chaos
Krystal Taylor: The Beauty in the Beach
Mattea Zurielle D. Menjares: Currents