The 2015 January issue explores mapping as place, location, and orientation. The print issue’s design this year encourages reading mindfulness with the intention of getting lost, disoriented, having to navigate a way through as someone might navigate a journey; it encourages discovery. The issue emphasizes the iconic physical ritual of unfolding and refolding maps and also the visual weight of traditional street maps in order to communicate credibility and an authoritative source of being an actual place. But this place—Tab Journal—is also no place.
In designing the print issue, we examined work by Jacques Bertin, a French cartographer and visual semiotician. In his book The Semiology of Graphics, he synthesized design principles with rules applied to writing and topography. His work was dedicated to the study of visual variables (shape, orientation, color, texture, volume, and scale) of maps and diagrams to code visual combinations that would create successful map-reading objectives. We challenge these guidelines by employing visual variables associated with illegibility, including graphic density and angular illegibility. The front side of the map, which contains the poems, tightly compresses layers between text and texture, eliminating hierarchy and contrast. There is no right side up so disorientation is part of the reading experience. This is further emphasized by an orientation conflict in which each poem is placed on its own angled baseline.
This backside of the map provides information about the authors. In order to discover the author of a poem, the reader must flip between the front and back of the map to determine its placement on the latitude and longitude grid. This side of the map uses photography of places so specific that the reader is excluded from knowing the place. With the common use of GPS and everyday devices that lead the way rather than show the way, this print issue empowers the reader to lead their own way.
In 2015, online issues switched to March, May, July, September, and November. While the online issues pick up design elements of the print issue, they are designed not to replicate print nor to quietly frame content but, rather, to use the platform to create a distinct reading experience. Here in the new Archives, the issues are available via live link to the web-based PDF and as a downloadable PDF.
IN SIBERIA
Michelle Chan Brown
AFTER “SHOULDER” BY ANNE GREENWOOD and A CATALOGUE OF ACHES AND PAINS
Shaindel Beers
SIBERIAN ELM and SIMULTANEITY/SEQUENTIALITY
Bin Ramke
EATING SNOW CRAB LEGS IN SEATTLE
Sheryl St. Germain
MID-MARCH
Tess Taylor
ADDENDUM
Lorene Delany-Ullman
MAJORCA
Natasha Sajé
MONOCHAORDS and FRAGMENTS, LATE SUMMER, MOTHER
Nicole Cooley
The content of our print issues is not available online in its entirety; this issue is still available and can be requested using the Contact form.
POWER OUTAGE and LOST EMBALMER
M.K. Brake
MY HOMETOWN and THE SHARECROPPER’S SON
Sarah Hughes
FROM WITHIN and FARTHER THAN I THOUGHT
Brian Satrom
“AND THE RUDE LEAVES FALL.”
Phillip Sterling
SIDEWAYS
Lori Widmer
WRITING ZHONGSHAN SOUTH ROAD, TAIPEI
Elaine Wong
BOOK REVIEW: Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory by Natasha Sajé
Heidi Czerwiec
K-1st grade
THE GREAT WHITE
Elin Ekenheim
OVER THE SEASHORE
Eeesha Muthineni
2nd-3rd grade
THE WAVES AT THE COAST
Arianna Traub
THE DEEP SEA
Zak Trevan
4th-6th grade
THE GREAT LINE
Isha Singh
WINTER
Natasha Gupta
7th-9th grade
SHE IS THE OCEAN
Emily Su
SPRING TIDES AT DAYBREAK
Sabina Holzman
10th-12th grade
CALIFORNIA SOARING
Amanda Vallecorse
A LEAP FROM THE JETTY
Jarid McCarthy
THINGS FOUND ALONG BOYER ROAD BETWEEN EL DORADO, KS, THE DUMP
Lanette Cadle
FROM CHICAGO FACADES: XXV and XXVIII
Inara Cedrins
R IS FOR REVOLTED, S IS FOR SOCIETY FOR MISSIONARY MEDICINE, and V IS FOR VICTORS/VICTORIA
Heidi Czerwiec
ODE TO JETLAG and DEUTSCH KLASSE AM MITTWOCH
Sandra Faulkner
NIGERIA:
Ron Singer
TWO BIRDS
Pia Taavila-Borsheim
BOOK REVIEW: Afternoon Masala by Vandana Khanna
David Krausman
REVIVE
Aaron Bauer
THE BODIES THAT FELL FROM THE SKY and STILL SUNSET
Joan Biddle
TAEGEUK IL JANG and BACK KICK
Yu-Han Chao
CLASS AVES
Merridawn Duckler
THE TWO LIVES OF ALEPPO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL and SESTINA FOR CAPTIVES
Ann Struthers
WHEN HANS NIELSEN’S FARM WAS CUT IN HALF BY THE COUNTRY ROAD (Da Hans Nielsens Gård Blev Gennemskåret af Landevejen), HANSTHOLM, and HEART OF THE MORNING (Morgenens Hjerte)
Knud Sørensen, translated by Michael Goldman
BOOK REVIEW: Little Spells by Jennifer Sweeney
Jack Gaiour
PEACHES, INHIBITED, REMIND ME OF MARILYN and SHOEBOX
E. Kristin Anderson
THE REMINDER
Lisa Cheby
UNTITLED [FOR THOSE THAT DIED THAT DAY]
Dylan Debelis
GROWTH
A.J. Huffman
TWO MOONS
Robbi Nester
PASSAGE and TO A THREAD
Alexandra Smyth
ATE AN ANGEL and DUE TO HUMAN ERROR
Anat Zechara
ON THE VIOLENCE OF VOICE: (RE)IMAGINING POETRY READINGS
Jacqueline Winter Thomas
BOOK REVIEW: Cement Shoes by Judy Ireland
Nick Dante