This year’s print issue of Tab Journal was created during a time of quarantine as the world underwent the isolation and anxieties of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this time, we reflected on concepts of time—as a sense of place, as space, as structure, as the visual experience of light and dark. Time has an impact on psychology; we can lose time or lose track of time. Time has a history of visual representation and documentation as well. This year’s print issue explores visual expressions of time warping, time-traveling, and the chronology and the kaleidoscope of time-keeping. In this issue, the images and texts engage in ideas of process over time, such as healing or growth. The large-format newsprint suggests additional ways to consider time, history, and cultural documents.
We usually do not share the entirety of the print issue online because it is designed specifically for the print medium and in a new format each year. In part because covid restrictions in Southern California have slowed our efforts to mail the print issue, we are making an exception. Below is the full pdf of the print issue itself, in addition to all the poems in audio format, which we had planned for increased accessibility. Keep in mind that we used large-format newsprint this year; the reading experience is quite different on a screen, as the relationships across poems and between text and image is altered.
We plan to mail the print issue to all Tab contributors (from all nine volumes!) by February 12. Teachers and librarians who would like to distribute copies of the print issue for discussion can use the Contact form to request a batch. The online issues in the 2021 volume of Tab Journal will pick up elements of the print issue’s design, and the website has been updated to reflect Volume 9.
MARRIAGE (MORE THAN MERCY)
Laura McCullough
MIGRATION SEASONS
Dia Roth
ANONYMOUS YEARS
Suphil Lee Park
PHOTO
Safia Jama
SALLIE GARDNER AT A GALLOP
Keith S. Wilson
ON AN AIRPLANE AT NIGHT WHILE ANOTHER IS MISSING
Michelle Brittan Rosado
GREEN WAS THE SILENCE
Millicent Borges Accardi
WE MADE IT
Susan Johnson
PROSERPINE
Mary Gilliland
CHECKLIST FOR TUESDAY
Amelia L. Williams
SALT OF BODY OVER BODY and CHAOITE
Melissa Eleftherion
NEW TOWN and BURN MARKS
Kurt Luchs
HARBINGERS
Charlene Moskal
DULCET TONES IN CHAPEL
Kenneth Pobo
GUN SHOTS
Isaac Rankin
HE KEPT
John Repp
ENCANTO and AUTUMN RHYTHM
D.S. Waldman
BOOK REVIEW: Street Gloss by Brent Armendinger
Kate Hampton
BOOK REVIEW: frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
Liz Harmer
BOOK REVIEW: 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millenium, edited by Matthew E. Silverman and Naomi Carlson
Jason Thornberry