Letter from the Editors

We’ve been thinking a lot about roses. And not just because it’s finally spring in Iowa—the pages of our newest issue are filled with the heralds of spring: flowers and songbirds; rainfall and days lengthened by the sun; pollinators and the golden honey of their labor. Even the laments and grief we find in these pages remind us of the cyclical passage of time, that after destruction follows rebirth, and that the fruits of one season are the result of labor in another: seeds planted and tended by the work of busy insects, birds, and of course, human hands.

Here in Iowa City, we were lucky to welcome spring with two much-anticipated events: a solar eclipse and a visit from poet, translator, and previous contributor Dan Beachy-Quick, the second honoree in our newly established annual speaker series celebrating poets who translate ancient literature. Perhaps it was his thoughtful words about translation that got us musing on roses, as his renderings of fragments by Xenophanes returned to our ears: “From ur seed to the flow of flower / All things that are are earth and water.” But it was also words recalled from another time, made famous by early 20th-century labor and suffrage activists calling for “Bread for all, and roses too,” a sentiment that has been traced all the way back to ancient medical writings that advised “bread is food for the body, but flowers food for the mind.”

Earth, water, bread, roses, spring: this is what we hope to make room for in the latest output of the literary landscape we’ve tended for the past four years. As with any garden, we can’t predict what a coming season might bring, but we can keep watering the seeds we’ve planted, and hope we’re there to meet them when they bloom.

with love,

the Ancient X team

(Adrienne, Laura, James, Lindsay)