I’m confronted, of late, by a sneaking suspicion—that time itself is accelerating. Has been, or already has, and now we find ourselves unwittingly enmeshed in unexpected velocities. As though making up for lost time after years in stasis, all the moments are sifting through fingertips, fine crystalline particles of the past falling footward, leaving us behind, in the present.

This year marks the 22nd issue of Mantis, and my fifth year as one of its editors. Over that span of time so much has changed, both for the journal and in the world around us. Mantis has featured an incredible range of poetry cutting across languages and national borders, that both embraces history and tradition and also departs from it, inventing and experimenting. We have experimented, ourselves, with the journal’s format, discovering new ways to arrange and array our poetic offerings (to the delight of our readers, we hope).

In this issue, perhaps owing to the peculiar present moment in which we find ourselves, or maybe just on a wily editorial whim, we’ve done away with our standard “translation” and “new poetry” sections entirely. Reading through the submissions received this year, we were captivated by strong resonances between poems, threads that we followed and wove into five thematic sections. The first section, Eccentric/Eclectic/ Electric/Ekphrastic, sets the tone for the volume. Some of the poems envision how poetry might be encoded, the digital lives and afterlives of language that is processed, transmitted, and received; others call to mind works of art and the poetry they can inspire in us; others still question the many ways we interface with technology and artificial intelligence, as the whole section emanates a sense of playfulness and wonder that is quintessentially poetic.

If the beginning of the issue carries us into new poetic terrain, the next three sections serve as the contours and arc of our trajectory, hurtling into the unknown. The second section—Dis.orientations—points the compass arrow with poems that go forward and back, seeking out destinations or lacking them entirely. And we continue, in that direction, toward the brink of a breaking point. Disillusion; Dissolution locates the human experience of realization at the intersection of perception and memory. Relationships rearrange; continuities, images, even language falls apart, with wounds and warmth, absence and yearning left in the wake. Visceral,Velocities, our penultimate section, offers an escape from the endless ineffability the precedes it, but at a harrowing speed that exacts a toll on mind and body. These poems are relentless and raw, and the pace of the section is unbridled by any hint of friction. It is bound to break skin, draw blood, dig in.

Should we remain intact, through it all, we might in the end find stillness. Return to a sense of calm, into our bodies, and have a chance to look at the world around us through our final set of poets’ eyes. The final section, ()bservations, was orchestrated by Poetry Editor Jon Tadmor to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Marianne Moore’s Observations (1924). Some of the poems we feature in the section were sent to us specifically with Moore in mind, but others serendipitously fit so well with the spirit of Moore’s poetry that we couldn’t help but group them together.

Tadmor’s eloquent introduction to the section is a must-read for complete newcomers to Moore’s poetry and seasoned veterans alike, concluding with a special treat that links Moore to Mantis through our journal’s home at Stanford. But in light of the culmination of our new website project (mantis.stanford.edu), launched at long last on May 1, 2024, and all of the opportunity I have had to revisit each of our five most recent issues in creating their online versions, I would like to end on a favorite of mine from Observations that I think speaks to the poetry (if not the creature) we have always searched for here at Mantis.

TO A CHAMELEON

Hid by the august foliage and fruit of the grape vine,

Twine

Your anatomy

Round the pruned and polished stem,

Chameleon.

Fire laid upon

An emerald as long as

The Dark King’s massy

One,

Could not snap the spectrum up for food as you have done.

Thank you, reader, for joining us on this journey. May we encounter each other again in the years to come.

Jason M. Beckman
Editor-in-Chief

April 2024