One of the great pleasures of my life comes in the form of discussing poetry with friends. These discussions are not necessarily close readings. Nor are they, by necessity, like what one of my professors called “explications,” a term which I borrowed for my own teaching. To explicate is to analyze in close detail in order to uncover, or more accurately make an argument about, a text’s meaning. 

Our dialogue feature is not equivalent to the academic’s explication, much as I also adore that form, nor do these pieces of writing necessarily make an argument. Rather, the dialogue is a space for response, a place for community building, for proliferating connection. They are, in their essence, a kind of generosity that I think exceeds the academic’s attention, though that form is also generous.  

In my editorial introduction to our spring 2024 issue I wrote about the pleasure of playing matchmaker as I pair poets for this feature. Drawn to write about dialogues again, I have been reflecting instead on the generosity of the poets that participate in this feature. (I was initially embarrassed to find myself drawn back to this subject for the second time this year, but reject that embarrassment as antithetical to the topic I want to explore here).

Typically we have three or four dialogues per issue, but in our final issue of 2024 we present to you six: 

• Sandra Fees & Sarah Etlinger

• Anne Menasché & Knar Gavin

• Ranee Zaporski & Steve Nickman

• Robert Carr & Eleanor Ball

• Thomas Dunn & Shaoni C. White

• Martheaus Perkins & Justin Karcher

Immediately you can see some delightful felicities in this list, which might mean nothing but bring an immediate sonic and symmetrical pleasure: Sandra/Sarah, Carr/Ball, Dunn/White. What is not so immediately apparent is the startling and utterly humbling generosity that characterizes these exchanges. Within these dialogues are one true conversation which we are permitted to overhear, a wordless musical composition offered as a musical response to another’s poem, several lyric essays, an annotation, many open questions, many statements of adoration, and, at least twice, the language of “gift” to refer to the other’s poem. 

In using the language of “gift,” these dialogues invite us to consider that which is highly valued and freely given. In theological terms, generosity is an afterimage of divine grace, given freely though undeserved. I often think, in putting this journal together, in the era of ballast before we can offer compensation (a pragmatic reality which we hope will not always be so) about the uncompensated labor of these poems, the work of our poets, writing and thinking and sending us their work without expectation. And then, after we have asked them to publish their poems, we ask for more: would you participate in this exchange, would you read and write and send us more of your thoughts, give us more of your time? The resounding yes never stops being remarkable, and deeply humbling.

This form of generosity is true of all the poems offered in this issue, sent to ballast with no expectation except that we read and fairly consider them for publication. Our ethos of more & more poetry is, in a way I hope is obvious by now if you have been with us for any amount of time, an invocation, a celebration, a cry of gratitude for that generosity.

Thank you for reading.

Sara Judy, for ballast