editor’s note
Our first issue centered around the idea of punishment, which was the first word that came to my mind when I thought of the myth of Sisyphus. We find ourselves in this situation because the second word was repetition. Repetition, arguably more than any other factor, is what defines the punishment of Sisyphus. Repetition may also be the factor that turns his task into art.
The repeated rolling of a series of boulders into a big pile would be labor. The outcome of said labor could conceivably be productive: It might result in some form of shelter. But rolling the same boulder, over and over again, forever, takes us into the realm of the conceptual (where art lives). The act’s meaninglessness is the very thing that imbues it with meaning.
Auden tells us that poetry “makes nothing happen.” You can write a poem with a goal in mind, but it’s far less likely to surprise you that way. That’s how it works for me, anyway: It’s in devoting time and thought to something that seems mundane and then returning to it later, crucially, again and again, that the piece comes to life.
I chose images of a cylinder seal to separate the pieces in this issue. A cylinder seal is a small piece of stone that is carved to print a repeating pattern when rolled across clay. The rolling of the seal creates art, indefinitely, as a byproduct of its motion. Sisyphus’ endlessly rolling stone leaves a repeating image across our minds. Art is the waste left behind by unforgiving stone and toil.
Sloane Allen
September 2026
Home