Editor’s note
Pollux’s third issue is being released a little over a year since we first launched this website. Adelina Rose ended the Issue 2 editor’s note with gratitude for everybody who has submitted, contributed, read, and shared Pollux, and it seems appropriate to pick up right where we left off: thank you so much for the love you show us. It is a true joy to be bringing another issue full of language and its intricacies to you. And I hope that in the past thirteen months, you have also had many joys and celebrations, however small in the scale of sadness in this world, and that as the new year opens, we will be met with blessings both expected and not.
When reading and editing, a question that we at Pollux continuously ask ourselves is: why must this piece exist in the multilingual form that it is taking? In other words, what dimension is language bringing that could not be addressed in solely English? A frequent answer to this question, in Issue 3, is precision. Here, multilinguality allows us to articulate ourselves with the details of a fine brush, or with the clarity that is only achieved when colors are mixed. Natalie Schriefer explores a loneliness that could not be described without Russian in “Дорожное Радио”, while Miriam Saperstein draws us into the space that a religious and cultural vocabulary holds for love in “Lekhstn Nokh”. Jannah Yusuf Al-Jamil and Jameson Hampton’s respective poems, “What I’ve Seen-Seen-Seen” and “I was never ένα κορίτσι”, converse about language’s roles in forging one’s identity in quite different lights. It is an understatement to say that I am excited for you to read this issue full of our contributors’ talent, and to join us in this neverending thought of how language exists in our lives, inseparably from our selves.
Thank you for sharing your time and space with us. We will see you on the internet again soon.
With love,
Youngseo Lee / Editor-in-chief