Editor’s Note
I haven’t figured out why this earworm has been stuck in my head lately:
“The medium is the message.”
Maybe it’s because I teach in the same lecture halls where I first learned it; maybe it’s reflective of my postmodernist-doorstopper-novel reading streak; or maybe it’s a guide to ground me when I’m upset by the absurdity of political ads, targeted marketing, and large language models.
The medium is the message, according to Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, means that when we engage with a piece of media, the first thing that catches our attention are the characteristics of it, followed by its content. It reminds me of a part of Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey, where Ruefle connects to W.H. Auden’s thoughts about a poem’s interest: “If you take the theme out of a poem and talk about that theme, there should still be some residual being left in the poem that goes on ticking…”
When I put these two quotes together, I’m reminded of the importance of craft and form as invitations for the reader. This isn’t to say that the actual words within a piece of writing are irrelevant or take a back seat, but rather, the way writing is presented is a vehicle to draw us toward positive awe and the charge of language.
As Roxana Crisólogo writes in “If Peru is a rich country,” translated by Kim Jensen and José Luis Rico:
“I need to banish the servile function of certain words
to turn up the volume the voice
to quell the fury of form”
The moving work in Issue 59 of The Adroit Journal has several moments like this, where technical choices—in this case, caesura and space—showcase writing’s aptitude to be an extension of our mind. How we clarify, question, and self-correct.
The 2026 Adroit Editor’s Prize winners offer particularly unique ways to enter the speaker’s interior. Sara Hovda, our poetry recipient, builds “Men and Starlings and Women,” a geographically-vast, multi-sectioned sequence out of “My father has lived, beyond death, for two decades / on the glissando of the green-black birds / he once shot for sport” to interrogate metaphor and promise. Prose recipient, Leslie Pietrzyk, uses stirring dialogue in “Hyenas” to bring us toward the deep-seeded violence and grief that precedes a character’s sense of “humor.” How what’s seen as funny to someone can be predatory and tragic.
Shnayjaah Valentine Jeanty, 2026 Adroit Prize for Prose winner, writes toward this disconnection in understanding with “7 Things My Father Might Have Done Instead of Telling ICE He Was Born in Florida (He Wasn’t)” where vignettes, numbering, and found text navigate through a simultaneous brutal reality and empathetic imagination. Adelaide Sendlenski, 2026 Adroit Prize for Poetry winner, uses the prose poem and associative imagery in “Someday I’ll Love Summer Again” to embody conflating emotions: “Plump cherries in plastic / sleeves filled our fridge. I loved cherries, the sting of their sweetness. They dyed my teeth purple, left the rims / of my nails sweet. But I couldn’t bring myself to eat any. I couldn’t stand the spat-out seeds and the / bellyache.”
The creators and speakers throughout this issue are contemplative in ways that will make you laugh (the all-caps of Rilke in Natalie Shapero’s “San Simeon”), be immersed (the onomatopoeia and sonic speech of Chelsea Peters Parkinson’s “Home:”), and reckon with historical memory (the color and naturalistic elements of Reiner Heidorn’s artwork “Northamerica”).
I’m also excited about this issue’s ways of defining expansion—whether it’s the surrounding themes of belonging and occupancy in Jordan Bolden Majewski’s conversation with Chet’la Sebree; in terms of skill-building in Lizzie Conklin’s triptych; or as connective, risk-taking length with Sumita Chakraborty’s “Signs of Life,” a magnificent seventeen-page (!) sonnet crown:
“When I used to picture the home
I would make, I had in mind a fortress, and thought
I might be its irrepressible master of arms.
I might be its irrepressible master of arms—
but, as I never tire of reminding my students, poiesis
comes from the Greek for to make, and a word
that can be made with it is autopoesis, or self-making.”
As managing editor, I’m lucky to be able to read every contributor’s methods of remembrance and creation before the issue is released. I can’t wait for you to learn from Issue 59, and to find something within that is a lovely, repeating affirmation.
Chris Crowder is from Flint, Michigan, and his debut poetry collection, The Kin of Nakedness, was published by Four Way Books in March 2026. Managing Editor for The Adroit Journal, his work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Georgia Review, Best New Poets, Mark, TriQuarterly, Indiana Review, Witness, the Poetry Foundation’s VS and Poetry Off the Shelf podcasts, and elsewhere. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and dog, and lectures at the University of Michigan. chriscrowderwrites.com
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