EDITORS' NOTE | Volume 5

I’m really in love with all the little details in Volume 5. From the precision of quarks, half-lives, and decimal places learned in science class to the moment where a farmer can’t pass the trade to his two kids, it shows how the tiniest things mean so much. It’s easy to miss the coffee cups and plastic containers when the world around us is full of big people and idols vying for our attention on tiny gorilla glass sandwiches. Ark Review shows the beautiful things that make us go “a-ha!”—the precious phenomena that remind us why we care at all.

- Sean

What will be left behind? our fifth volume asks between its lines. The pieces are astounding in their loving boldness, their intimacy, but also in the myriad of ways in which they frame the inquiry. They rattle us, appeal to our empathy, whisper to us, hold us by the collar.

That question—proposed by a declaration, an invitation, a rejection, an elegy, a testament, a memory, a return, the sound of a window—wonders if we are our own loose ends. And its answer? They leave that to us.

- Mason