Letter from the Editor

When Sylvia Plath was finishing her manuscript, she—like many writers—reorganized and retitled it many times. Over and over, she would write a new poem and decide it should be the title poem of the collection, then changed her mind when a new poem came along. On her thirtieth birthday, in October of 1962, she wrote a poem about riding her horse. Both the poem and the horse were called “Ariel” and the poem she produced that day became the title of her collection. With this new anchor poem, she carefully ordered and compiled her book. It began with a poem about Plath’s child that starts, “Love set you going like a fat gold watch.” The manuscript ended with a sequence of poems about beekeeping, a hobby that Plath had taken up and which had family significance, as her late father had been an expert on bees. The final poem of Plath’s manuscript concluded, “The bees are flying. They taste the spring.” Plath was thrilled that the book began with the word “Love” and ended with “spring.” It seemed to her a hopeful gesture, particularly as she stared down the winter of 1962-63, her marriage crumbling and bitter cold descending on London, where she lived alone with her young children. Plath wouldn’t be alive come spring, though, and her manuscript, crafted so deliberately toward hope, was rearranged by her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, changing the tone and the narrative arc in ways that emphasized the way that she had died, rather than the artful triumph over despair her book aimed to be.

I thought a great deal about this as I compiled the packed Winter 2026 issue of Bluestem. It has been an extraordinarily cold winter in Illinois this year. Snow stayed on the ground for longer than usual; the weather was more brutal for longer than it has been since I moved here in 2018. Political events in America and around the world made the cold seem more biting, the winter seem bleaker. The impulse toward retreat is strong, the impulse toward dissociation, toward burrowing into a blanket, toward cynicism or despair. But I was also reminded, by this story about Plath and her bees, and by the actions of our writers and artists in this issue, that hope is a choice. Hope doesn’t have to mean a sunny disposition or a positive attitude. It might be something we try and fail at, like baking a loaf of bread or trying to learn a new hobby. It requires tending and consistency—like bees. It requires attention and recommitment every day. People will try to undo our gestures toward it, wittingly or unwittingly. 

Continuing to write and send out work, to observe and witness deeply and share that witness with others, is a movement toward hope. I am proud to share that with you via this issue and hope it gets you through to the spring that waits for us.

Colleen Abel, February 2026