Dear Reader,

As I sit here writing this letter, I can see a flowering white tree out the window. I have watched this tree all semester, and I knew it would eventually start to bloom, but that felt like it would be much farther in the future. Now, as the semester draws to a close and the seniors prepare to graduate, it feels like all anyone can think or talk about is the passage of time, and somehow this tree has managed to bloom without me noticing when it started budding.

Issue #49 of The Forum invites you in this season of change, endings, and beginnings, to take time to pause and enjoy art.

Read the poems and short stories written by the students who won the annual English Department creative writing competition, contemplate the cultural and classical importance of music (Rooks Russel and Michael Branigan, “Into the Past”), the philosophy of reality (Aidan Jones, “Quest for Reality), or discover new insights into Tolkein’s liturgical imagination (Campbell Collins, “The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, A Book Review”).

We hope you can take time to pause this week and enjoy the beauty around you, and that you may use this issue of The Forum to help you rest amidst these busy last few weeks of the semester.

Enjoy the musings, poetry, and prose,

~ Gray Turner, Editor in Chief