Tribute

by THE EDITORS
in Spring 2025

Jillian M Rock, “WEdoourthang,” 2024

We are oft reminded of Ben Okri’s words: “Just as rocks bear the strata of the ages they have witnessed, so deep inside us are the strata of unmeasured overcoming.” 

To pay tribute is to measure our overcoming and make meaning of it.

There are those who say that it is necessary to give people their flowers. We must honor each other while they can still appreciate it, the saying goes. Flowers are a metaphor for tribute, for an expression of honor and gratitude due or deserved. Implicit in this saying, though, is that we have somehow lost part of the imperative. We forget to include tribute in our regularly scheduled programming. 

In our traditions, there has often been space set aside for such rituals of homage. Libations are tribute. The holidays we created connected tribute to other significant celestial and natural events. Anniversaries and reunions are tribute. We even embedded tribute in the ways we greet each other. 

In this issue of A Gathering Together, tribute is also a literary affair. Words become a measure—only a measure—of the possibility of representing the immensity of something given to us, of returning to the source that which enabled us to be. This is why tribute was often given to a sovereign, some entity meant to represent what went beyond mere human power. Tribute was meant to “pay” the higher power, to ensure that it will maintain its hold on us, to keep on blessing us. Perhaps we can do the same with our words. 

Tribute is an act of remembering in order to reawaken. Proper tribute bends time, simultaneously introducing past, affirming present and imagining future. It is dialogue across geography—a testimony to place, a map of influence.