This issue was the first to transition fully from our old site to this static platform. We hope you enjoy the content in this new format.
Publisher's note
Sight, Sound and … Smell?
As a multimedia journal, Rootstalk offers words, pictures, video and sound. Does the future hold smell as well? Read more →
Editor's Note
Time For A Roadtrip
When the spring comes around, Midwesterners hit the road. Read more →
Essay
Peaches, Meet Corn
In this essay, a Georgia-based writer shares her introduction to the prairie’s wild beauty. Read more →
Multimedia
Birds of the Prairie
In this issue we focus on the Wood Duck, the Baltimore Oriole, the Common Loon, and the Hooded Merganser. Read more →
Poetry
Ode to the Honey Bee
The poet confers a Spring blessing on one of the prairie’s humblest—and most necessary—residents. Read more →
Essay
Roadtrip
What’s an East Coast transplant to do when she doesn’t feel she fits in the Midwest? Fill a car with friends and head for Davenport, Iowa. Read more →
Poetry
Travel by Starlight
Roadtrips aren’t just fodder for travelogues, as this poet shows us. They produce poems, too. Read more →
Essay
His Ambassador
Grief is this writer’s companion as he drives from Red Wing, Minnesota, to Minneapolis. Read more →
Poetry
Think of night as controlled prairie fire, and it becomes an imperative
Our issue’s third poet posits a commerce between ripening ferns and the stars. Read more →
Podcast
Roots Talk! Podcast Episode 3
In the first of two podcasts in this issue, plant scientist Lee DeHaan discusses the new perennial grain, Kernza. Read more →
Poetry
Making Room
A room isn’t just space in a house; it’s a state of mind, as this poem reminds us. Read more →
Essay
The Heart of the Oblates’ North
Our first contributor from Canada tells how a piece of prairie history was preserved in northern Alberta. Read more →
Local History
Growing Up in Kansas
Anthropologist Don Janzen examines his own background in his essay about his father’s homesteading childhood in early 20th century Kansas. Read more →
Local History
The Peace Rock
How could a hunk of rock buried on a college campus have so much history attached to it? This woodworker/amateur historian tells us. Read more →
Essay
This Old House
When you move into an old house in a small town, you inherit that house’s history and, sometimes, its former residents. Read more →
Memoir
Roots of Stone
When this Minnesota writer’s family farm became a regional park, she kept her family memories. Read more →
Closeup
Closeup: Keith Kozloff
Keith Kozloff discovered a trove of his old black-and-white negatives from the 1970s in an old shoe box. Take a look at this selection. Read more →
Poetry
Two Poems
This poet turns to a pair of Iowa icons–a Grant Wood painting and the quadrennial caucuses–to evoke the quiet behind the image. Read more →
Podcast
Roots Talk! Podcast Episode 4
Audio producers Noah Herbin and Eva Gemrich interview University of Iowa Prof David Osterberg about CAFOs. Read more →
Essay
From My Table to Yours
A small-town restaurant is where the local foods movement gets real. Read more →
Music review
Pieta Brown in Concert
Our reviewer covers a Spring concert by Iowa folk music royalty Pieta Brown. Read more →
Closeup
Closeup: Kristine Heykants
This Twin-cities photographer looked south for the images in this Closeup, to the small Iowa town of Belmond. Read more →
Poetry
Gnosis
The word “gnosis” denotes the study of spiritual mysteries, which this poet recognizes in the sky, in the land, in the eyes of love. Read more →
Essay
Finding the Lost Duck
Where can you find the essential Iowa? Not in a single place, as this writer found, on the road with his father and a van full of friends. Read more →