From jmesch@artsci.wustl.eduThu Feb 29 11:51:14 1996 Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:27:46 -0600 (CST) From: James M Esch To: James M Esch Subject: Sparks Online Issue Vol. 5 No. 1 Sparks Vol. 5 No. 1 contents Editorial Two Poems by Michael Estabrook what can you expect she's an engineer I won't see Last Tango in Paris again Six Poems by Ray Heinrich genocide eats the lamb you're getting to be a dream feet and figs what are you wearing? the secret of life forget the accident Two Poems by Fraser MacFarlane Jeopardy Answers Writing Poems For Al Poem by Daniel Vian SPASM 1900 Reviews The Tunnel by William Gass Noteworthy ====== Sparks: A Magazine for Creative People ISSN#: 1077-4149 Editors: Jim and Stacy Esch Sparks Copyright ©1996 by Jim Esch and Stacy Tartar All rights for each work contained herein revert back to the authors upon publication. Web Published in the USA Sparks is published four times a year. We welcome your submissions. Send all correspondence to the address below. email: jmesch@artsci.wustl.edu Sparks Online available at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jmesch/sparkspage.html and http://las.alfred.edu/~sparks/sparkspage.html ============== Editorial So we've cut loose, made the break. We've gone to an electronic-only edition of Sparks. Why? No time, no money, no patience left to do the print version. That's OK. We welcome the change. Most of our readers reach us online anyway. Besides that, to be frank, the color publishing possibilities of the Web-edition make our old photocopied print efforts look piss poor. So enjoy Sparks in all its transient flickering interlaced and non-interlaced glory. I guess with a name like Sparks, it's rather fitting to see it make a home on the wires. We'll keep working to provide you the best literature we can find in the best format we can present it in. - J. Esch =========== Michael Estabrook what can you expect she's an engineer Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major. Augustin Dumay's playing like ice melting in the dawn's rising sun. I turn the volume higher and say to her, if you listen carefully you can actually hear him breathing. A quizzical expression drifts across her face as she asks, "Why would I want to hear that?" I won't see Last Tango in Paris again In 1973 my wife and I went to see Last Tango in Paris and after it was over and we got outside I began crying I don't know why exactly. It was dark out and the streets were empty like the theater was empty and we walked slowly and I couldn't stop crying. In the car I rested my head against the steering wheel and held onto it with both hands and sobbed and sobbed my poor wife watching quietly thinking I'd lost my mind trying hard not to laugh. =============== Ray Heinrich genocide eats the lamb Right there, in this photograph of hands reaching, genocide eats the lamb. The neighbors she grew up with are busy killing her brother, there in this photograph of hands reaching. This will be explained to her grandchildren, long after all the hands and the remembering of all the hands, are over. This photograph will be denied, just as she will be denied, just as she will remember, a hand reaching, and one more and one more becoming all the hands reaching. you're getting to be a dream waiting for a laugh before returning before signing the required form you should have been here hours ago you're getting to be a dream i'm getting to be old my fathers words my mothers songs i forget more and more of them soon i'll be returning but first i must laugh with your old smile you're getting to be a dream i'm getting to be old feet and figs caught between the feet and the figs listening to idleness refusing to answer oh my silence oh my feet each wiggley toe blessing like prayer wheels greeting me escaped from socks uncaught but i'm caught between the feet and the figs what are you wearing? My new pink skin fresh with innocent blood and the gray fur, rings, needles, and claws sewn into this jacket you made me into. the secret of life today we discovered the secret of life but still can't decide what's for dinner forget the accident the bits of glass left in your face sparkle beautifully in the truck's lights ================ Fraser MacFarlane Jeopardy Answers who do you think you are? what is your problem? when are you going to change? why are you such an asshole? where the hell are you going? Writing Poems For Al The rain beats the pavement Like a red-haired stepchild I hold my head in my hands And consider the abyss Does that sound more like a poem to you, Al Or should I make it rhyme? =============== Daniel Vian SPASM 1900 Nothing to be seen Nothing to be heard Nothing to be touched He sits in the musty room in the shadows Books shaking whenever the El passes Piles of old magazines Newspapers, photographs, postcards, assorted debris Agglomerated and stacked in odd places Multiple towers of Babel Blisters of dead paint on the walls Frosted glass in the single window Daylight outside but nothing visible A smell of rotting fruit seeping under the door An insidious gas In the year 1900 millions are reported to be starving in India A groaning mass of wriggling bodies The river Ganges brown and bubbling The boy Apu wandering naked in an alley in Benares Where is Gunga Din? Of whom are you speaking, my dear? Regarded with such evil forebodings She stands facing right Her right side presented Her right arm folded Her right hand on her hip Only her left hand can be seen The hand bent The fingers touching the lower part of her left shoulder Her face is turned so that all of it is visible Dark hair, a rose pinned in her hair at each temple Lips heavily rouged, dark eyes looking unwavering The right side of her face in a green shadow A bit of pink on the upper slope of the right cheekbone Below the oval face an expanse of cream-colored skin A gown with a low neckline, white shoulders exposed A mass of ruffles on the upper arm and over the bosom On her left side a dangling shawl, blue-grey in color Hanging past her knees On her right side the red flounces of the gown Scattered green and blue and mauve patches She moves her right arm She slowly turns She says something in Spanish The music starts Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down Many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures British trade unions create the Labour Party White sleeves raised, ruddy faces, hands clenched We are determined to change the course All the mouths are open He passes his younger days perpetually occupied A variety of circumstances prevent his marrying early Nor is it until the decline of life that he becomes a husband And the father of a family He came down furious from the summits With his bow and his quiver on his shoulder And the arrows rattled on his back with the rage He sat himself down away from the ships With a face as dark as night As she sails into the room like a great ship gliding on the sea Shouting, the voices hoarse, a beer mug raised in salute Too much dust here One hovers on the edge of a sneeze I cannot breathe this morning Dust Dust He could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion A plain man cannot stand against the anger of a king Waves of strikes spread through Europe I suppose it was to be expected The dead man was an absolute stranger to everyone A query at the railroad station No one had seen him alight from a train Mayor of New York breaks ground for construction of first subway Through a tunnel linking Manhattan and Brooklyn Starched white collars and a gathering of pick-axes All the open mouths He then took me into his laboratory And explained to me the uses of his various machines His eyes flashed fire as he scowled It makes it a little awkward for you, doesn't it? Hawaii is officially a territory of the United States Oahu green, then acres and acres of pineapples Ships of fruit companies in the harbors Let us hope she will not turn out so badly The sleuths turned the clothes inside out Then bit their lips in frustration The tailor's label had been ripped out of the jacket The laundry mark had been torn off the shirt and underwear Fire reduces the Canadian city of Ottawa to ashes in twelve hours Blocks of smoldering wood, a gray haze in the eyes I always do you justice Indeed, a remarkable woman! World exposition opens in Paris Yellow gleam of tubas and trumpets Dark eyed girls with sweat glistening on their upper lips He could not imagine the robber in the kitchen Hearing a shot in the dark Calmly assuming it had been fired by his partner The sleeping husband could have awakened And fired at the intruder The natural impulse of the man in the kitchen That of self-preservation Eugene V. Debs announces he will run for president Mouths opening and closing, opening and closing It's a magnificent place, and certainly the grounds are ravishing Boxer rebellion breaks out in China I shall go in the morning See what she means to do in the matter British take over Orange Free State in South Africa Jeffries defeats Corbett The two men half naked, arms and fists raised, at the ready Here you are again! Do you want to see Papa? Stephen Crane dies at twenty-eight of tuberculosis I'm waiting for you, you know You haven't finished your work yet General Arthur MacArthur offers Filipinos amnesty Of course I did. It was delicious! Germany reported to be building a powerful navy Hundreds die as three steamships burn in Hoboken What must be, must be But it's really dreadful to think of it all King Humbert I of Italy is assassinated by an anarchist Your reputation would suffer, I assure you! Zeppelin airship makes first flight Order the carriage at half past three Australian colonies form confederation We may as well leave our cards together Allies enter Peking to free legations But she's a mere peasant! Entirely uneducated A mere, common creature Nietzche dies after eleven years of madness It's not finished Where is the upper part of it and the sleeves? William Jennings Bryan accepts presidential nomination I'm sorry to have called you wicked United States population reaches 76 million One can't praise such a voice as that! McKinley and Roosevelt win election I believe you would do it if I asked you Oscar Wilde dies in poverty in Paris at the age of forty-six I think a great many people will be jealous of her Sarah Bernhardt arrives in America I believe the world is a cruel place after all The Boer War drags on. ================ Reviews The Tunnel by William Gass (published by HarperPerennial) reviewed by Jim Esch I'm digging in the dirt To find the places I got hurt (Peter Gabriel) This book took about three decades to write, and it shows. It's as big as life, as dark as death, as depth defying as a Wallenda family high-wire act. The novel tells the story of one William Frederick Kohler, a cynical, bitter history professor at a Midwestern university. He has just completed his masterwork, called Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany and only needs to write the introduction. A funny thing happened on the way to the intro, though. Instead of writing history, he writes the history of his life in fits and starts, inserting the errant pages into the pages of his tidy manuscript, so as to hide them from his wife. Not only that, but he begins to dig a tunnel in his basement, another dirty little secret. That's the extent of the formal plot here. Most of the action has to do with Kohler's upbringing, his alcoholic mother, his verbally abusive father, his academic mentor ( a German named Mad Meg), his history department colleagues, his affairs, his students, his relatives, his philosophical musings, and much much more. Kohler's literally digging into his past; it's a messy business, and what he finds aint pretty. You can't say that about the writing though. Gass is a prose master, who seems able to toss off brilliant similes with the ease of lighting a match. He's unafraid to challenge his reader, with unreliable narration, stream of consciousness effects, riffs and tangents, and other modernist tricks and turns. Many readers will be put off by them; I wasn't. It's a relief to see someone attempt to write this kind of novel, instead of opting for the minimal slice of life tripe that passes for literature too much these days. Gass, himself a philosophy professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has informed this novel with his broad knowledge of literature, philosophy, and history. In fact, the book can be seen as a cold, hard look at the philosophy of history itself, a grappling with history's absurd fates and fatalities -- history as humanity's graveyard ditch. It took guts to write this book. Folks will inevitably search for biographical parallels between Kohler and Gass, which won't be fun for Gass since his narrator is such an asshole. The truths in this book will hurt you, make you wince. It's lies may be hard to sort from the truth, which may make you itch. But if you have the stamina to finish it, I don't think you'll regret having read it. For all it's bitter digging into nowhere, The Tunnel amounts to something frighteningly deep. Noteworthy A group called Book Stacks is now hosting an on-line Fiction Writers Workshop. We are hoping to turn this into a forum in cyberspace where fiction writers can present drafts of short stories or novel chapters for comment and critique by other writers and interested readers. Writers of all experience levels are welcome to present their work, and everyone is encouraged to provide constructive criticism. If possible, I would very much appreciate it if you could mention this on your zine. The URL is: "http://www.books.com/scripts/newcon.exe?" From there, click on the link to the Fiction Writers' Workshop. Thanks. DC Palter Fiction Editor Abiko Quarterly ===== Heron View is a small Internet press, selling books in electronic form, distributing them through e-mail and on disk. We specialize in new authors, hoping to develop them into the kind of author that the larger houses eventually steal away from us. Our first catalog, starting in the fall, has 5 novels and a role-playing game on it; mostly SF, but one mainstream and one horror work to add a little variety. We're going to have more diversity come the new year, when we add a few more authors to our list, but right now, we're trying to get the word out. Please visit our site at http://www2.cy-net.net/users/heron and check us out. Robbie Taylor, Senior Editor Heron View Literary Services http://www2.cy-net.net/users/heron or E-mail:heron@cy-net.net "bringing light out of the black hole..." ===== World's First Online Literary Reading No more need to put up with the overpriced cappucino, monotone authors, and bad pick-up lines so commonly found at today's coffeehouse literary readings. The World's First Online Literary Reading is up and running! Eight characters' voices, reading from eight short stories, can be found at "Xander Mellish: Short Stories and Cartoons," at http://www.interport.net/~xmel. In addition to the voices, the site includes comic drawings and short fiction about New Yorkers in their twenties with very big dreams. Plus news and updates, a poster offer, and a large selection of reader response from all over the world. ====== Jim Esch jmesch@artsci.wustl.edu http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jmesch/