translated to ASCII on October 11, 1996 -- %%%%% %%%%%% %%%%%% %%%% %%%%%% %%%%%% %%%%% %% %% %%%%%% %% %% %% %% %% %% %%%%%% %%%%%% %%%%%% %%%%%% %% %% %% %%% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %%%% %% %%% %% %% %% %%%%%% %% %% %%%% %% %% %% %% %% %% % %% %%%% %%%%% %% %% %%%% %% %%%%%% %% %% %% % %% %%%% %% %% %% %% %% %%%%% %% %% %% %%% %% %% %% %%%%%% %%%%%% %% %% %% %% %%%%%% %% %%% %% %% %% %%%% %%%%%% %% %% %% %% %%%%%% %% %% %% %% dedicated to the art of the written word volume 2, number 4 June 1996 ================================ POETRY INK 2.04 / ISSN 1091-0999 ================================ **Poetry Ink Electronic Literary Magazine** ~Dedicated to the Art of the Written Word~ Volume 2, Number 4 Issue 11 June 1996 POETRY INK ---------- **Editor & Publisher** Matthew W. Schmeer **Honorary Editor Emeritus** John A. Freemyer **Staff Artist** Calvin Xavier **eMail** **snail mail** Matthew W. Schmeer POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS 6711-A Mitchell Avenue St. Louis, MO 63139-3647 USA **Literary Columnist** Lawrence Revard **Chief Book Reviewer** Phil Pearson **Web Page Maintainer** Wayne Brissette **Logo & Icons designed by** Geoffrey Hamilton Legal Stuff ----------- POETRY INK is copyright (c) 1996 by POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the imagination of Matthew W. Schmeer. POETRY INK can be freely distributed, provided it is not modified in any way, shape, or form. 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POETRY INK is initially uploaded to our subscribers, with further Internet distribution by our readers. We use Global Village Teleport Gold(tm) II Fax/Modems. POETRY INK is produced using MicroFrontier's ColorIt!(tm) 2.3.4, Claris Corp.'s ClarisWorks(tm) 2.1v4, and Michel & Francois Touchot's eDOC 1.1.2. We encourage others to support these fine hardware manufacturers and software programmers. Submission Information ---------------------- POETRY INK is a free electronic literary journal written by and for writers and poets with access to the burgeoning global community known as the Internet. Rather than existing solely on the World Wide Web (that part of the Internet getting all the media attention nowadays), POETRY INK is designed to be downloaded to your computer and read off-line. We encourage you to share POETRY INK with your friends, family, classmates, and coworkers. Since we are a free publication, our contributors acknowledge that the only compensation due to them is the right to access a copy of the issue of POETRY INK in which their work appears. Because POETRY INK is found on America Online(tm), CompuServe(tm), and other various online services--as well as our own World Wide Web home page--we do not anticipate access dificulties. We regret that we cannot provide so-called "hard" paper copies; if you desire a "hard" copy, you will need to download POETRY INK and print a copy on your own printer. POETRY INK accepts submissions on a per-issue basis, with each issue published on a bi-monthly schedule for a total of six issues per calendar year. Generally, each issue is uploaded and eMailed to subscribers and contributors on the fifteenth of every other month (April 15, June 15, etc.). We do not send rejection letters; if your submission has been accepted for publication, you will be notified by eMail within one week of sending in your submission (or within two weeks if you sent your submission via snail mail). Our Submission Requirements --------------------------- * Your name, eMail address, physical (snail mail) address, and telephone number must appear on each submission. Your name and eMail address will appear on any published work; the remainder of this information is only for our files and will not be released. You may omit including your telephone number if you are uncomfortable disclosing this information; however, please realize this means that if we need to reach you immediately regarding your submission, your submission might be excluded from inclusion. * Electronic submissions should be submitted as plain ASCII eMail files, or as BinHex 4.0 (.hqx) or StuffIt(tm) compressed (.sit) file attachments. 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No previously published work may be submitted. * Please include a short biographical sketch (3 to 5 lines) with your submission; if your work is selected for publication, this bio will be included in our About the Contributors section. These submission guidelines are an abbreviated version of our complete guidelines; all submissions are subject to the guidelines outlined therein. For a copy of our complete submission guidelines, send a request to our eMail address. >From The Editor's Desktop... ---------------------------- As always, POETRY INK is in a constant state of flux. This month, I have both good news and bad news. **The Good News** It seems that with each issue of POETRY INK , this magazine just keeps getting better and better. Admittedly, I have a biased viewpoint. But I think many of you will agree that with each issue, POETRY INK enriches the on-line experience as it (the magazine) grows in depth and scope. This issue again breeds many changes to our content. Gone are the Footnotes From Home, Belles Lettres, and Writing Exercises features introduced in the past two issues. Due to overwhelming reader requests, these features have been abandoned in favor of giving their space toward featuring more poetry and short fiction. Gone as well are the some-what cheesy clip art graphics which have "graced" our pages in the past; henceforth we will concentrate on the written word, and leave the doodlings to those who do it better. We have more good news, too. This issue introduces two of three new feature columnists, Lawrence Revard, Phil Pearson. Shaun Armour will be joining them in Issue 12. Lawrence is a graduate student at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop for Poetry, and he is bringing to our pages a keen sense of literary criticism POETRY INK has lacked. Until now. Lawrence's dad, Carter, teaches English at Washington University, so Lawrence has access to writers such as William Gass, Donald Finkel, and Mona Van Duyn. As an active member of the Writer's Workshop, Lawrence also has contact to some of the brightest stars in the poetry pantheon, such as Jorie Graham, Helen Vendler, and Seamus Heaney, whom he features in his inaugural column. Phil lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he teaches in higher education and fiddles around with computers. A Mac aficionado, he is also the associate editor of "MacNow Magazine" . When not fishing for walleye and perch in his favorite haunts, he maintains a keen interest in the field of twentieth-century literature. And as a matter of fact, in this issue he brings us his suggested summer reading list. Sure, everybody cranks out a summer reading list this time of the year, but not everybodys' is featured in POETRY INK ! Shaun is a regular contributor of poetry to these pages, and he volunteered to submit the occasional book review and poetical diatribe,too. As a self-described "graduate student of literature earning a Ph.D. without benefit of a university", we think he is more than adequately qualified to fill our pages with interesting criticism. That, plus the fact that he is a Los Angeles native plopped down into the big- bad-movie-stand-in-for-Chicago known as Toronto also lets him inform us of the literary scene in one of Canada's brightest cities. **The Bad News** With every piece of good news comes some bad news, so here's our contribution: Our hard drive was hosed on April 20th during one of the worst storms to hit the St. Louis area in twenty years. Granted, the 80MB hard drive on our one and only computer, a Color Classic, doesn't hold that much data in these days of bloated word processors and sprawling system software, but we lost a lot of submissions, and our subscription mailing list was a total loss. We managed to contact those folks whose works had already been accepted for publication and had them resubmit their work. My thanks to all who were able to provide another copy of their contributions, as their's are the works mainly featured in this issue. However, there were still a lot of submissions we lost. If you sent in a submission after April 20th, chances are we have it on file, so don't worry. Otherwise, you may want to resubmit your work for consideration. Also, we were able to scrounge together a partial mailing list of folks who have been long time subscriber to POETRY INK. If you were previously on our eMail subscription list and didn't receive a copy of this issue, or if you would like to subscribe to POETRY INK and receive each issue in your eMail box, please see the Subscription Service section, which immediately follows this column. Now part of this hosing might have been due to the fact that we were using Netscape Navigator 2.0 to download a few files from info-mac after we had just upgraded the system software to System 7.5.3 . But, hey, I'm just saying... But in all seriousness, we are not without blood on our hands for this tragedy--for we disobeyed the two cardinal rules of computing: * Never work on your computer during a big bad electrical thunder storm! * Back-up your important files daily! Yes, we were guilty as sin on that second one. We hadn't backed up our files in over a month (gulp!), and suffice to say we have learned our lesson for flaunting the laws of societal convention. We are now backing up our files on a daily basis, and when it even looks vaguely threatening outside, we turn off the computer and grab a book to read (currently the "Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway"). However, seeing as this magazine is produced on a shoe-string budget, we can't afford any storage solution other than the ubiquitous 1.4MB floppy disk. So now I get down on my knees and beg: If anyone is willing to donate a new/used SyQuest drive and a few cartridges, we would definitely appreciate it and we would eternally trumpet your greatness. Especially if it was one of those sexy new EZ135s. We could also use a Universal Power Source (UPS), and while I'm at it, I'll wish for a new PCI PowerMac with a 4 gig hard drive loaded to the hilt with RAM as well. And a pony. I want a pony, too. Spill the Ink and May the Muse be Kind! Matthew W. Schmeer, editor Subscription Service -------------------- It is now possible to have each issue of POETRY INK delivered to your eMail account upon publication. This service is now available to all readers regardless of computing platform. Each issue of POETRY INK will be sent to your eMail account upon its publication as an eMail file attachment. Most eMail clients and commercial online systems' proprietary software will automatically translate this file into text format; otherwise, you will need to procure a utility to translate the file you receive into a readable format. Please check with your Internet Service Provider to be sure that you can receive eMail file attachments before you subscribe. CompuServe and America Online do allow this functionality. If you wish to subscribe to POETRY INK, simply send an eMail message with the subject line "SUBSCRIBE POETRY INK: your real name" to , where **your real name** is your actual name and not the name of your eMail account. It is not necessary to provide a message in the body of your eMail. For example, the subject line of your message should look like this: SUBSCRIBE POETRY INK: John Q. Public You must follow this wording EXACTLY; otherwise our eMail macro will not be triggered and you will not be added to the subscription list. Sending a subscription request triggers an automatic reply, which you will receive within three days. This reply will confirm your subscription, and also provide you with information pertaining to the POETRY INK subscription service. It is very important for you to save the reply for future reference. Please note that you will not receive the latest issue of POETRY INK upon subscribing; however, you will receive the next scheduled issue - and all subsequent issues - upon their release. One final caveat: if you have submitted work for consideration and your work has been accepted, you were automatically assigned a subscription to POETRY INK, and therefore these instructions do not apply to you. The Write Thing --------------- _The Poet & The Scientist_ There were once two people traveling on a train, a scientist and a poet, who were riding in the same compartment. They had never met before, so naturally, there wasn't much conversation between the two. The poet was minding his own business, looking out the window at the beauty of the passing terrain. The scientist was very uptight, trying to think of things he didn't know so he could try to figure them out. Finally, the scientist was so bored, that he said to the poet, "Hey, do you want to play a game?" The poet, being content with what he was doing, ignored him and continued looking out the window, humming quietly to himself. This infuriated the scientist, who irritably asked again, "Hey, you, do you want to play a game? I'll ask you a question, and if you get it wrong, you give me $5. Then, you ask me a question, and if I can't answer it, I'll give you $5." The poet thought about this for a moment, but he decided against it, seeing that the scientist was obviously a very bright man. He politely turned down the scientist's offer. The scientist, who, by this time was going mad, tried a final time. "Look, I'll ask you a question, and if you can't answer it, you give me $5. Them you ask me a question, and if I can't answer it, I'll give you $50!" Now, the poet was not that smart academically, but he wasn't totally stupid. He readily accepted the offer. "Okay," the scientist said, "what is the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon?" The poet, obviously not knowing the answer, didn't stop to think about the scientist's question. He took a $5 bill out of his pocket and handed it to the scientist. The scientist happily accepted the bill and promptly said, "Okay, now it's your turn." The poet thought about this for a few minutes, then asked, "Alright, what goes up a mountain on three legs, but comes down on four?" The bright glow quickly vanished from the scientist's face. He thought about this for a long time, taking out his note pad and making numerous calculations. He finally gave up on his note pad and took out his laptop, using his Multimedia Encyclopedia. After about an hour of this, the poet quietly watching the mountains of Colorado go by the whole time, the scientist finally gave up. He reluctantly handed the poet a $50 bill. The poet accepted it graciously, turning back to the window. "Wait!" the scientist shouted. "You can't do this to me! What's the answer?" The poet looked at the scientist and calmly put a $5 bill into the scientist's hand. Notes From the Workshop Gulag ----------------------------- by Lawrence Revard **Heaney and Vendler Visit Iowa City** Tuesday, May 14, 1996: It was a rainy day reminiscent of Dublin, or perhaps Boston in the fall, when Helen Vendler and Seamus Heaney arrived in Iowa City to clink champagne glasses with their comrade-in-award-gathering, Jorie Graham. Vendler, winner of the Truman Capote Award for Criticism, came to collect fifty thousand dollars. Heaney, still shaking the millionaire gold-dust from his Nobel Laureate, came both to introduce Vendler at her award ceremony and to regale a packed auditorium with his sagacious charm. Graham, who teaches that the Writer's Workshop and has been known to publish from time to time, was there to welcome them. Graham, Vendler, and Heaney should congratulate one another for a winning year. Graham, who received a MacArthur grant in the '80's, garnered a Pulitzer this year for "The Dream of the Unified Field". Vendler's acclaim is extensive; from her position at Harvard, she has authored and edited a string of books on poetry in recent years. Her latest, "The Given and the Made", was the impetus for the award given by the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. But of the three winners, Heaney is the gem. Heaney's recognition for excellent poetry in such books as "Death of a Naturalist", "Wintering Out", "Field Work", "Station Island", and others has proceeded steadily from the mid-sixties and culminated in the Nobel this year. It was in part for her extensive analysis of the Irishman's verse that Helen Vendler won his admiration and a glowing introductory speech. "She sells nobody short, she butters nobody up, and she leaves nobody in doubt," Heaney declaimed convincingly at the close of his introduction for Vendler. The award Vendler received was for service to the poetic community and not, it should be noted, for pure service to academia. With this award, "poets and fiction writers have the chance to judge their judges," as all of the speakers at the awards ceremony took time to comment. The Truman Capote Award is not your average pat on the back for a critic. Heaney made particular mention that Helen is a colleague in the academic atmosphere of Harvard University, referring to her as his "colleague" and "friend." In doing so, Heaney smiled: he had chosen to make his personal connection to the critic a positive force and not a matter of insider trading. The central appeal of Helen Vendler is the accessibility of her writing and its attention to the voices of the poets themselves. As Heaney further commented, "She [Vendler] is the ideal winner because over the years she has managed to keep the generally literate audience of the United States in touch with the demands and achievements of poetry." Vendler was teary-eyed when she stepped up to the podium and was compelled to retreat for a handkerchief. However, she was quick to recover. "Criticism...is first of all the desire to show an art work as the marvelous thing it is. And, secondly, Criticism is the finding of words adequate to that task of showing," she stated. With such words, Vendler diffuses the traditional war between critics and poets. Critics, she says, create an "energetic diffusion" of the ideas and images of poetry, making it acceptable, understandable, and more beautiful to succeeding and present audiences. "You bring the poetry to the theory," Vendler commented to me after the ceremony. Vendler's introduction to her 1988 book of criticism, "The Music of What Happens", makes plain that she wishes to work by a kind of inductive reasoning. It is this aspect of her work which gives her such appeal and virtue. However, it is not clear at all if her work truly attains a level of empirical discipline. When I questioned her about her methodology and the influence of various recent philosophical doctrines, she said, "I don't think any 'ism' could explain all poetry... Of course philosophies have their influence... Swedenborg influenced Coleridge and even Yeats, for example..." Vendler went on to suggest that a critic uses the best tools at hand for analysis, whatever their source. The question to ask yourself when reading Vendler's reviews of contemporary poetry in the New Yorker and elsewhere is: what tools has she chosen and why? "I gave a speech to the Academy...and collected a few shillings, you know," Heaney commented on the receiving the Nobel. He winked at us, sipping his drink in the formal buzz of the reception room after the award ceremony. It is hard not to succumb to Heaney's charm. He stands tall, at least six feet, and has deep-set, dark, twinkling eyes. His shock of white and slightly unkempt hair testifies to his age. He does not waste words; his speech emerges with a rumble and burr both familiar and foreign for any American. Heaney listened with an admirable amount of patience to the chit-chat of the young, admiring poets at the reception introduced to him by Jorie Graham. The University spared no expense for the reception. What with the quiche-pockets, crackers, and chocolate truffles, I knew I would need no dinner. Hungry graduate students and street riffraff moved in and busily scarfed free victuals as Heaney, Graham, and Vendler linked arms and slipped off under umbrellas to a waiting car. The buzz in the room before and after their exit was not due to the hooch. A atmosphere of accord and wonder held court, uncommon at academic or poetic functions. Heaney and Vendler were respectable and personable. They had come not to hawk their wares or grind their axes, but to visit and tell us that the fantasy of making a living as a poet or a critic of poetry was possible. But most amazingly, in the midst of all this, it seemed that the critic and the two poets were honest- to-goodness friends. In the small, squabbling world of scholarly poetry and criticism, it is rare to be greeted with harmony. Heaney's audience for his evening reading was too big. In defiance of the palsied reputation of poetry readings, the turn-out was larger than anyone had anticipated. Few or none of us were wearing black turtle-necks and toting Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time". The University, underestimating the broad appeal of the spoken word, assigned an auditorium which, by eight o'clock, was over capacity. A hurried relocation was conducted and a crowd of around two-hundred or more eager poetry-lovers marched in columns through the rain, blocking traffic in downtown Iowa City. If you know the size of Iowa City, you will not be too impressed with this feat of mob-rule, but it was still unusual. When a larger auditorium in MacBride Hall was conquered and the audience settled, poet James Galvin performed the sacrificial hyperbole of introduction, "Signature". "Concerned with argument, but not judgment," and "stoic" were a few phrases Galvin chose to depict Heaney's work. Perhaps the truest words to describe him are patient and thoughtful, though this would not do justice to Heaney's mesmerizing capacity for lyric. His poems are not enormous, rangy productions, but compact and certain. Heaney read with restrained inflections and an exceptionally clear, deep voice for a just under an hour. His initial poems concerned his dim awareness of World War II as a child, and touched extensively on his childhood in Ireland, a center point in his literary forays. Later, Heaney read his "Watchman" poem, inspired by a scene from Aeschylus' "Oresteia". It was a disarmingly scholarly and detached piece. Heaney's introductions to his works were brief, half-explanations, mingled with anecdotes about receiving the Nobel and reading in various parts of the world. For his finale, Heaney read a long, formal, rhyming poem dedicated to the late Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. Nearing sixty years after time spent teaching, lecturing, and writing in Berkeley, Boston, Dublin, and Belfast, Heaney has made more than a few acquaintances. Doubtless, Heaney is caught between some of his vanishing contemporaries and mentors and the up-and-coming as he has received the distinction of the Nobel. It was impossible to receive his somewhat sentimental final poem with the same critical awareness that his free verse demands. On the whole, however, Heaney held sway over his sizable audience with exceptional poise. No one would grudge him his Nobel, nor his preeminent position as international poet- scholar. The evening drew to a close. I sat at a local bar waiting to see if Heaney would accept an invitation from workshop students John Beer and Michael Theune to drink with the riffraff. While there, I reflected on the general success of the day and hoped that Heaney would make it that much more remarkable with an appearance. With significant disappointment I threw in the towel after a hour and half and stepped out into the persistent drizzle, heading homewards. It seemed Heaney was too busy; few of us had expected him to show. To my embarrassment, I learned the following week that Heaney had arrived with the head of the Workshop, Frank Conroy, in the hour after my departure. To my knowledge, no Workshop students were actually present for his arrival. Word also had it that Heaney had insisted on visiting the bar and had been flattered by the turn-out at his reading. The world of poetry is thankfully still small, and in it Heaney and Vendler compose some of the the most distinct, open, and friendly figures. About the Columnist ******************* Lawrence Revard is a graduate student at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop for Poetry. He welcomes comments regarding his writings for POETRY INK. He can be reached at the eMail address at the beginning of this column. (Okay, you lazy bum, here it is: ) World Wide Words ---------------- by Phil Pearson **A Summer Reading List** As a poet once wrote, "Summer sows murmurs of tiger and flame..." If I may take poetic license with these evocative words, summer too sows murmurs of albinos and ice. Summer's not just striking colors and forest-fire heat; rather, summer's a season of cool drinks, of white sails, of firefly phosphorescence. A time when words and books can more easily latch on like cockleburs to the sweaty socks of our too-busy-to-stop lives. Where poets and novelists and playwrights with their cargo of ready-to-deliver words, their appetite for life and death, eyes full of earth and sky, empty themselves before us, pockets displayed inside out, talking about sunrise and sunset to our too-much-so stuffed brains. Now's when they can catch us at the best time. Minds unfettered. Our souls aloft on the hammock of life... "A book list for summer reading," you say? A list for light and serious readers alike. A list for dreamers and realists. Offbeat, eclectic, purposefully not mainstream. Intriguing. Challenging. Mostly a list of not-so-well-known authors. International in scope, twentieth-century in time period. Around fifty total at last count. Please hunt up a dozen at your local library. Pester your inter-loan librarian. Dust off some jackets on the shelves. Write down a few memorable passages. Share them with friends. Dogear. Reread with a fond smile. Let them shake the person in your soul. Taste the sad alcohol of their words. Become a waterwheel and let your mind run wet. A minimalist, random presentation: draw your own conclusions. The great Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo penned the following line: "May the grass, the lichen, and the frog grow in your adverbs." Anyway, I offer these writers and titles for your summertime perusal. Conrad Aiken's musical prose and poetry "Collected Short Stories" 1960 (try "A Man Alone at Lunch") "Collected Poems" 1953 Sergei Esenin, Russian poet Confessions of a Hooligan: Fifty Poems 1973 Anthony Powell celebrated 12-book roman fleuve "The Music of Time 1951-75" Patrick White "Voss" 1957 W.B. Yeats (plays) "The Countess Cathleen" 1892 "The Words Upon the Window Pane" 1934 Saul Bellow "Seize the Day" 1956 Karin Boy, Swedish writer try her dystopia "Kallocain" 1966 Luigi Pirandello (many translations available...) masterly short stories & infamous plays: theater-inside-theater approach "Six Characters in Search of an Author" 1924 "Each in His Own Way" 1924 "Tonight We Improvise" 1930 Ford Madox Ford "The Good Soldier" 1915 Henry Green entertaining, comic novels "Living" 1929 "Party Going" 1939 "Loving" 1945 Nelson Algren Chicago school of realism "The Man with the Golden Arm" 1949 Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet four heteronymic personalities... "Selected Poems" 1971 Aime Cesaire, Martinique poet "Return to My Native Land" 1968 Nathanael West "Miss Lonelyhearts" 1933 "A Cool Million" 1934 "The Day of the Locust" 1939 Wright Morris "The Works of Love" 1952 "The Deep Sleep" 1953 "In Orbit" 1967 Carlos Drummond De Andrade, Brazilian poet many translations... Pierre Reverdy "Poems" 1968 Cubist-like poetry approach... George Moore "Celibate Lives" 1927 Junichiro Tanizaki, Japanese "The Makioka Sisters" 1957 Henry Handel Richardson "The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney" 1917-29 Australian masterpiece... John Dos Passos narrative originality-camera eye, newsreel... "Manhattan Transfer" 1925 Federico Garcia Lorca "Gipsy Ballads" 1950 read famous elegy for the Spanish bullfighter Mejeas... Jaroslav Hasek, Czech novelist "The Good Soldier Svejk" 1973 immoral, bawdy, blasphemous... Georges Simenon, Belgian writer any of the "Inspector Maigret" series... Laura Riding Jackson, American poet "Selected Poems" 1970 Emile Verhaeren, Flemish poet F.S. Flint translations... Joseph Conrad "The Secret Agent" 1907 Antonio Machado, Spanish lovable, humble poems... "Eighty Poems" 1959 Henry Roth "Call it Sleep" 1934; 1963 Arnold Bennett "Riceyman Steps" 1923 classic English realist novel... Albert Camus "The Outsider" 1946 portrait of an alienated man... Herman Hesse "The Glass Bead Game" 1960 a difficult read... Thomas Hardy "The Dynasts" 1903-8 highly imaginative verse play... Wyndham Lewis, English a fascinating personality and artist "The Human Age"tetralogy (set in hell): "The Childermass" 1928, revised 1956, best of the four... "The Apes of God" 1930 (Bloomsbury sendup...) "The Revenge for Love" 1937 "Self-Condemned" 1954 Guillaume Apollinaire "Alcools" 1964; 1965 read "The Song of the Ill-beloved" Alfred Doblin, German novelist "Berlin-Alexanderplatz" 1931 Cesar Vallejo, Peruvian poet "The Complete Posthumous Poetry" 1978 Dashiell Hammett "The Dain Curse" 1929 "The Glass Key" 1931 anonymous, colloquial narrators... John Millington Synge, Irish dramatist "The Playboy of the Western World" 1907 master of the poetic idiom... Georg Trakl, Austrian poet "Selected Poems" 1968 Attila Jozsef, Hungarian poet Selected Poems 1973 check out "Ode"... Robert Musil, Austrian novelist "The Man Without Qualities" 1953-60 unfinished tome worthy of study... Jules Romains theory of unanimism: independent collectivity "Men of Good Will" 1933-46 27-volume roman fleuve to keep you busy... Paul Valery differing Collected Works translations... two great, longish poems: "The Young Fate" "The Cemetery by the Sea" P.G. Wodehouse "My Man Jeeves" 1919 "The Code of the Woosters" 1938 Bertie Wooster and Jeeves escapist high-jinks... About the Columnist ******************* Phil Pearson lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he teaches in higher education and fiddles around with computers. A Mac aficionado, "MacNow Magazine" Associate Editor, he enjoys multimedia authoring and maintains a keen interest in the field of twentieth-century literature. In his spare time, he can be found on a lake fishing for yellow perch and the elusive walleye. Featured Writer ---------------- Amy DeGeus 1 poem and an essay _Sestina_ "I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now." --Morrisey Sunday night, and we drive past the Crobar, The warehouse district dark save for streetlights. A long line of hip hop kids in cool clothes Slouching and surly; they're waiting to dance. No thoughts of Monday; they don't have to work They don't have to get up in the morning. The thought of waiting, one in the morning For a chance to pay them money, my clothes Perhaps not retro enough, the streetlights Casting us in shadows, all for a bar! We are indignant. "I don't want to dance that badly! I refuse to wait, that's work!" Oblivious, or envious, that work Used to be getting up in the morning Instead of noon, or one; midnight's streetlights Were our friends. We nursed our beers at the bar Bemoaning our poverty; yet our clothes Were always trendy enough to go dance. Liquor and pounding bass lured us to dance Like ancient wild creatures; our black clothes A rebellious conformity. Morning Brought last call and pickup lines that didn't work On cool chicks like us; we closed every bar And stumbled home through the Diag's streetlights. Now, sometimes on my morning drive, streetlights, Not sunlight, show me the way; and the bar Of the tollbooth is one where the staff work At six instead of going out for morning Grand Slams at Denny's. The commute is a dance Performed in heels, ties, and constricting clothes. Shallowness haunts me--did Thoreau care what clothes Covered his back? Did he dread each morning? No! But we share one thing: a dislike for work, Which pales you, and drains you, in its clumsy dance; Which blinds your eyes to the brilliant streetlights All for the promise of a shiny gold bar. What good is money if you lose the dance? I stumble through days in professional clothes, Dim zombie memory searching for streetlights. Featured Writer Essay --------------------- Amy DeGeus lives in Chicago, Illinois. She works in prepress, likes to mountain bikes, recently was coerced onto a bar's softball team, and she says she actually kind of likes Lake Michigan's dead fish smell. She reports that she lives two blocks from the Green Mill tavern, which is home of the weekly, original, one-that started-it- all **Uptown Poetry Slam!** About _Sestina_, Amy writes: This sestina was the third entry I submitted to the last POETRY INK contest. It was also the third entry received for the entire contest. I was surprised that no one else entered, because I had a great time learning about and working in poetic forms. Free verse is fun and expressive, but sometimes it feels too easy. It offers absolute freedom, which can, ironically, induce complete paralysis. Working in a form, on the other hand, is like driving with a good road map. Not only does it show you your destination and how to get there, it also displays alternate routes for arriving at the same destination. I will admit to beginning this sestina by driving around blindly. I quickly discovered that the sestina may look simple but in practice, it's a very difficult form. A sestina is composed of six stanzas of six lines each, and a closing stanza of three lines. The kicker is that the same six words end the lines in each of the six stanzas. How do you repeat the same words over and over without being repetitious? And is that a rhetorical question? Oh, and I almost forgot that this, being a form, requires at least an attempt at syllable count consistency...and the last word of the last line of one stanza must also be the last word of the first line of the next stanza. I told myself, "Just write about something you did recently. If it sucks, at least it was good practice and you can get on to the real thing." The main question in my mind--which in the sestina goes unanswered because I myself haven't found the answer yet--is: Why is it that in college, we can't wait to go out and make some money, and later, when we're making money, we long for the time (and fun) we had in college? Oh, we thought we had no time--it was all spent studying or working off steam from studying. But studying was our choice; our time was our own to divvy as we wished. Whereas back in my temping days, and to a much lesser extent today, where I have a job I love but I still must show my face 8 hours a day, the same time of day, the same five days a week, my time chunks are decided by others. I don't know about everybody else, but I know that when I have a day off, I am sometimes at a loss without a schedule of projects. Without projects and deadlines, I am liable to sit on the couch all day watching "Brady Bunch" reruns. This has actually happened. It's my life, and in the end I must shoulder the blame for how I spend the time. But I can't help but wonder--if my life were not so regimented, would I feel as lost when facing a blank appointment book? Once we enter the workplace, our streetlights are gone forever. We might visit them occasionally, but pretty soon waiting in a line to get into a club just to hear some kick-ass music seems like a waste of time. It's hard to remember when waiting in line was only a slight nuisance offset by yakking with your friends during the wait. Time that is not spent producing something becomes seen as a waste of time. The pressure to produce is so embedded in our thoughts that it leads to inertia during non-working hours. I used to join mosh pits at industrial music concerts. This was before anybody outside of the music scene knew what moshing was. It was dangerous and wild, but it was also free, and there was a sense of community, in that if someone is knocked down, you help them up; if someone stage dives, you help catch them; if someone is body surfing, you don't let them fall. (Unfortunately, many guys never did get the hang of, 'If a girl is body surfing, don't grope her.') Now I see the mosh pit as our last expression of wildness. You don't see 9-to-5 adults in combat boots. So now the editors at "Time" magazine and their ilk wring their hands and moan about reckless youth banging into each other at concerts. These ex-hippie columnists wonder, unaware that they have morphed from donkey to elephant, 'What are they doing? We had causes, we had ideals, we had sit-ins, for crying out loud! What is their purpose in banging into each other?' Well, maybe all the causes have been taken. Maybe their voices, less numerous than the generation previous, are too low to be heard. Maybe the media is business as usual, showering attention on freaky behavior and ignoring the well-meaning, but untelegenic day-to-day work that goes on in social, environmental, and political organizations. Maybe the media folk have forgotten what it's like to dance for hours, kiss your boyfriend on a bench by the river, pack eight people into a car the size of a Chevette, go on carnival rides, eat churros y chocolate, all in the same night, and stumble home, arm in arm for support, in the brown hazy light of dawn. According to the sestina, that's exactly what has happened. Ajay M. Narayanan ----------------- 1 poem _Inside or Out?_ The linen heaps loom tall, dark and noisome. The bell jar's been brandished about ever too often. Like its contents it's yellowed and begun to pall; Formalin's bad for the complexion. To tinkle your private glass is hardly in fashion. Would you still confess ? ***** Summer long I sucked in the outer spheres, one by one like bloody pomegranate seeds. Inhaled whole lily ponds fringed with guardian reeds and tickled silly by fern fronds. I fed on warm spangled breeze scented with sunsets. Winter long and fall then, carried them all like cold, hardboiled eggs. Come spring, now, they sprout and leap from my mouth. I take no blame they reek of me. Any mingled mutt or hound enticed with a prize of a single pickled trout would truffle me out in a trice from these and other accounts of the inside or the out The latter tinged irretrievably with the first. On white picket fences I see my entrails slung out to rust. Richard Epstein --------------- 2 poems _Yeah, Lights_ This woman who is 93, she swears that she was young once. Silly as she seems, she now claims she has been your age and danced under a fairy moon, whatever that is, some same-sex astronomical effect of medication, Alzheimer's, and pain, perhaps. She says she has the photographs to back it up, but boxed away; she's left them all to you because you'll understand-- she told me just this morning. Being young, you know what colored lights can do and dresses that crinkle when they're touched by the right hands. That's what she said. Talk about touched. She said she wishes fairy lights for you. Yeah, right. _St. Christopher of the Suburbs_ I was not a willing carrier; I came to the ford alone, able to endure some conversation, if I had to, for the intermittent interchange of warmth. No more, though: just some comfort for the night. I did not plan to portage any children. I did not mean to be some nitwit saint stuck with suburban burdens, soon to be stuck on the dashboards of the local cars. Let kids build bridges. Better, let them stay wherever they are before they're anywhere. Do you know what it costs to buy them shoes? Can you imagine how it racks your spine, chauffeuring them, plashing a path across, compresses the vertebrae, forces the discs every which way? I'm saintly, friends, not crazy. "Daddy," they call you while they need a lift, then leave, and find themselves in distant towns. A long way off, those towns, and full of villains. I should have given them money for the fare. J.W. Drake ---------- 2 poems _LBJ Ears_ I'm getting LBJ ears now, I don't know why, maybe I'll hang my boots on 'em and listen for false steps, or maybe Stetson "Ranger" hats to hear somebody else think for awhile. New lobes like skillets where I'll sell advertising space for liberal causes, 'course, and beer companies, and prime Pedernales acreage for HUD retirement mobile home ranches built by fresh Job Corps graduates and their gangs. And maybe on the pinna and inside I'll hire gummint-funded and certified tattooers to inscribe the names of all Texans missing in action since 1845, that'll be the right one, and on the left the first 500,000 pages of the Warren Report with Spanky's and Audie's and Sandra Day's autographs on the space left over. I might go blind as all the new sounds flood and drown my other senses and deaden small cortical countries until hearing all I see nothing. Oh no. Oh no! Oh nose for napalm! _Beauty Does_ Things borrow their beauty like paintings from nightmares and freshfruit veranda mornings, like some women. She lolled apart, drinking alone at the low table, disturbing spilled ashes with marble fingers, legs spread slightly open as she explored her purse for a scratched lighter and then forgot. Nothing contained her, she beat with it, borrowing her beauty from the stricken objects and startled dreams in her surround, flooding veins with thick surprise, dulling the room around to cardboard forms of oblique opacity. She swore softly and emptied the room of hope and power, a perfect eyebrow raising closed the show. Beautiful things steal their beauty from the things around them, which grow pale and empty until they leave, or are gone. John Freemyer ------------- 1 poem _Then It Starts Up Again_ Fred Jacks orders waffles and then turns to me. I'm sitting in the booth behind him. I don't say anything to get him started. He doesn't wait for me say hello. He knows I won't. He shrugs. "It's frustrating to never be right," he says. "Everything I do is wrong. It's always my fault. My sister wants me to babysit her brat. If I can't do it, she says I'm ruining her life. Her husband will leave her. Right. My wife wants me to fix her car. If I don't do it, she won't have a car. She'll lose her job. This is important to her. I'm good with car repairs. I don't want to let her down. But I have a life, too. There are things I want to do. You know what I mean?" "Yes." I'm trying to read the newspaper. There's a story about a guy who was in a coma for five years. He existed as a vegetable in a rest home. Suddenly he came out of the coma one morning, asking for breakfast. He died from food poisoning before lunch. Fred picks up his coffee cup. He walks around his booth to sit at mine. "The pressure and stress of this responsibility and continuous blame wears away at me until there's nothing left of me at the end of the day. It's horrible. I struggle with sleep. My insomnia is awful. All I do is worry. Then it starts up again in the morning with more demands of my time and my money. Today my wife wanted to borrow my car, the kids wanted to watch my television, use my vcr-or they want money! Are they spending my money on drugs? Where does it go? Why are they trying to kill me? They WILL kill me, I tell you! Unless I can get away, get the hell away from here, right now, they'll be my death!" I push my empty plate off the paper placemat and slide the paper toward Fred Jacks. The placemat is printed with a map of the USA, showing all 80 locations of the Regal Pancake Restaurants of America. I close my eyes and circle my hand in the air then jab my finger though the map ripping a hole through Minnesota. I say, "Move to Minnesota. Everyone is nice there. It's not like out here. Nobody will bother you. They're civilized." Fred Jacks looks at the hole in the map and then at me. Expressionless, he asks, "Are you crazy?" Then he slowly stands up and walks out the door. Probably half way to Minnesota by now. Juraj Sipos ----------- 2 poems, 1 short story _Envy_ Pain has fallen down from branches of a tree. Ordeal comes. We suffer. We climb up. Our palms are up. It is magnificent To have pockets Waiting for it. The pain. I push it up back on the tree. It is a good prospect For a masochist. And I see it. The fire. It gives me the most When I see others to suffer. I think I should climb up The tower of Babel, too. How I envy the Lord His eyesight! _In Quotation Marks_ My last hope has died away. A full glass of it Is drunk. It graciously Extinguished the fire. The fire of everlasting Knowledge that "I am here" Forever. Built in the quotation marks. Do you see me? " " _Confession of a Fool_ When I started writing the first lines of this article, a bird arrived in my room. It unhesitatingly jumped up on my shoulder and stayed with me the whole night long. This confession of mine is a very exclusive material as it is empirical and true. The events I underwent in my life gave birth to my new identity. I was stigmatized by circumstances and I became a fool. The folly of me has more arguments for defense: 1) a world of equal people would have no sense and 2) fools have a different perception of reality that helps them see such things other people can never think of. But there are negative and positive fools. The negative fools propel winds for the destruction of all humane principles; however, the positive fools are creative and propel engines as ignition for spark plugs toward the development of new ideas and new futures. It all started in Australia where I emigrated in 1980 from Czechoslovakia. The problems I experienced there might be caused by my contact with wrong people. Vladimir was one of them. He was weird. He was a Czech immigrant that had been in Australia since the 1950's--an old dusty settler. He was bald, about 50 years old, and spoke of unbelievable things! He spoke of Russians giving him their citizenship, he spoke of his eating human flesh in a coterie of friends where some people inexplicably disappeared. He told me that he had been scared that one day he would be on their table. And in his presence most of my personal things started disappearing (socks, trousers, underpants, needles, keys, etc.), which has continued up to now. Sydney is famous mostly because of its beautiful Opera House and Bondi Beach. There are three Bondis--Bondi Beach, Bondi Junction, and Bondi. Both Vladimir and I were living in Bondi. He was the only thing to catch hold of, as I had no friends in an unknown world of kangaroos. On one occasion, when he went to Bondi Beach to buy cigarettes and I stayed alone in his apartment, a man broke in with gun fire. As my heart was oscillating up and down from stomach to throat, he, the bastard, told me that he was only looking for his newlywed wife. Perhaps it was only a threatening maneuver of Secret Services. I worked as a storeman with very expensive microelectronic components. One day on my way to work I noticed a very robust man following me in the train. A few days later he suddenly turned up in my office and put sunglasses on the table and left. It was beyond my comprehension, but later someone attempted to murder me. It was a car that followed me on a sidewalk several times, so under the pressure of distress and fear I decided to go back home to Czechoslovakia. However, first I had to visit the Czechoslovakian consulate. The consul was a nice man but he could be just another danger for me, so I prepared for a very exhausting talk with Vladimir. It was in September 1981 when I visited him the last time and we had a long conversation. I told him that he might be a source of my problems with Secret Services. He refused my views and arrived at an unexpected platform, speaking that I could be an origin of tremendous occult powers that were going on around me and that could attract Secret Services. "If this is truth," I said, "then I should be able to lit this electric bulb," I raised my hand in laughter and pointed at the electric bulb and, to my amazement, I lit it--with my mental power. I did this only as a joke and I was shocked to see that it worked. Immediately after that I had a hallucination. Vladimir's face turned into an image of a human skull and I was dry-mouthed with fear. I predicted him death--I told him: "Soon you will go to Hell". He died few days after and, as his neighbors told me, the police rummaged his house shortly after he had passed away,looking for something of which I only presume was the tape that we had been listening to. The content of the tape was a chaos of the hell of English voices in the pandemonium of telephone ringing. As we were listening to it, an electric current of agony surged through me because, on the tape, sounded a sharp voice in the Slovak language that spoke of my mission far in the future. The tape was definitely not a hallucination--for this Czech guy also heard it and confirmed it. It was only my hunch that he could speak of the voices on the tape to other people as there was this prediction concerning my future, which could also elicit problems with Secret Services. Moreover, he might be one of them. Though I do not exactly remember what the eruption of the English voices screamed about, I presume that these voices were the future recorded on the tape because I heard future dates, names of nonexisting (future) magazines and names of American writers whom I contacted ten years later. But let us go back to the burning candle. Though I loved Fletcher Street, I knew it was the time to move. In the same way, I loved Australia, but I knew it was the time to leave. It was a hell of a hard burden for me and, alas, the situation got even worse. As I was one day on my way home from work, an unknown man in the car stopped me and, speaking the Czech language, told me to put my hand in the window of his car. I thought that he wished to hand something over to me. I put my hand in the window of his car, but he suddenly closed the window, my hand arrested there. Then he revved the car and propelled forward. I ran along with him as quick as I could and luckily, after about 200 meters, I released my hand in deadly sweat as I was desperately shaking it, so the window finally got released a little. Then he stopped the car and shouted to me: "You're good". I soon moved from Fletcher Street in Bondi to Bon Accord Avenue in Bondi Junction to one of my Slovak acquaintances who told me: "Whatever is happening to you, you must solve it or else you may be in a very serious trouble". After I moved to him, he and I were receiving threatening phone calls. Several weeks passed and I was in terrible condition of uncertainty and fear. Perhaps the only solution was to disappear somewhere or to go in a hospital, so I made a final decision. I spent three weeks in psychiatry and was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which was particularly good for me as I planned to return to Czechoslovakia, where there was the dictatorship of hard-line communists, so I could avoid all the problems with the regime. However, in 1986 the highest government institution at the time took all my manuscripts from the publishing building where I published a book of poetry. Again, I experienced fear. I must say that I started to have extraordinary experiences that happened to me and are happening now and then. This all had started in Australia, where I experienced more enigmas of which I do not want to write. But Vladimir was right--I am really enveloped by some unknown supernatural powers. To be more accurate, I believe it is some extremely powerful Supernatural Being (with a sense for devilish humor) who is guarding and protecting me. This Supernatural Being is giving me signs to the future and it all is exhibited in the form of "disappearances" or of sudden "finding" or "weird computer bugging" of things or of a bird's arrival or weird telephone ringing as if the lines were mad and computers crazy. I believe that this Supernatural Being shining above me is a Woman and She has in focus only the things of everyday use like scissors, pens, diskettes, telephones, etc., and She also gives me money, medicine or other important things when I need them. If something like this happens, you must assure yourself that it really did inexplicably appear or disappear, and when it is a valuable thing, you would know that hardly ever would someone give it to you; and if it disappeared, it was definitely stolen by human beings! I see these signs as symbols. When scissors evaporate, it could be a sign of losing something, someone; it could be a sign of breaking a relationship with a friend or beloved thing. It really works. For example, after losing a pen I received a very important letter. No only we human beings have sense for humor. Let me mention some more amazing experiences that happened with my parents' death. In 1986 I lived alone in a one-room apartment. I am absolutely sure that my senses were always telling me the truth and I do not happen to be in the absence of mind. I had a one thousand-crown bill in a book of poems written by Edith Sdergran. I suddenly found out that "Someone" had added two hundred-crown (1+1) bills in the book! I knew that this money had not been there before and only I had a key to my apartment! In January 1987 I had other one-hundred bills in a book (1+1+1+1+1), which all disappeared and "moved" to a different place, where I had kept four thousand crowns, and the transferred money "changed" to one five hundred-crown bill. My mother died on April 5th 1987 (4 thousand [as month], 5 hundred [as day]), and my father died nine months later, on January 2nd 1988 (1 thousand in a book [as month] + 2 hundred [as day])--that is, two good years in advance "Someone" had given me the exact dates of my parents' natural death. In the book on the place where I found those two hundred crowns was a weird poem with a flabbergasting message speaking of two spirits and the mid-Atlantic. I think it was this Supernatural Being directly speaking to me through the poem, which, together with the money account, represents an oracle for my future. Another experience happened to me and to my friend, who is a professional mountaineer and who had led the first successful Czechoslovakian expedition to Mount Everest (autumn, 1984). We meet sometimes as friends. This time we met at his work. I did not have a watch and he loaned me his. About three weeks later he called me and suggested a visit. He was very embarrassed and his first questions were like if anybody might listen to us when we had visited the last time. After a while he told me that he had found the same watch he had given me on the table at his work, and not one from his colleagues knew anything about it. I had his watch and he had obtained a new one. It must have turned up there from heaven! Obviously, nobody believes this and I became a fool. It is a great pity that there exist people who can never understand you. They can never grasp that, due to borderland situations, a person like us behaves differently. But we, folks standing only a little beyond the verge of nonsensical borders, are proud of being fools. We are not like ordinary human beings. We are original, authentic and even the wise personages of this world confirm that there were more cases when politicians, psychologists, editors or scientists made considerable mistakes. The people who do not understand us do not know that arrogance creates not only new Hitlers, Husseins, Stalins, but also Buddhas, Jesuses, or new Joans of Arc. Therefore we should receive fools in the same way as we are received by our beautiful universe. Let me conclude with a citation from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 1:27--"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise." The bird on my shoulder inspired me. After all, we are all the folly of the universe, but only few of us found out that it is better than the folly of the world! Ken F. Tsang ------------ 1 poem _Window Pain_ (or One Sock Is Black, The Other Is Tan) I am here. No I was here. That was until you made me invisible. You look towards me but not at me. Through me like a window pane. So now I have disappeared. What can I do now that I am not here ? Peter Kendall ------------- 2 poems _You Chose to Go_ You chose to go for mere sensation: the pastel strokes and hues of picture book views. And something else: a self that leaps, but does not look or long for what I am. An image caught and shut within that house you left behind. Your self-making is a mirror. I see a child livid in the trap of years I thought were sprung. My thoughts released one by one: you were the last to leave. I will not spring again or swim upward to the light that flares in airless space. I cannot breathe your blinding rage. I will not break. I do not shout or try. My anger will not be said. I listen to the dead. I cannot cry. Church bells chime above your head. You stand by the altar with a camera witnessing a Christening, drawn to the Crucifixion, measuring the dark the candled shadows, the angles of the cross-all perfectly composed. My love's a revelation-it has no form just hunger for your flesh. Your breast no longer seeks my mouth. My rage just feeds upon itself. I fall but you hardly find the time to call. It always shocked to watch you feed that greed of yours for sensual meat, that beer I once saw spasm at your lips and spill in spreading damp upon your lap. I feel desire. The man you watch stirs within a distant storm of lust. His dazzlement approaches. It is a common god that calls. A god that blurs our difference, the distance between my flesh, his, and yours. Our mouths share tongues, the pain is sheathed in motion, my prick is bathed, rocked tight within your grip. I want to speak or weep but cannot think, or feel. The lush friction makes me come in him, in you. Our desires are the same. We want the thunder crack, the lightning flash to pass from flesh to flesh. But what is left? Damp tissues by the bed. Soft strategies of talk. Our sleep in separate arms divides my loss from yours. We will not touch again. You chose to go yet promised a return and when you call the Pentecostal spirit speaks in familiar tones, about common things: work; who you saw; what you ate. I rage politely among these pastel views. Their beauty, yours, muffles my despair. The phone shut in its cradle now at rest. Your voice of scattered thoughts I can forget. The pull of sleep returns me to myself. I cannot weep. I follow sheep to a dead land far from where you are. _The Plane of Memory_ I feel affection for the full-bodied flight above: the slow glint of passage, the mantric drone deepens and disturbs my senses, shaping a remembrance I do not recognize or own. I cannot place my feelings. A day perhaps in dead time. Faded in the spaciousness of Summers blending calm and loss. I cannot understand this depth of sound. The soft distracting moods of death. At first it feels so gentle. I am a child in a room of open windows, scented air disturbed in the hush of distant trees the breath of still uncertain ease. My father sleeps. My mother reads. My sadness here: the mirror and the walls confused with fear and force I could not grasp. As a child I felt the consequence of knowing. A street-smart sense of cunning made me turn back into the quiet afternoon. The Sunday sleep of drowsy tables, muted chairs. Upstairs my father read; my mother slept In the faded reaches of a light whose source embraced my youth revealing age upon her face, a mask of motion, ice-floes, melting into breath. I could smell the air: sea-sour, salt. I could sense in vision-depths a blinding shape arise. I weakened in this light, confusing loss with hunger--not my own. In the waters of the garden pond I saw the flash and turned to see my house--cathedral'd incandescent light. I could not shield my sight, my thoughts went blind my senses deafened by the roar of speechless all-consuming awe. The sadness of a half-remembered war drones softly now above my head. I sense the spill of eggs and hear their fall wolf-whistling down upon the flowering world. I watch the trip-wire flash of endings spread from house to house. I feel released ashamed, a force transforming all with death. What have I done? What can I do to be once more the child in you? Madness is still horizoned, held in the sun that sets upon my life. Above, the plane drones softly back into the past. I have not changed. Calm blends with loss to shape the dim cathedral of my age. I sit among the drowsing chairs and look upon the muted text of day, the cloudless sky through which an evocation passes slow possessing me with senses hardly owned. Rick Lupert ----------- 2 poems _I'm The Writer_ I'm the writer I always have a pen I play Scrabble just to keep in practice with all the words I don't need to play Scrabble because I know all the words People come up to me who I've never met before and say "You're that writer guy" My identity precedes me Things I witness are not other people's experiences, Rather they are material for my work I use metaphors My work screams to be interpreted Sometimes it's so complicated, I don't even understand what I've written Some women worship the paper I write on Some men worship the paper I write on My mother worships the paper I write on Both men and women ask to model nude for my poems My work appears in many places including but not limited to Books, magazines, newspapers, bathroom walls, the inside of matchbooks and the internet Soon it will be beamed into outer space for the benefit of culturally literate aliens and God The dictionary is my Bible I am constantly quoting from it I make people laugh I piss people off I offer a full range of emotions Sometimes I leave the house without underwear I do this to increase my consciousness It always works I'm the most conscious person I know I'm the writer I write That's what I do _Some Common Themes in My Poetry_ or, a Future Table of Contents Mr. T. Goldfish Naked Girlfriend No Girlfriend Will you be my girlfriend? I wish she was my girlfriend The plight of the negro and others oppressed The Moon Naked Mr. T. Naked goldfish Naked girlfriends Will you be my naked girlfriend Will you be my naked oppressed negro Let's get naked and become negroes and fly to the moon. Let us worship Mr. T. But only if he's naked and only if he brings along his girlfriend and we establish a naked colony on the moon. Liberate the naked goldfish by disguising them as Mr. T. and other famous negroes and hiding them in a secret underground hideaway on the moon. Let's all get Mohawks and eat Sushi. Tristan Li Tom -------------- 1 poem _Hatred Commences Upon the Pit of Folklore_ Through and throughout all of the Torrid and horrid deep dark secrets. From the pain and suffering, The blood and struggle. By way of the battlements and the trenches Across the boarder At the pit of our folklore. Past the seething sugar coated writeoffs We reach out of the violent holes of our souls And away from the crust of our evilness For something that is not there. We lose control of our early tendencies for kindness. We emerge--alive and kicking. Shaun Armour ------------ 2 poems _Sam_ Sam turned forty today. By my standards, an old man. Gyroscopic death, twirling backwards to drag me down. Sam washes dishes. A hundred thousand, million dishes, his dishes. So why do I want to mourn? For Sam. For nine years of desolate, rancid scraps of dreams, crumbling. Not my dreams, no, not mine. But those dishes, they keep piling up, demanding his attention, his suspension of Sam's truth. No absolutes just dirty water, fetid sludge and burnt offerings. Swollen, scalded fingers and mute submissions. No transitions, nothing new, nothing else. And I pour Sam I Am free drinks, smile and laugh, "Happy Birthday Sammy, heard you won $500 in bingo last week, That's great Sam! Don't look a day over thirty." Scraping plates, scraping away the residue of a life, and I want to shake him and scream, "For God's sake Sam, get the hell out of here!" Take off those fucking rubber gloves, pawn them somewhere for a life. Nine lousy years of scorched and cracked hands has gotta be worth something. Every day, five days a week you sit at my bar after your shift and I give you three beers. And I know that's just the warm up. How sedated do you have to get for your millionth plate? Did anyone ever tell you that they loved you? That you mattered? Sam, your dying. Don't you see it? Through the steam, going down the drain in brown water. What did you want to be when you grew up Sam? Some questions just hurt to much to ask. So I smile and say, "Happy Birthday Sam, let me buy you a drink." Sam I am _An Unlikely Colloquy_ (In which God enlists great minds to bring Neanderthal up to theological speed) Socrates presses his palms too his forehead, rocking slowly, anguished. Grouses about the futility of method against simian obstinance. And Freud can't take his eyes off the pestle, swirling within the gourd, crushing whelks, carapace and all, a crunchy, mucous laden treat licked salaciously through prognathous grin. Crouching unperturbed, our Neanderthal looks fettle and sybaritic. He does not mean to offend, but these bald macaws won't stop chattering. His mind is all tangent, he thinks of feathers and fetishes. Only Darwin sits quietly, giving credit where do, realizing the joke long before the others. Nietzsche sulks, can't conciliate any of it, see's it, but won't feel it. Hairy arm, proffers sulking Friedrich the silent macaw, snail mash surprise But uprooted existentialism once again misses the opportunity for concresence, and Germanic decorum doesn't want to acknowledge hirsute sentience, let alone the vision to know God, besides he likes his escargot in drawn butter and white wine. Out of habit our troglodytic forebear searches for lice within his coat, but they did not make the journey with him to this verdant utopia. He ponders for a moment why he misses them so. Thinks about how his lice must have felt living upon his body, thinks about how he feels towards the earth he roams. Earth is good, earth is God. Makes a prodigious mental leap, knows suddenly, certainly that he was the lice God. That they worshipped him, made temples within which to pray in the crook of his armpit, in the folds of his hairy genitals. He feels sad that the lice have lost there God, and now he knows why he misses them. Wants to explain it all to poor Friedrich, but thinks it might be too difficult. Old Aquinas can't take it anymore, starts grabbing books from the reference pile. Hurls the Talmud, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, The Bible and Curious George Meets the Vicar at our friend. Cro Magnon Man sizes up the obese sage, contemplates beating him about the head with his own ripped off arm, eyes catch Curious George receiving confession from the Vicar, as wind ruffles pages. Grabs the book. Rips of the cover, then the back, rips out the pages, flings them skyward. Aquinas sneers, "His ignorance is indefeasible, he even destroys books." Darwin can't keep quiet anymore,"Oh, and you never tossed any on the pyre?" Socrates sighs, "I think it is quite impossible, that we can teach him of God. He has not the capacity for reason necessary for such an endeavor." Nietzsche broods aloud, betraying his own bias,"Would that I didn't as well." Neanderthal sits contentedly, pleased that he has freed the little monkey from the inhuman confines of those two dimensional pages. He watches the torn sheaves blow towards the trees, screams, "Whoop, Gwubba!" Which loosely translated, means, go play amongst the branches, little monkey. He turns to the other books, and gets to work. There is much freeing to be done. Wayne Brissette --------------- 3 poems _Sorry_ for Anne My heart weeps a dark song for the one I need to let go. Was Einstein right? Could I travel the road upon which time changes? I want the clock to change I want the thoughts to change For now only sorry seems to come out. _Stars_ for Teri Under the stars a kiss; nectar for humanity I stand in awe I'm in a fire yet, you reach in to touch me. Waves crash against my rocky soul each bearing your name. Like a library; wealth stored within you weave a spell upon me strong and powerful; more tenacious than my body has felt before. Under the stars I dream Under the stars we kiss Under the stars we touch _By Chance_ for Teri i stood alone with my secret deep and dark for it was nothing to write home about nothing to share with friends thousands of miles away a gentle smile; a gentle voice golden hair; a golden touch within my heart my secret cries out knowing what it can't have a promise... unwrap the secret, toss aside the blackness burning deep at my soul when the distance became none i had my opportunity to let my secret free open to the golden voice, free at least for a while at least long enough to see the gentle smile again the distance spread again my secret sank silent and slow back into the dark back into my soul by chance i asked by chance i received but was it by chance or predetermined long before i shared my secret with you? About the Contributors ---------------------- Amy DeGeus is this issues's Featured Writer. Go to that section to learn more about her. Ajay M. Narayanan lives in Batavia, Illinois, where he moonlights as a poet. He is a graduate student doing his thesis in experimental high energy physics, and also enjoys running, photography, and kick boxing. Richard Epstein calls Denver, Colorado home. A frequent contributor to POETRY INK, Richard works in the exciting field of paraleagalism. J.W. Drake (actually a pen name for John Hansel ) lives in Tucson, Arizona. He lives with his dog and writes poetry when he's not writing a detective novel, eating, sleeping, or working for somebody else doing ads, PR, or website design/maintenance. John Freemyer lives in Redding, California. He will soon be appearing at a theater near you. Juraj Sipos lives in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has published several books of poetry in his own country, including "Under the Southern Cross", as well as translations of American poets into Slovak. Ken F. Tsang is a resident of Beaverton, Oregon, and a native of Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He is a sophomore at Westview High School in Portland. Ken enjoys playing ping-pong, listening to music, and sleeping. Peter Kendall has lived in Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan for 12 years. He is presently working as chief instructor of language school. He would prefer to be full-time poet with a 24 hour Net connection to the Source Of All Creativity. He doesn't want money; he wants God - just once - to single him out in the crowd and give him his 15 minutes in the spotlight. Rick Lupert hails from Encino, California. Rick has hosted a weekly open reading at the Cobalt Cafe in Los Angeles for the last two years, has appeared several times in "Caffeine" magazine and "Blue Satellite Literary Journal", is the author of "Paris: It's The Cheese" (a chapbook of poems written recently in Paris), and believes that the holes in Swiss Cheese have certain erotic capabilities. Tristan Li Tom lives in Berkeley, California. He writes poetry, prose, screenplays (his short screenplay "I Feel Better Already" was recently selected to be made into a film), articles (look for his articles in the BMUG newsletter, for example) and more. Tristan likes to write and hopes to someday make money with his writing. He is looking for the meaning of life and hopes to eventually find it somewhere on the 'net. Shaun Armour lives in Toronto, Canada. He is currently in the process of writing a novel, and likes bowling shirts and has his own pool cue; alas, he cannot yet eat fifty eggs. He will soon start writing a regular column for POETRY INK. Wayne Brissette marks his return address as Austin, Texas. A frequent contributor to POETRY INK, Wayne also maintains our web page when he isn't working for Apple Computer as a technical writer. ..