-- @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@ @@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ dedicated to the art of the written word ================================ POETRY INK 2.06 / ISSN 1091-0999 ================================ **Poetry Ink Electronic Literary Magazine** ~Dedicated to the Art of the Written Word~ Volume 2, Number 6 Issue 13 (October 1996) This file looks best viewed with a 9- or 10-point mono-spaced font. We recommend Monaco or Courier. If you are using a Macintosh, we highly recommend you use ProFont 2.0. This file is coded as setext, a special text coding which embeds section breaks and style codes in a non-obtrusive format. We recommend you view this file with either EasyView 2.6.2 for the Macintosh, EVWin 1.6a for Windows, or se for Unix. However, this file can still be viewed with any word processor which can import text files. We hope you enjoy POETRY INK, and we urge you to encourage the poets and writers found in these pages by dropping them an eMail. All of the writers featured in POETRY INK invite comments and constructive criticism of their work, so support your local Internet Poet! We accept no advertising, but we will plug stuff we think is cool. If you are interested in having your chapbook, book, CD, magazine, or software reviewed, please either contact us via eMail, or send the item you wish reviewed via snail mail to the mailing address found in our Masthead. If you are interested in submitting work for possible inclusion in POETRY INK, please see the Submission Information and Guidelines at the end of this document. Masthead -------- **Editor & Publisher** Matthew W. Schmeer **Honorary Editor Emeritus** John A. Freemyer **Senior Contributor** Wayne Brissette **Literary Correspondents** Lawrence Revard Phil Pearson Shaun Armour Rick Lupert Calvin Xavier
**Submissions and Other Contact Info** eMail: anonymous FTP access: snail mail: Matthew W. Schmeer, editor POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS 6711-A Mitchell Avenue St. Louis, MO 63139-3647 U.S.A. Legal Stuff ----------- POETRY INK is copyright (c) 1996 by POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the imagination of Matthew W. Schmeer. Individual works copyright (c) 1996 their original authors. POETRY INK is published electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire text of the issue remains intact. POETRY INK can be freely distributed, provided it is not modified in any way, shape, or form. 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We use Global Village Teleport Gold II Fax/Modems. POETRY INK is produced using Claris Emailer 1.1.v2, BareBones Software's freeware BBEdit Lite 3.5.1, Robert Gottshall's and Rick Zaccone's freeware spellchecker Excalibur 2.3 & and M. Akif Eyler's freeware setext reader, EasyView 2.6.2. We encourage others to support these fine hardware manufacturers and software programmers. Subscription Info ----------------- 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. From The Editor's Desktop ------------------------- There are a number of things on the Desktop this issue, so I guess I should start at the top of the pile and work my way down: 1) We now have a registered ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). POETRY INK's ISSN is ISSN 1091-0999. For those of you wondering what an ISSN is, it is a specifically assigned serial number given to periodicals (or serials to you non-Americans) to keep track of what is being published in the world and where. An ISSN is similar to an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), in that it gives merchants, libraries, and independent catalogers a hierarchical numbering system to keep track of publications published on a periodic or "installment" basis. Of course, this is a "in a nutshell" explanation. For more info on ISSN numbers, see the United States Library of Congress's web page at . 2) The reaction to switching over to the ASCII-format was better than expected. Nobody flinched and nobody cancelled their subscriptions. Thank you for sticking with us! 3) At the suggestion of John Freemyer, our venerable Honorary Editor Emeritus, we have rearranged the order of things in this issue. John suggested that it was a bit intimidating to have all the columns and literary reviews all crammed in at the beginning of the issue, and I am afraid he was right. So, from here on out, our featured columnists will be interwoven between the poetry and fiction from our contributors. 4) Many folks have asked about our policy of not issuing rejection letters for unaccepted submissions. Well, the reason we do not issue rejection letters is that I hate rejection letters. Rejection letters are cold and impersonal and they are never fun to see in your mail box or your in-box. And because we do not have time to personally reply to each and every submission, we don't issue rejection letters. Thus, if you don't hear from us within three days of sending your submission to via eMail, (two weeks if you submitted stuff via snail mail), then please assume your work was not submitted and feel free to submit it elsewhere. But please submit it to us first! 5) Who is this Calvin Xavier fellow, and why doesn't he have an eMail address? And why is he so testy? Well, Calvin doesn't have a particular eMail address, as his dispatches are sent via Internet public access sites. According to what little biographical data Calvin has shared with me about himself, he is a mid-40ish fairly prolific poet and writer who was influential in the underground publishing movements in the late sixties and early seventies. He claims he has published over twenty volumes of his poetry and prose, and he also has had two plays performed off-off-off Broadway--so far off Broadway as to be in Newark. Other than this, all I really know about Calvin is that he travels around the Midwest writing and hustling pool and he has an interesting individualistic view of what it means to be a writer. And he wants to share that point of view with us. 6) Yes, occasionally we make mistakes. Sometimes they are little ones, and other times they are big ones. So now we have a Corrections Department. It will always follow this little intro ditty, and hopefully it will always be very very brief. 7) Is it me, or are there not enough women submitting stuff for publication? Get with the program, ladies, and send in some submissions! 8) Anybody want to donate a fully-functional PowerPC Macintosh and a Macintosh-compatible laser printer to our cause? Anybody? Hello? Anyone? 9) Now is a good time to send in your submission for the next issue, due out mid-December 1996. Hint hint wink wink nudge nudge. 10) Until next issue, Spill the Ink and May the Muse be Kind! Matthew W. Schmeer, editor and chief poetry guru Corrections Department ---------------------- In POETRY INK 2.05 (Issue 12), C.A. Clover's name was incorrectly identified as _C.A. Culver_ in attributing the work _The Wedding_. We apologize for this error, and wish C.A. Clover much success with further writing ventures. C.A. Clover can be reached at . Belles Lettres -------------- A place for reader comments, criticism, and other assorted feedback. Not too many letters with complaints, suggestions, etc. these days, so this section is devoid of any meaningful content besides this little explanation. The Write Thing --------------- (This was forwarded to us by an unknown source and was uncredited; if anyone knows the originator of this piece, please contact us so that we may appropriately credit this piece and not get sued for copyright infringement.) **Shakespeare Insult Kit** Combine one word from each of the three columns below, prefaced with the word "Thou" to make a handy-dandy insult Shakespeare would be proud of: Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 -------- -------- -------- artless base-court apple-john bawdy bat-fowling baggage beslubbering beef-witted barnacle bootless beetle-headed bladder churlish boil-brained boar-pig cockered clapper-clawed bugbear clouted clay-brained bum-bailey craven common-kissing canker-blossom currish crook-pated clack-dish dankish dismal-dreaming clotpole dissembling dizzy-eyed coxcomb droning doghearted codpiece errant dread-bolted death-token fawning earth-vexing dewberry fobbing elf-skinned flap-dragon froward fat-kidneyed flax-wench frothy fen-sucked flirt-gill gleeking flap-mouthed foot-licker goatish fly-bitten fustilarian gorbellied folly-fallen giglet impertinent fool-born gudgeon infectious full-gorged haggard jarring guts-griping harpy loggerheaded half-faced hedge-pig lumpish hasty-witted horn-beast mammering hedge-born hugger-mugger mangled hell-hated joithead mewling idle-headed lewdster paunchy ill-breeding lout pribbling ill-nurtured maggot-pie puking knotty-pated malt-worm puny milk-livered mammet qualling motley-minded measle rank onion-eyed minnow reeky plume-plucked miscreant roguish pottle-deep moldwarp ruttish pox-marked mumble-news saucy reeling-ripe nut-hook spleeny rough-hewn pigeon-egg spongy rude-growing pignut surly rump-fed puttock tottering shard-borne pumpion unmuzzled sheep-biting ratsbane vain spur-galled scut venomed swag-bellied skainsmate villainous tardy-gaited strumpet warped tickle-brained varlot wayward toad-spotted vassal weedy unchin-snouted whey-face yeasty weather-bitten wagtail Got a good joke, a funny story or a bit of humor pertaining to the literary arts? Send it to POETRY INK with the subject line "SUBMIT WRITE THING". Featured Writer --------------- Ben Judson 1 poem and a brief essay _The Power Of The Modern Mind_ I watch this: you follow the rhythm with your fingertips. flowers of evil must float in your head, like a mexican sculpture: diablos sitting under a flor. often people compromise their beauty for something more. the old poetman says, "beauty kills!" yet he has mercy, as old poetmen often do. revelations float up all around us, in the books of the learned, and in the movements of the sinful. i must exist, seeing all these things, i must be in the middle of them. i am thinking about them. yes, unless the thoughts float up around me, like they seem to do. Featured Writer Essay --------------------- Ben Judson currently attends the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. He has been writing poetry for about four years, growing increasingly dedicated to it over that time. He has tried - somewhat unsuccessfully - to publish a literary journal called "Scarcely Scholarly", which will soon die unless he gets some good submissions soon. He has previously been published in "The Sun Poetic Times", a literary journal in San Antonio, and in POETRY INK. You can get more information on "Scarcely Scholarly" by visiting the infrequently updated Eat Worms Publishing pages at: . About _The Power Of The Modern Mind_, Ben writes: Modern man finds himself in a complex world: he swims in a sea of - more often than not - contradictory ideas. In this poem, I am watching myself follow a thread of these ideas. Baudelaire published a book of poetry called "Fleurs du Mal" ("Flowers of Evil"), which let evil fall into the realm of beauty; for this he is often considered the first modern poet. When in Mexico, I saw a sculpture of two devils (diablos in spanish) sitting under a flower (flor in spanish)--which struck me as a beautiful expression of evil in life. (Oscar Wilde said "There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his concept of the beautiful," in "The Picture Of Dorian Gray".) Gregory Corso wrote a poem (entitled "The Whole Mess...Almost"), where he (Corso) kills off his ideals one by one: Truth, God, Love, Faith, Hope, Charity, but at the last minute he saves Beauty from the fate her siblings have followed. Descartes said, in "Discourse On Method", "I think, therefore I am." Neitchze didn't like this, claiming that thoughts could be strung up in front of you by some higher being: it is entirely possible that your thoughts do not originate within yourself. The way that this relates to beauty is that there is so little certain, perhaps not even existence, that pure beauty is often a fall-back. You can always come back to beauty: it is, in a way, certain. More so than taxes or death. Which is why you are reading this magazine. I have come full circle. My general philosophy is that certainty is a lie, and that the closer you come to complete uncertainty, the closer you come to enlightenment. Study for me is a way to achieve uncertainty--the more you learn, the less you know. As you gain knowledge your ideas slowly slip away--until you realize contradiction is inevitable and certainty is fiction. It's my way of following philosophical Taoism, although I don't consider myself a Taoist. That is what this poem is about. Michelle Ernst -------------- 1 poem _Think About It_ Creativity abounds in this chaotic spaghetti Choking insecurities, defiant compliance Throw them on the conveyor belt Life takes 8 minutes to pass through As a failure? Or does pain make you think That something worthwhile is being accomplished... Take this brain, so empty but absorbent Lazy, lulled to sleep by anticipated stress Coffee is a drug to cure this disease Struck with inspiration I leave this apathy I am powerfully laden with potential See this, and let me shine through Somewhere in books, somewhere in a greasy pan Maybe it's what will bring me my independence. I sleep in a cell of four pink walls, I stand for hours dreaming of redemption I say yes sir, and callously dismiss what I hear There are too many at the mercy of the mouth Let me cower here in the corner singing pointless songs I will awake with little sleep to fight for a dream To collapse under my own fatigue. You. Yes you with the face I am to adore. Aren't you my icon for hope? So I place you on your transparent pedestal And waste my time and money on a facade All in the name of hope. I am left to drown in my own failure But to cherish this limited token of relief Which in itself does nothing but Make me believe I am dependent. Oh twenty years of life, I have no right to complain. I have every right to complain. Heaven awaits me Hell awaits me Nothing at all awaits me Sudden death is on it's way. But yet tomorrow comes, And with it another sunny day How can I capitalize on this? I will better myself - intellectually Scheduling - I need discipline Think about it - there is the poor to save There is the blue and grey steel box Which is really a leash around my neck Dysfunctional family, ah I see... Shh don't say that, why don't you Think about it - you are so fortunate To never have been beaten by a belt To never have gone hungry in your life See heinous graphic crimes done to family members To never have lived. Invisible belts sting in suburbia Where the rules are law slowly Killing an adults belief in oneself Failure, dependence, here have a twenty You never worked for it, mommy give me money Swallow the pill, there is nothing else to do. Damn kids don't know how good they have it To have an obsessive father He works so hard, good little catholic. Then there is the tarnished knight righteous and bitter Joust me with your holy insults and foul mouth There is food on the table. This occupied house with a TV Turquoise and purple sleeveless With flabby thighes watching birds I see my own sloth mirrored in Trashy talk shows and my failure Is ground further into my spirit. No. No Family days. Sorry. What is a family? I think A mom, a dad, and two kids, smiling Pouring out of a minivan. I think affectatious snobs ignorant of The poor of the world, living in some two-story. Alone I am. I have no "family". I want no "family". These are people I live with. They feed me you see... Adults we all are. Four adults living together. Let me not diverge from the central meaning. If, in a playground nightmare You want to know the solutions to your problems, And wonder why it is I ponder so much These things caught in the dusty corners of my mind, I would tell you to just stop And think about it. Misty Leigh McGuire ------------------- 1 poem _Giving Up..._ I'm tired of giving up so easily, I'm tired of letting little things Get the best of me. I wanna keep on trying, I wanna shoot for the cloud with the Silver lining. I don't want to settle for less, I don't want to always be on the losing end. I want to be on top of the world where I can't be reached, I want to be high enough to lose this Losing streak. I'm tired of giving up so easily, It's time I quit letting things get the Best of me. The As Of Yet Untitled Column By Rick Lupert -------------------------------------------- by Rick Lupert **Writing in Paris** _Man Of The World_ As I watch all the beautiful women walk by in the coffee house As I regard their asses and compare them to the great archive of asses I have stored in my brain As they ignore me with the practiced skill that so many women use on me I can't help but think about next month in Paris There it will be French Beautiful Women walking by me There it will be the first international contribution to my ass archives There, women will ignore me In French My trip to Paris will make me a man of the world Get on the plane; go to Paris; it won't explode; you'll get there in one piece; Henry Miller wrote there; you can write there; there will be French women everywhere; if you're lucky, some of them will be naked...and it all turned out true...except that the plane DID explode. Okay. The plane did NOT explode. But the rest is true. Henry Miller did write there. I almost stayed in Hotel d'Esmeralda where he and Anais Nin would meet during their on-again, off-again affairs with writing and each others' genitals. It's located in the INFAMOUS left bank home of the Sorbonne and other things which I will now list. How about the Latin Quarter with it's alleys packed with restauranteurs standing outside of their establishments shouting the hard sell to get you to choose their eatery. "We have French food" they would shout as you passed by the assortment of Mediterranean and Italian themed joints which crowded the place. I should hope they had French food...I didn't come to Paris to get a Falafel, after all. I didn't stay at the Hotel d'Esmeralda because it was too expensive. I am a poet. Money isn't a part of my lifestyle. Also in the Left Bank is Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. It's across the Seine from Notre Dame and if there was no traffic you could run out the door of the store and jump in the river in probably less than ten seconds. There were two reasons why I didn't do this. One is that it was colder than it ever gets here in Los Angeles and I was sure I would freeze my nipples off in the water. The other reason is because there was traffic. Shakespeare and Company is run by George Whitman. According to "Let's Go Paris", George is allegedly the great-grandson of Walt Whitman. According to me this may or may not be true, but George looks like he's 138 years old and could possibly be Walt Whitman himself. It is an English bookstore which has rooms upstairs that play host to anyone who comes to town and meets all of the following three criteria: 1) You are looking for a place to crash for free in Paris while you write there, 2) You are willing to work a few hours a day in the bookstore, and 3) George Whitman feels like letting you stay there. I didn't stay at Shakespeare and Company because I wanted to be a tourist during the day. I didn't want to work in the bookstore. I did however meet the poet Mo Reager who just happened to be standing by the cash register. Mo wore a beret and was thus the only other person in Paris besides myself wearing a beret. Naturally Mo reminded me of Henry Miller. This was because he was the first poet who I met there and because he kind of looked like the guy who played Miller in the film "Henry and June". Mo caused the person who I was travelling with upon her decision to leave early to remark that one of the reasons she was leaving the trip early was that she wasn't meeting any English speaking people who she could relate to. Her exact quote was "The only Americans I've met in Paris are Americans and that's no good." I left copies of "Caffeine" magazine at the store. "Caffeine" is a national publication of poetry, art and fiction which is based in Los Angeles and was heavily supported by the pre-post-partum Charles Bukowski. "Caffeine" had published several of my poems and I thought it was the least I could do to bring some copies of their mags to Paris. When I left Shakespeare and Company the cash register operator du jour was handing the copies out to every customer. I felt this was good and bad for reasons I will not go into now. I encourage you to make some up, though. In Paris I would be a tourist during the day and a writer at night. It's not that I wasn't a writer during the day...but I didn't put on my special writing boxer shorts until about 7:30 p.m. The evening would always start with a meal. The food in Paris is enough reason to go there, and could inspire volumes of work which would be so vast that they would make the complete works of Shakespeare look like a pamphlet. I realize this is absurd hyperbole and I don't expect anyone to believe it. Especially anyone who has not eaten the food of Paris. And so at night I wrote. I covered all of the traditional ground covered in my work. This could be translated as "I wrote about the asses of women and my penis and the incessant quest to merge the two." Of course this would be an only partially accurate translation and you should not believe it either. I don't think I've been as intensely prolific as I was during this two week period. So much so that I decided that my first collection of poems (after four years of SERIOUS writing and six filled journals) would be all the poetry I wrote in Paris. It includes such classic poem titles as "It Turns Out That The Eiffel Tower Is Really Fucking Big", "The Good And Bad Ramifications of Early Morning Trash Collection In Paris", and "Bitch 2." I feel that these titles alone are enough to make anyone wish to contact me to find out just how they could get a copy of my book. My book comes with a cassette. My book is called "Paris: It's The Cheese". My book is not for small children. My book has gotten me into trouble. My book is one of the few independently published books which has broken even. MY BOOK IS THE ONLY BOOK I'VE EVER SEEN WHICH COMES WITH A FREE ZIPLOCK BAG!! Goddamyoushouldcheckthisbookout. _Good And Bad Ramifications of Early Morning_ _Trash Collection In Paris_ They collect the trash early every morning in Paris which is good because it keeps the city clean and bad because it wakes me up every morning which is good because I don't oversleep and bad because I get tired during the day which is good because I'll sleep at night and bad because I like to be up at night which is good and bad for different reasons which is good because I didn't take up space listing the reasons and bad because you might wonder what they are which is good because it adds a poetic mystery to this piece and bad because maybe you don't like mysteries and would rather shoot Agatha Christie in the head if you had the chance and that would have various ramifications some of which would be good and some of which would be bad and would regardless have very little to do with how often and early they collect the trash in Paris and who it wakes up and why that is good and bad etcetera ipso-facto blah blah blah a la mode vive La France I will not flick anyone's boogar off the Eiffel Tower as you can well imagine. In Paris it wasn't hard to find evidence of dead writers. In Pere-Lachaise cemetery one can gaze upon the final resting places of Moliere and Oscar Wilde, as well as George Seurat the painter, and Jim Morrison the rock star. Everyone goes to Pere-Lachaise to see Jim Morrison's grave. There is a guard standing by it so I wasn't able to scoop up some dirt to bring to my roommate who would have been into that sort of thing. My roommate has a human bone collection. I'll give you his e-mail address if you'd like to ask him about it. _Parisian Mecca_ Today I was asked in two different languages where Jim Morrison's grave was As I had the only paisley shirts in all of Paris It was clear that I was the expert in such matters Victor Hugo's house is in Paris. I went to it. He wasn't home. He hasn't been home for quite some time. I left him a note. Baudelaire kept apartments on Ile St-Louis. Ile St-Louis is the Island that is NOT the island that Notre Dame is on. You can't miss it if you go there. It's the OTHER island. It's a good island to visit especially if you want to stand outside of Baudelaire's old place. One of the guide books I had suggested that Baudelaire kept snakes up in the apartment. I saw no evidence of this from outside, but as I mentioned earlier, it was cold in Paris. It was so cold that my tongue stuck to the Eiffel Tower when I went up to lick it. The overall moral of this essay is to never lick the Eiffel Tower no matter what the weather is like. Excerpt from _I'm The Poet In Paris_ I'm the poet in Paris I invented this town I invented this continent I invented the French language I invented cheese and I invented that little piece of fabric which sticks up in the middle of berets. This was the single most important invention in the history of the world since Pangea. About the Columnist ******************* Rick Lupert lives and writes in Los Angeles except when he writes elsewhere. Like in Paris for example. He has also written in Pittsburgh, but that was just the airport. He has written in other airports as well. He has hosted a weekly open reading at a coffee house in Los Angeles for two-and-a-half years and has had poems published in POETRY INK, "Caffeine Magazine", "51%", "Blue Satellite", and "The Los Angeles Times". He is the author of "Paris: It's The Cheese". Rick Lupert is a short, vegetarian, guitar playing Jew who recently suffered the loss of two of four of his goldfish. Send no flowers. Money only. Dave Delaney ------------ 1 poem, 1 short fiction _grey guilt_ I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling the dirty used ashtray sat on my chest representing my heart the ashes being dumped into it until the end the hot embers at the filter pressed into it In her bed it was similar only one clean heart left untainted mine she would reach over and grab it flick her guilt her grey guilt and the hot heater pressed firmly into it against it it would burn out she would light another to finish the job the worst case of heartburn I've ever had. _We Meet Again_ Cheers my good man! He raised the beer in the air. He hadn't felt this good in years, he was with his best friend, who he hadn't taken the time to see lately. With you I feel my best. I feel that I can conquer the world, man. Seeing him again brought out his pent up happiness, earlier he was a miserable waste. He felt good about himself again. I thought I was shit lately and that I would never amount to anything. That's what my dad always told me. "Wilbur, you're never gonna amount to anything!". Ha! I showed him. It's too bad he's dead though, it would have been nice to rub it in a little. You know, I'm starting to get drunk and I couldn't give two shits about it. Wilbur gave him a good look in the eyes, smiled, and took another hit from his bottle. With Marla gone, I feel so free now. I didn't think I would, but I do. He laughed. She really fucked me up you know, but we are men, we move on to bigger and better things. This is what we do, we don't need no women to screw around with our heads, and fuck around on us when we are looking the other way. He sighed, his throat had become dry. Wilbur swallowed and frowned to his friend. I just can't believe she really fucked around on me, things were so good for so long...then just like that! He punched the wall, then inspected his knuckles for any damage. I've known you for thirty-five years now, I've gotta admit that we weren't always good friends. In fact there was that time that I tried to kill you...fuck, what was I thinking then, eh? Well it's you and me now pal. Through thick and thin, I know you ain't leaving anytime soon. He chuckled to himself. Wilbur finished the last of his beer and put his bottle down on the counter. He gave his friend one last good look, walked to the door and switched off the light. Once out of the bathroom Wilbur strolled back to his table. He ordered another beer, picked up his book and continued reading to himself. Richard Epstein --------------- 3 poems _Surprise, Surprise_ They say that at the house right down the street, the one looks much like ours, they ran a brothel. Actually, a whorehouse is what they say, a word that people like, when they can manage to poke it somehow into the conversation. I haven't pictured anyone who lived there, although I've tried, no woman who might be the siren of our cul-de-sac. The cops led two kids and a chocolate lab away. I hadn't seen a one of them before. At my house we were busy with the closets-- you take this, no I want that--mementos of incidents we couldn't quite remember, except of you, young in your wedding dress. _All That Extra Light_ Our house is beginning to sag. I recall when they planted the tree, a skinny stick at the curb. Now it is all worn out, almost unable to make new leaves out of itself. Lately it doesn't know what to do with the light. The gutters are flaking away. They can't make the water go down and around and out; instead it piddles through, rotting the leaves beneath, rotting the leaves inside. The wrens are singing early today. They seem to know, right where the roof is bowed, above and outside the house, what to do with the light. _Air Waves_ Is your radio on? I send you a message from my study. Hello, are you still the one there? Yes, I guess you're the one, there though preoccupied this hour with other programs--children, perhaps, or a Sunday breakfast, the want ads and coupons, or your own fitful sleep, a long, hard social night of it, glass and husband in hand. Now I see him, still in bed, that one hand proprietarily cupped on your exposed flank. That's all from here. I send no message after all. Greetings, perhaps. We speak two languages with a lost but common root. Notes From the Workshop Gulag ----------------------------- by Lawrence Revard **John Ashbery Wows 'Em** Unsteady on his brown Rockport walking shoes, John Ashbery staggered to the car. He is a stocky man of medium height with gray hair peppered with black. He wore a white oxford, black Dockers, and thin blue dress socks. Why did I take note of all the details? Pale cheeks, red, aquiline nose... Here is one lucky old man: a famous, wealthy, respected poet. Mark Doty and company ferried the drunken poet away from the small party that convened after his mid-September reading in Iowa City. Ashbery's first book was a printing of eight hundred copies that took eight years to sell out. He made note of this when I asked him at the morning Q&A before his reading. But he made few other points. Unasked questions were: "Why does your poetry lack any logic or sense?" or "When you returned from Paris in '66, didn't you have a great deal of help stepping on the right rungs in your climb toward poetdom?" or "Just how did you obtain that MacArthur 'Genius' award years ago?" Jorie Graham interfered at the Q&A and soft-pedalled questions to Ashbery. The writers who appeared at the Q&A sat in tense silence straining to hear Ashbery's soft, muddle responses to the soft, muddled questions "I was in France on a Fulbright when my first book came out..." Ashbery recalled. "I was having great difficulty writing so I would use writing exercises...collages, cut-ups...as Ginsberg and Burroughs were doing at the time. Some of them were not successful at all." Really? Unsuccessful writing exercises? But what were you doing in Paris? Weren't you a publicist? Weren't you specializing in publicity and self-promotion? Eight hundred copies...unsuccessful struggling...pshaw! "I wonder if you can comment on how your audience has changed since you returned from Paris in '66?" I asked. "I started out without an audience..." Ashbery has been putting out book after book since the sixties. His third, _Rivers and Mountains_, was successful. He has had an audience since that time. "I met an editor who was very enthusiastic...I was reviewed in the New York Times..." Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler helped to set up Ashbery's work as an example of deconstruction at work in poetry in the '70's. "I was taking poetry apart to see how it worked...but my intention was always to put it back together...I'm still trying to put the pieces back together, but I still revert back to the dislocation and juxtaposition and choppiness...Postmodern is what I'm called, but I don't know what it means." The choppiness is his signature, not a feature Ashbery avoids. It gives him his punch--his ability to surprise and entertain an audience. It also makes his work available for certain varieties of critical interpretation. When asked what poets he read, Ashbery commented that he had been reading James Tate and Keats. Keats? "What is it about Keats that you find moving," one student asks. "His language is so luscious, it is like eating a big bowl of fruit," Ashbery replies. Or is it that Keats is currently the high example of genius with Helen Vendler and Jorie Graham? Perhaps not, but certainly none of us is surprised that Keats is a favorite. "If poetry has a responsibility, what is it?" asks another student. "Nothing more than to give pleasure to somebody...I don't think that poetry has any responsibility. It is enough that it is poetry." Bravo! Another flourish for the public, John! At his reading, John Ashbery was the victim a weeping, simpering psychopath in the front row. The disturbed man, clearly out of his head, made much audible commentary in praise of Ashbery. Ashbery did not hear the man, but the audience was perturbed. A poem beginning with "The patient has escaped...!" then drew spontaneous laughter and applause. The audience supposed this was Ashbery's dry commentary on his peculiar fan in the front row. As it turned out, Ashbery chose the poem by accident and intended no commentary at all. "I appreciate miscommunication as a form of its own," Ashbery said during the Q&A. So do we all, but many prefer skill to luck. (Special thanks to Gillian Kiley for contributing to this is article.) 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: ) Darren Lauzon ------------- 2 poems _Passing the Bowel Line_ Once I arrogantly believed that lying here like this on hot sand with the oily and darkened heliocentric required a sleight of consciousness equal to lobotomy, needed the 'heil' salute to heat and sex and potential for sex, needed the rhetoric of fumbling surf. Now I am burning and meditating on Burroughs and the potential for melanoma and what burrows beneath my coccyx in the sand, what god it supposes me to be, and I notice your breathing is now joined to the rhythm of my own. First I'm aware that you sleep; then I'm aware that you dream, that your unconscious has taken its turn at free speech, and I can tell that the video presentation is pretty slick, yet some part of you heckles from the floor; sweetheart you mumble so sweetly in your sleep. I have much more to give if your soul wrings harder from me the remaining, most complex chains. I could so easily interrupt this nightmare by grabbing some part of you, clutching tightly to avoid passing as waste into the sea. _I Will_ I will bleed so that your blood may feed your own tissue. Without breathing I will mount the back steps tiptoing push the screen door slowly so not to make it squeak. I will damn myself should another floorboard crack. I will learn to slow my heartbeat to a whisper, so not to disturb your dreams; the night water will be still as glass. I will stare at the sun unblinking absorb the light so that your eyes do not squint and strain. I will climb to the roof without a ladder sit there, knees scraped, hands bleeding waiting for the sun to move. One day you will escape through the chimney behind my back like smoke. Matthew W. Schmeer ------------------ 3 poems _making karen happy_ last night my wonderful wife beautiful wife touched my shoulder and asked me to write a poem for her. "make it a happy poem," she asked. "promise me it will not be negative, or dwell on death or the unknown, or sex, like your other poems." this is more difficult than i had thought. happy poems are difficult. but i agreed to write her a happy poem. afterall, she is my wife and i love her, so how could i refuse? this is the poem i write for my wife: every day is a word. it is a quiet word, a word between lovers or birds or children at play and you know the word is good. every day is a word which is on the tongue hiding behind the other words which are spoken throughout the day. the word is when we drove home along the great river road, winding our way through the towns marked "Population: 24" or less; the towns with only six buildings shrugging against the blacktopped strip and the fields of wheat, corn, and soy stretching between the bluffs and the rivers churning toward each other. each day is that day and the word of that day; i think my wife speaks truth. it is the simple things which write the best poems. _mouse_ this morning the cat brought us a mouse. it was a simple gift, the only gift a cat knows how to give to those he loves. the mouse was dead, and it had not died quickly; it was not mangled by claws or by jaw, but played out, tired, or possibly scared to death. my wife did not see the mouse at first; it was too dark. but the cat sat beside his gift and waited for us to notice. he did not follow my wife to the kitchen to be fed, but merely sat there, waiting, wanting to give us this pure simple gift. my wife woke me with a startling shake of the bed. "methinks there's a mouse," she said in jest, but i know she does not take vermin lightly. she did not know this is the cat's way. i found an empty box which once held vanilla wafers, and with a ballpoint pen, i rolled the dead mouse into the box, and took the box outside to the trash. in silence, the cat watched what i did and then he went to his pillows and his eyes began to slide towards sleep. he is a good cat and I stroked him and I told him he was good, for cats need encouragement. _wife_ the woman sleeping in the upstairs bedroom is not his wife. she is sleeping with the covers pulled close to her chest, the dusky haze of the sun coating her in oranges and reds and yellows not found in bottles of hair coloring, tubes of mascara, or compacts of rouge. his wife is on the downtown train coming home. she does not know the woman is sleeping in their bed. he does not know his wife is coming home and he is drinking a pepsi, watching the television, and he is sitting in his boxer shorts, the leather chair sticking to his thighs. the woman in the upstairs room stirs her womb and the woman on the train feels the movements. World Wide Words ---------------- by Phil Pearson **Maximum Culture + Maximum Student Collaboration = Teaching Success** Within the last few years I have taught, more than any other, the basic college composition courses often tagged Composition I-II. The students in my classes have reflected the various races and ethnicities that make up Tulsa's neighborhoods: I have had students from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Mexico, Pakistan, and Brazil. I have taught American Indian, Hispanic, Black, and International Students who speak one language at home and English at work and school, so I feel I have an ever-growing appreciation and deepening understanding of the cultural and ethnic diversity of students. Sadly though, in America nowadays we have The Great Writing Doctor Tradition: take your words into the aseptic, acultural class-waiting-room for a grammar checkup, a teacherly tongue-depressor inspection. Dispense the correct use of a coordinating conjunction and explain parallelism and send them on their merry way. Yet teaching writing, learning to write, is not a Marcus Welby two-pill prescription. Our pedagogy must more full address the less acculturated of our society in our public institutions. So how can less acculturated students best learn to write in a community college setting? First, I believe in recognizing the importance of pluralism in community discourse. The marginalization of an English Department from a community setting, especially Composition, has far-reaching ramifications for academic student writing. If feasible, I strongly support the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Movement. Second, I believe in privileging writing over, yes, teaching. We must divest ourselves of the bank model of writing instruction as teacher depositure; instead, we should invest ourselves in a labor model of writing instruction more slanted towards student production. The focus ought to be on the student's ideas, the student's questions, the student's words, the student's writing, the student's cultural experiences. Third, I believe in teaching writing as a recursive process, writing as critical thinking, writing as the student's resources, and writing as revision for graded evaluation. The perfect textbook, I believe, needs to offer a teacher a combination of writing instruction approaches, ranging from a literature approach (exposing students to classic texts; analyzing works) to a peer workshop approach (buddy writing; small-group projects; medium-group hypertexts; cross-peer evaluation and scoring), from an individualized writing lab approach (Roger Garrison-like workshops) to a text-based rhetoric approach (major/minor rhetorical strategies, studying prose models of composition; discourse modes; the Toulmin model of argument‹claim, warrant, and support), or, if warranted, from a basic skills approach (grammar and usage) to a service course approach (e.g., techniques for writing research papers). In addition, the perfect textbook should allow for classroom interaction that can vary from brief introductory lectures to large-group, simultaneous small-group, or buddy-system activities, as well as student-led or teacher-guided discussions of writing. The sum of the parts of teaching writing is only as good as the writing textbook parts you start with. Finally, I am also a firm believer in process conferences and semester-end portfolio evaluation, having found both to be extremely successful, especially the ongoing student conferences. A recent professional experience of mine that I found highly enlightening involved empowering my students with more direct control over their discussion groups in class. I decided I would restructure my classroom environment, and I attempted to establish an atmosphere of openness, cultural and ethnic respect, and safety in the class. At first, I had numerous qualms as to giving my students such free rein, but soon I began to hear and see them acknowledging the importance of their connections to each other, responsibly appreciating another's culture, and defending and voicing the notion of America as a great melting pot. With most discussions, I struggled and forced myself to remain quiet and forgo the tendency to pop into the discussions and pepper them with words such as "pluralism," "academic discourse," "acculturation," or "political correctness." The discussions did lag and falter at times, but not for lack of student collaboration or interest. I would watch them go out the door at the end of class, a conversation of ideas now going, a new cultural dialogue divested of any overt academic pedagogy that I had not seen before. All too often we teachers‹I plead guilty here‹with our Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test, our Myer-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, our well-intentioned Socratic Method, our having gleaned the latest "Exercise Exchange" for possible teaching tips, are confronted with a serious teacher-to-student cultural lag as we look out over rows of we-are-not-worthy faces on that very first day. At times part P.T. Barnum and part Peter Pan, pitching a fantastic "writingese," an "educationese," with a coy, welcome-wagon spiel, we over-sell and over-teach the fine art of writing. Weeks down the line, after too many bean-counting sentences, too many low calorie-ideas, too many writing-to-go essays, everything and the classroom textbook goes out the window. Ascending up from our highly mythologized student grading-hell (good riddance!), now student-proofed, now teacher-by-fire ready, we regroup. A next-semester-win-them-over mindset takes hold, and, with one's top-performance ideals still intact, John Q. Student and the Perfect Composition Chase begins anew. In the end, we as progressive writing teachers must learn that students are quite capable of assuming the mantle of responsibility for their own acculturation. We must give them that collaborative empowerment. Already suffering from a tenuous sense of responsibility, ownership, and authority in their writing, students ought to be challenged with many kinds of cultural and ethnic connections. The art of teaching writing should create social filaments that network students' thinking to a writing community of others. Teaching success = maximum culture + maximum student collaboration. World Wide Words Book Review ---------------------------- "On the Black Hill" by Bruce Chatwin Viking Penguin Books, 249 pages **Episodic Form, A Painter's Eye, and Critical Detail** On a first run-through of Bruce Chatwin's novel, "On the Black Hill," the reader is quickly struck by how episodic the structure of the book is: 249 pages and 50 chapters, roughly about a chapter every five pages. The pace is quick, the plot multiple. In fact, this book cries out for the tag "traditional novel" to be given to it. We get multiple story lines. We get more characters than we really need from Chatwin, which is one of his few faults here. "On the Black Hill" resembles a good old-fashioned eighteenth century novel like "Tom Jones." Ironically, even though the book centers around what takes place on Black Hill, a peripatetic expansiveness exists that is delightfully refreshing. Chatwin moves the reader around, and travel becomes an important thematic element in this book in many ways. Characters are always in movement, always going places, by car, on foot, with bicycles. Chatwin as well possesses a painter's eye for description, and his use of critical detail to describe rooms or settings captures the Cezanne-like effect that Ernest Hemingway was striving for in his early short stories. A descriptive fussiness and baroque indulgence with detail intrudes at times though, which Hemingway would probably balk at, for Chatwin seemingly cannot set his scene and place until he has exhausted us with a rich evocation. He loves knick-knacks, and any scene-setting of a room is sure to include many little 'objets d'art'. Ways of seeing have everything to do with the means by which a novelist structures experience, and this reader keenly notes how Chatwin "sees" and structures the texture of his novel. Much of the book's narrative line takes up with Lewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, but, at the same time, the other story lines, the character portraits of eccentrics and grotesques occupies Chatwin's imagination. In some ways, Chatwin's characters remind you of the dramatic studies of familiar life done by William Hogarth. Chatwin's character portraits could be dead-ringer figures right out of a Hogarth painting. Unfortunately, what we get too much at times in Chatwin's limited characterization is just flat character portraits. The painterly eye mentioned earlier comes into play in many aspects of the book's overall makeup. Curiously, the first line of the book orients us to the visual, for Chatwin tells us that the farm where Lewis and Benjamin live is known as "The Vision." Much as the early Hemingway used different components of the landscape in such a way that each is distinct as the eye focuses on it separately, yet tends to blend into the next when the whole picture is viewed, Chatwin applies the technique of critical detail to create setting. Hemingway's attempt in "Big Two-Hearted River" to depict the countryside like a Cezanne painting best exhibits the technique of critical detail: The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climbing. Nick went on up. Finally the road after going parallel to the burnt hillside reached the top. Nick leaned back against a stump and slipped out of the pack harness. Ahead of him, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned country stopped off at the left with the range of hills. On ahead islands of dark pine trees rose out of the plain. Far off to the left was the line of the river. Nick followed it with his eye and caught glints of the water in the sun. There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue hills that marked the Lake Superior height of land. He could hardly see them, faint and far away in the heat-light over the plain. If he looked too steadily they were gone. But if he only half-looked they were there, the far off hills of the height of land. (180) Now, here is a scene of striking similarity described by Chatwin: Next morning, after foddering, he [Amos] took a stick and walked the nine miles to Bryn-Draenog Hill. On reaching the line of rocks that crown the summit, he sat down out of the wind and retied a bootlace. Overhead, puffy clouds were streaming out of Wales, their shadows plunging down the slopes of gorse and heather, slowing up as they moved across the fields of winter wheat. He felt light-headed, almost happy, as if his life, too, would begin afresh. To the east was the River Wye, a silver ribbon snaking through water-meadows, and the whole countryside dotted with white or red-brick farmhouses. A thatched roof made a little patch of yellow in a foam of apple- blossom, and there were gloomy stands of conifers that shrouded the homes of the gentry. A few hundred yards below, the sun caught the slate of Bryn-Draenog rectory and reflected back to the hill-top a parallelogram of open sky. Two buzzards were wheeling and falling in the blue air, and there were lambs and crows in a bright green field. (19) Again, all the components of the landscape are presented in such a fashion that each is distinct as the imagination's eye focuses on it separately, yet tends to blend into the next as the whole is taken in. No superdetailed description exists here, no photographic realism. Details have been critically selected and blended. Chatwin shows a keen painter's sense of proportion here. The composite we visually receive of Bryn-Draenog comes across to the mind's eye as a proportionate interplay of key subordinate parts, each distinct yet each fusing together into an overall Cezanne-like impression. Chatwin even uses the technique of critical detail to convey character: Lewis was tall and stringy, with shoulders set square and a steady long-limbed stride. Even at eighty he could walk over the hills all day, or wield an axe all day, and not get tired. He gave off a strong smell. His eyes‹grey, dreamy and astigmatic‹were set well back into the skull, and capped with thick round lenses in white metal frames. He bore the scar of a cycling accident on his nose and, ever since, its tip had curved downwards and turned purple in cold weather. (10) Here details have been critically selected and blended to round out a picture of Lewis for the reader. Much like working in a three-dimensional medium, Chatwin fashions his prose to create volume and relief, to writerly represent the face of a character. With the likes of such august figures as Edmund Wilson and Somerset Maugham bemoaning the downfall of the classical novel, its "decline and fall," its "passing," the doomsayers' cult has been reaping the message of its long overdue death left and right since the turn of this century. For nearly a hundred years now, the scope of the novel has been widening to include matters never dreamed of before by its progenitors and early practitioners such as DeFoe and Fielding: dissection of motive, in-depth exploration of psychological states, social criticism, economic theorizing, every conceivable variety of theme and crusade. All these variants have greatly enriched the novel, but they have also steadily and unfortunately diminished the element of narrative, of pure story, sometimes diminishing this important element to the point of destroying it. Fortunately, for us, Bruce Chatwin offers up to the reader just this lost art: Pure Story. A master of the episodic form, of the painterly eye, of the use of critical detail, Mr. Chatwin takes us back to the old-fashioned art of novel-making in "On the Black Hill." World Wide Words Special Feature -------------------------------- short fiction by Phil Pearson _the cellophane of memory_ a shimmering green field soon soothes you, so bright in the summer sun from the pickup as your eyes come back to you. a green grass clearing stretches out far and wide, a rippling golden green for an instant for your eyes, then fading to a quick, lost sensation. you brake at the dead-end sign, pull your blinker arm down, head west west okoboji lake. the gentle gentle rocking. a windy moil of blue water. wind forever leaving you. just big pin-oak trees left to play an angry rustling tune. you wait by the lakeside: you wait on the water. pushing off then boating downwind, the water tolls‹bells that only you hear. the green sounds of the ice-blue water. west okoboji some old city council signs peg the ground here and there. wind whistles. mechanical, hammer-headed grasshoppers, hind legs circling flywheels, genuflect solemnly, lonely pilgrims chained to the red soil, chugging on. blowflies, green- and bluebottle, hover over a dead possum, its tail a white limp curve there on the road in front of you, fur ruffling, scurrying the flies as you rumble by. "no HUNTING or TRESPASSING under the penalty of the law." one grunting pig scratches its piebald side against a thick wood post before going on burrowing in drying mud. some strange car honks. a bearded guy in black sunglasses. he guns around, shuddering by, wheels spitting back asphalt grains that ping off your truck's windshield. a boy pitches his fishing line back into a small brown farm pond with a small red dog at his side watching pulling those little round porcupine balls off, you, tennis shoelaces burred thick, your whiskey-red Irish setter yelping as you perform surgery, memory of a packed lunch eaten on the lake, slip-bobbering for panfish while listening to Saturday afternoon Iowa Hawkeye football games on your portable radio. hooking fat-bellied yellow bullheads off colcord's point at sunset. gored by that pelvic sidefin stinger, swelling the cee of flesh between the thumb and forefinger, hand sore for days. catnapping, seat cushion for a pillow, feet dangling over the gunwale, fish hatchery maps under your tackle box, tennis shoes prints sanding the hull. fall fever. october. browns. lush. an airplane drones overhead somewhere. just you trampolining upon the water in your 12-foot crestliner, a helmsman for the day. water scout. acquiring your water badge. outboarding all the way south on two fill-ups of gas to wide and deep emerson's bay, then trolling back and forth across the mouth of the bay, across the rock reef, from eagle point to pocohontas point, pocohontas point to eagle point, over the scattered gravel and emergent raccoon's tail, trailing your pole-bending red-and-white daredevil spoon for muskies, the afternoon gusty with hope. cold water clappers the boat, belling down along the v-hull from bow to stern. everything rings bells inside you. the bulrushes sibilate, the cattails kowtow, bentover chesspiece knights. hours ago Okoboji so penitent, robed in dark serge blue, now glinting whitecaps salute, roiling gunmetal gray at high noon. all of it you take in the sun beats mercilessly down. a jet contrail mars a pale indigo sky, diffusing into a dirty gray scar. white horses in a strange perfect circle graze, necks all kowtowing to the ground, now in the rearview mirror white dots against a tree line, tails swishing. a red-shirted farm kid up on a rusty bike too big for her waves, glances back at you in the cab, then yaws left, yaws right, her little legs pumping hard to get up a hill. "Trailer for Sale 827-6418." yellow ribbons enbow trees‹the mailbox enbowed too in corn-yellow. car-clogged front yards, cars cannibalized for parts and up on cement blocks, hoods askew, stray green clumps of sprays of flowers, dirty puppies running loose, rusty gas tanks and cords and cords of pinewood stacked alongside trailer homes clotted with mud-spattered, muffler-rumbling 4x4's, then the roads pockmarked, edges crumbling, patchy and potholed, the asphalt oily, the sheen dulled, dulling on the dull, mossy rocks, overturning them, using the leeches underneath for night walleye bait, letting them suctioncup themselves to your fingers for fun, then the real laugh of squeezing, pulling, stretching them away from your skin, then you rinse your hands in the instant ice-tea foam. then it is 1976? bicentennial year? under a sunless sky and thrumming for walleyes with limegreen grasshoppers. remember those tiny orange eyes of their's. echoings of a boat motor. someone or ones heading for hayward's bay, calling it a day. a gull flaps into a light headwind. wave after wave cradles your double-anchored fishing boat. waters of memory advance and recede, advance and recede, you tread, tread, treading then remembering diving deep deep first through hot, then warm, then cool layers then cold, ah, icecube-like relief to your sunbaked skin, pure ice water, you jackknifed off and up and away from the lake bottom mud, legs scissoring, feet flippering, arms angelwinging, re-wing, surface finally with a headwhip, wringing out your tousled hair, snorts clear the nostrils, atread, floating, bobbering down and up and down, swell after swell after swell, they rollercoaster you to the end of a private dock, sitting alone, you desiring to be undisturbed, absorbed by a book, twenty years old? and very quiet, an independent mind of your own, a drinker of words, the hot burn of words, your fresh mind tasting cayenne peppers, tasting horseradish, feeling giddy, you, like a drunk who is aware of what is going on around you, yet not there, in a wholly different world of sensation, who is slowly leaving your body, to be resurrected as a new spirit in a new world someplace else the baking, remollient countryside steams droning sounds out over checkerboard fields. birds counterpoint strange strains of melody. a lavender skyline oranges lighter, pinking now the sky-rim, higher up softening to the orange-brown color of english marmalade as your eyes periphery the horizon. the pinkening deepens. low-lying clouds, bouffanted cotton candy, dissolve under the twilight sun. cool air fluffs your neck as you dip down a hill. manured air stenches the nostrils. you roll up your window. a cow grazes greedily, branded JR on its flank, you think of okoboji. some man in a white t-shirt, a coffee mug in hand, surveys the land as the orange sun sinks. four bobwhite quail waddle across the road ahead, skittering away into cover. one stalls at the roadside, backs off, then bobs and skedaddles away up into the ditch and up into the barbed fence-line. you pull on your lights. your world transforms and quickly reduces to varying circles of light‹red, yellow, white. "Warning. All. Thieves. and. Trespassers. Will. Be. Shot" hangs on an abandoned farm house. past machine-littered, fire-scourged fields, past little 4-way junctions, past leaning stop signs, past recreational campers parked in driveways, past countless rust-spotted basketball bankboards starkly lit in the night, you stare at the yellow chips of butterscotch now, counting the squares. then moths flare up like whirling white dervishes, some meteoring right into the grillwork of your pickup, while others flutter off away unharmed into the gloom of nighttime sticky time, revolution, driftwood stumps cobwebbed with old fishing line, little miller's floating greenseed algae, thick peasoup, you spoon around with an oar laughing at the little round dunking balls of fluff, woodies, mom cheeps them away quickly into the marsh cane as you pole yourself around the bay's edge, trusty duckblind-green johnson motor tilted up, dip and dart of dragonflies preying on mosquito larvae, beads of lake water drip drop plop, plop, plop off the old splitwood blade ends of your two gray oars, smack of a smallmouth bass in the early crisp morning air, plash of waves washing up upon the shore rocks, emptying, emptying, xylophoning of sound, gradated rock by rock by rock, pellucid tuning forks sounding out out onto okoboji, out, out, onto the air, out out out onto you, pincering crawdad-like for life centerline reflector chips of butterscotch. the roadside's tree color russet, the pine's green clarifying itself in the cone of the headlights. leaves cartwheeling on the road and falling now and then from above with a grace and finality to the gunmetal gray pavement. gray telephone poles as if they are crosses, eerie hangmen. cold farmhouse lightpoles polka dot the eye's creep and bound. musty heat filters in from a blower fan. fingers prickle with sleep: little balls pinball against the sidewalls of the skin. the cocoon of night spins tighter. blue zombie-like glow of a TV through the gauze of living room curtains. all these country people, with their silly front-yard ornaments, hokey at best, these never-ending trailer homes with cars up on cement blocks, a mangy mutt or two moping around. tonight the yellow-soft rooms uninviting and unmysterious, these unknown people with their irritating foibles, their slow-as-molasses dinner-table talk, their dry and dreary banality. hum of tires and road, a higher pitch dopplers around the lateral sides, a hissing underneath away and out, gone into the cold air. a squiggly black and yellow road sign like a fat nightcrawler big fathead minnows wriggling in a styrofoam minnow bucket, you nightcrawler hunting by flashlight, Old Man Harry's back yard watered all afternoon. perfect. pinching the glistening heads, pulling, sliding, stretching, easing them out of the ground with care, not wanting them to sever apart on you in the hole, spying, fingers thumping down on the damp ground, doubles, mating pairs, soap bubble lubricity, the night wind sashaying a two-step in the treetops of the oak and the elm, bulldozing dirt into an ungarbaged glass miracle whip jar first, a baker's dozen later having met your following day's fishing-worm quota you jaunt home, the jar jiggled round by you and fishbowled, a wriggling and wry curiosity, clotting, mucous, membranous, clods turded up, tunnelling, corkscrewing around and down, shiny oiliness, then shakered up, primeval, slinky caterpillar movements begin anew, roto-rootering tips fencing each other all round, sidewinding contortionists so slippery. you shake again vigorously this time burying them all under for good. back in the garage you aerate the twist-top lid with a Phillips and refrigerate wet trunks cold so cold. just off the clothesline. off to go swimming again. whitecaps beckon. tennis shoes squish. tight black ball-like schools: the morning spent chasing baby bullheads with a minnow net along the shore rocks, delighting in each plucked-up blackie with a whoop. flotsam and jetsam now you pick at a dead shell. light blue skeleton: crayfish. gone. and suddenly you're returning in your green newport on highway 9, years later, and that smell of water, of lake, hitting you. miles away. amazed, you inhaled greedily and deeply then, filling your lungs, holding in your breath for minutes, exhaling slowly, serenely. epiphany. you're moving downwind now, upwind, slinking back, a shimmering gold comet, silver wiggle, you break the bread and wine of waves, commune. a wave takes a balletic hop. you roll up your shirt sleeves. your okoboji. every morning you smell your lake, your water. the gray-blue lake water and the surging whitecaps frosting the surface in the sunlight. aluminum fishing boat chunking the waves. the witchy water whispers only to you, splashing out a morse code. and waves after windswept waves thunder against the cold rocks. your own footprints in the sand. then gone. washed over, wiped out. a glimpse: white wings arc, smooth perfect landing, hugging the sandy runway. so white the raucous gull. you smile tenderly. your heart tightens hoo, hoo-oo, hoo, hoo. plaintive. a great horned. high up somewhere a jet grinds like a garbage disposal. dirty cotton rag cloud cover. full milkwhite beaver moon. arcturus wnw in the bootes constellation. silhouetted pine trees like old featherdusters. dark dark green treetops: brussel sprouts. soft whisking sound of wind stirring leaves. an accelerator hammered down, muffler pistoning out pops. the cool burn of night air wafts against the cheekbones. rich spice of wet, fermenting forest duff. shiny, slick leaves curled up like wood shavings. bur oak limbs seemingly denuded grapevines. gnarled, corky-ridged branch clusters. maples celery stalks. a rising point and counterpoint of crickets. hurly-burly of farm dogs rustling brush in the woods. yaps and yelps. the subsequent tang of skunk. far far away hunters' voices echo in the loess hills. suddenly a strange loon-like whinnying breaks forth coon tracks. three wheeler's. sidewinder, stallion of the lake, rumbles by, white tail, watering a banana-shaped spray. you, leaving fresh footprints on the beach sand for the past. into a lower galloping gear, sidewinder, runner of the waves, gambols around the sand bar buoy out from gull point state park. wind and water shear rocks on the sand bar point and you are watching the dragonflies do their ritual kissing of the rod tip, summer of ? you dunk those pests. you forever trying to dunk them in the lake water and never succeeding. then you are taking a scoop of baking sand and slowly sieving it through your fingers, slowly riddling it, a rolling movement from side to side, trickling down to the ground. scoop and sieve. listen. for only you hear the fluid sounds of lake water tolling to you. and rod and reel in hands you set off. time a full hourglass passing time you catch a darting glimpse of raspberry-dusted rumps and bibs of hubbubing house finches gorging themselves on black oil sunflower seeds. you remember the rutting stags in the woods at night with their sexual snorting. you see stubbly fields, razed corn stalks, a combined row of corn as far as eyes can see. that yellow tilled road to oz. diesel fumes cloying the air, the churned-up fodder whirled out by chaff spreaders, that rich vegetative musk. wicker chair tentacles of rooted corn, like half a bird cage above ground. ramrod stalks, kings, spiky crowns, drooping with heavy ears while bearded with a nest of deep-brown tobacco, leaves curliecued and dry as onion skin, paperlight. chock-full grain trucks lumbering through the fields on a mission, through pink bull thistle looking like champagne glasses, through the bristly greenbrier with its pigtailed tendrils, like when you take a scissor's edge to a christmas ribbon. the rabbit-eared pods of milkweed split open. those amazing seed throwers. brown pumpkin seed gondolas going up like hot-air balloons, downy soft white spiders, once grounded tumbleweeds, yet airborne again and up up ready to velcro themselves to your clothes, those pods fine as deer antler felt, cargo bay hatches open and little parachutists spilling out, carried by the whim of the wind out among the black-headed gulls the lake gulls dally and the squirrels scurry, busily burying acorns. air is spiced with seaweed and leaf smoke. leaves tumble and beckon as grounded leaves cartwheel back and forth across the beach sand. you out on the lake, late autumn, in insulated coveralls, a few docks remaining. you fished for jumbo perch that day while the water xylophoned, xylophoned, the lake wash xylophoning over and over the pebbly littoral. hearing those cricket chirps in the deep grass, the cicada's bray strange and solemn somewhere, maple's rasp and crackle of dry leaves, hearing okoboji, in-seeing its blueness, you, the fever of water, the pulse of water, throbbing, beating, stethoscope you, you its sounding body, you alone its heart, water beat, water beat, water beat, between water beats that liquid lull, happy beating beat beat beat beat hydroplaning beats across the lake's skin, skipping the surface, frisbee flip flung hanging catching major air you canoe paddle swirl underwater, you, fluttering sailcloth dimples in and out, ruffles, sand like a deck of cards spread wide, sunlight curlicues under and in through the sand bar riffle defining the water's oil-smooth form, chthunk thunk thunking speed bumps of a ski boat plowing through an overgrown field of whitecaps, only you hear the suspirations of the wind in the sedge grass as you climb that tire-roped tree crabwise, heady coenesthesis of vertigo you swung out with a bird's eye view, cannonballing yell dopplering you down down down down, and you are picking up a dry-as-dust king crawdad, pugjawed shad silvering the surface with little filliping spanks, heron, a wading great blue, still life, pencil-lead legs then gallop, a greedy gulp, some gurgitating, an after-dinner billful or two of liquid refreshment, then back to the stalk, pose, sneak attack, miss, a squawking croak, its bass call sounding like an old creaky floorboard, then again back to the stalk. ahead on the shingle remember suddenly the zippered buzz of hoppers jumping out of harm's way in the wild rye grass, you after that walk along the beach, that shell, hands fingering it, that shiny wet washboard feel, you a beachcomber at five, burrowing for your lucky arrowhead, right-sized rock hammers and you wedge it open enough for a fingertip's hold and then pry it wide open to soft-poached egg-white jelly, learning full how to destroy then, no pearls, an angel wing left dehiscent on the flint brown sand. okoboji and the cellophane of memory clinging to you still today at this very instant About the Columnist ******************* Phil Pearson hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he's involved in higher education and enjoys fiddling around with multimedia projects. A Mac aficionado, Editor-in-Chief of the popular "MacSurfer's Headline News" website, he maintains a keen interest in twentieth-century poetry and fiction. In his quieter moments, he can often be found fishing for yellow perch and the elusive walleye. Audrey L. Smith --------------- 2 poems _Sonnet for Eric_ What did you want to show me in the black and white Photographs you took at your grandmother's house? Maybe you thought I'd see the curved lines and contrasts, And maybe I'd recognize a theme in the images? I saw the doorway of the guest room where you stood, Daffodil in hand, staring at the mirror; The dark lake that cast a spell on you, one Clear, starry midnight--you almost drowned; The stalky high grass that waved in subtle Wind behind the house. It also grew around Lime tombstones on the edge of the pine woods, Behind a falling wrought iron fence. I could almost read the writing on the closest stone "In memory of childhood and human thresholds." _In Shadow Unseen_ You and I crunching Through the ice and sparklesnow. Me in black boots And the black hat That everyone seems to like on me. You've got your camera Capturing shadow, capturing Light, the streetlight shining through branches On my cold face. You, all in darkness, Asking, "Lift your hands to the sky and Turn your face to the light." I want to switch places; You in white brightness, and I in shadow Unseen, holding the camera. Richard Parnell --------------- 1 poem _Moot_ Mutable founts, if not wisdom, then "what?" or rather, "whom?" Who sees anymore what you hear, ch-ch-changing the way you who do? Wind bends to spray: syllables, silly little symbols; then a crash (crush) of meaning on fixed ground as if all is in vain and a striving after wet. Mute-able fonts, pixel by pyx'l silence be traded in on? Speak written words! Yet dumb, we're struck in an auditorium. Hear ye, hear ye, my holy wayfaring friend, nothing you see is sacred anymore, unless you are blessed to be deaf. Illiterati ---------- by Shaun Armour > **"The Bridge on the Drina" & " "Captain Corelli's Mandolin""** "Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not." --Thoreau, "Journal" (1860) In 1945 Ivo Andric published "The Bridge on the Drina", in 1961 it was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Immediately, one wonders why it took the judges sixteen years to give this brilliant novel it's much deserved accolade. Certainly the fact that the world was just ending it's most bloody conflict in history didn't help. The global state of affairs, and the little matter of the book being the chronicle of a three-hundred-year-old bridge in Bosnia, written in Serbo-Croat, with no central protagonist (except possibly for the bridge itself) is enough to get any book shelved for sixteen years. But wait! I know what you're thinking. "Dry, Eastern European, historical fiction, oh yeah, I've got to read more of that." Well actually you do, and for a couple of good reasons. "The Bridge on the Drina" isn't dry in the slightest. It's a thoroughly engaging, and often a profoundly eloquent story of simple people attempting to deal with a powerful and enigmatic world constantly encroaching on their humble town and way of life. More importantly though, the novel is the most succinct, clearly explained introduction to Balkan history available. If you've ever wondered what exactly the war in Bosnia is all about, this is the book that will explain it clearly, catch you up to speed on three centuries of European history, and tell you one hell of a good tale. "History is all about geography." --Robert Penn Warren, "Writers at Work: First Series" (1952) The "Bridge on the Drina", while fiction, is historically accurate in it's depiction of the politics and polemics of the troubled area. The story focuses on the little town of Visegrad, nestled next to the powerful river Drina from which the bridge and, in turn the novel, gets its name. Visegrad's only inherent significance is that it is on the road connecting the predominantly Christian world of Western Europe, with the East, and the great Moslem Ottoman Empire which rules Bosnia at the beginning of the novel. The town is populated by Turkish Moslems, Christians, Jews and Gypsies, all of whom live tenuously at peace beside one another. The opening of the novel coincides with the rise to power of the Ottoman Grand Vezir, Mehmed Pasha, (a thoroughly documented historical figure), a man whom, as a boy of thirteen was taken from his native Bosnia to be a slave in the Ottoman Empire. The young boy grew up within the Empire and rose to it's most commanding official position. At his bequest--in memory of his native Bosnian roots--the Grand Vezir commissioned the building of a bridge over the river Drina in an attempt to surmount the natural divide between East and West. The majestic bridge quickly becomes the central focus of the town, whether as a source of Moslem pride at the power of the Ottoman Empire, or Christian resentment against the occupying forces. It is with the bridge--used with the same dramatic emphasis as a stage--that the lives of the people of Visegrad are played out over many generations. Ivo Andric uses the timeless, immutable structure of the bridge as a pedestal to tell powerful and at times horrific tales. Sometimes, the stories are in vignette fashion, while others weave together over decades and centuries. Whether he is telling the story of Radislav, the Christian workman who is impaled upon the bridge as punishment for attempting to obstruct its construction, or Fata, the beautiful, young bride who commits suicide as a testament to her own honour, Andric takes history and makes it personal and meaningful on an individual level. Andric manages, with remarkable clarity, to take the epic scope of warring empires and reduce it to understandable and relevant experiences of the people who are subject to the whim and caprice of great change. The beauty of this novel is that as you find yourself engrossed in one of the stories, like that of Fedun the young soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who tries to make the best of a boring guard duty on the bridge and pays dearly for becoming enamoured of a pretty Moslem girl, you realise that you are absorbing and witnessing powerful historical changes: the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of European power, the inherent conflict between Moslem and Christian ideology. But, this is not "history lite"; it is history made accessible and lucid. With each new story, Andric uses his immense and insightful narrative skill to condense the facts, through fable and anecdote, and make it immediate and relevant. Though the novel ends in the midst of World War I, it presciently predicts and defines the problems that plague Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia to this day. And while Andric does not offer any easy solutions, he clearly states that the difficulties are historic and involve not just the people who live in those countries but the outside powers who have traded, fought over, and dominated these lands. "History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unerring she flows toward her goal. At every bend in her course she leaves the mud which she carries and the corpses of the drowned." --Arthur Koestler, "Darkness at Noon" (1940) Like "The Bridge on the Drina", Louis de Bernieres's, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" (1994), fluidly tells an emotionally stunning story within the confines of historical fact. Louis de Bernieres chooses the rustic Greek island of Cephallonia, an island described by one of the central characters, Dr. Iannis as "an island so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia, and the red earth lies stupefied not only by the sun, but by the impossible weight of memory." Within this palpable air of nostalgia, Dr. Iannis and his beautiful young daughter, Pelagia, live a sheltered and idyllic existence. While Dr. Iannis struggles to write the complete and definitive history of Cephallonia from the time of the ancient Greeks, Pelagia is off falling in love with Mandras, a young local fisherman. This intoxicating first love is jarred back into reality by two major forces: the attack upon Greece by Italy and the fact that Mandras, a humble fisherman, feels unworthy of Dr. Iannis's intelligent and spirited daughter. "Corelli's Mandolin" is infinitely more than a straightforward story of true love, denied by war and fate. Louis de Bernieres has a powerful gift for creating hilarious, charming and believable characters. He populates his world with people the reader grows to love and identify with. They are humans with real weaknesses and frailties who sometimes do evil things and sometimes rise above the wickedness around them to a beatific level. Two such characters are Captain Antonio Corelli and Carlo Guercio, soldiers in the invading Italian army. We are first introduced to Carlo early in the novel as a young soldier in the Italian campaign against Albania. Carlo, a closeted homosexual, has joined the army after reading Plato's symposium, where Socrates argues that the best army would be made up of male lovers. While denying himself any hint of overt love, Carlo defines his existence by befriending and protecting another young soldier as an act of pure love and devotion. The sad story of Carlo and his unrequited love leads him to the occupying army stationed in Cephallonia, where he meets the charismatic and charming Captain Antonio Corelli during a formal morning opera session in the military toilets. Corelli is billeted in the house of Dr. Iannis and Pelagia, where try as they might to treat him as an invading soldier, they are defied by his humanity and kindness and both in their way, grow to love him. This novel is filled with a natural and effervescent wit and humour. The idiosyncratic inhabitants of Cephallonia, such as Velisarios the strongman; Alekos the ancient goat herder; Kokolias and Stamatis, the aging political rivals and best friends; all deal with the invasion in their own amusing way. Meanwhile, Dr. Iannis reminds the reader--through the writing of his history--that Cephallonia has been invaded many, many times before, and that some invaders are far worse than others. This point is proven by the arrival of the German Army. While the Italians are spending their time on Cephallonia like a vacation by playing soccer and chasing girls, the Germans approach the occupation with a fanatical zeal that brings forth some of the true drama and horror of the novel. When the Allies defeat the Italian army in Europe, the Italian soldiers forgotten on Cephallonia find themselves abandoned and facing a new enemy, the Germans. "Good writing is almost the concomitant of good history. Literature and history were joined long since by the powers which shape the human brain; we cannot put them asunder." --C.V. Wedgwood, "History and Hope" (1987) In the same way that "The Bridge on the Drina" taught history by telling eloquent stories about simple, honest people, "Corelli's Mandolin" allows the reader to absorb Greek history and the forces at work during World War II while being totally engaged in the complicated love story involving Pelagia, Corelli, Mandras, and Carlo. Don't confuse this novel with a bodice ripping historical romance. It is deftly written with a lyrical energy filled with beauty, tragedy and satire. Clearly de Bernieres, like Andric, respects the importance and the inherent power of the history at work. The past in these novels is not used as some sham stage, only valuable as a backdrop to the stories. Both authors distill the great historical processes at work and find human denominators to make some sense of the larger pictures. The irony is that Andric writing fifty years ago, accurately foretells Bosnia's current situation, and de Bernieres, writing now, humanises the past, and makes it resonate for us today. Andric and de Bernieres embrace the characters in their novels as human beings, be they Christian, Moslem, Greek, or German. Neither story allows itself to lapse into stereotypical portrayals of good and evil, or comfortable visions of right and wrong. This sensitivity is all the more dramatic in "The Bridge on the Drina". Ivo Andric grew up in the the town of Visegrad as an Orthodox Christian and was educated in Sarejevo. What's remarkable about his novel is the depth and grace with which he writes about the Moslems in the novel, the ease with which he insinuates himself into their psyches. Looking at the current political situation in that devastated region, it becomes all the more acutely visible that the understanding and respect Andric shows in his novel is all but dead in the Balkans. Undoubtedly, it was that profound empathy as well as the epic scope of "The Bridge on the Drina" that captured the minds of the Nobel committee, sixteen years after it's publication. Louis de Bernieres is also a masterful writer who is getting better with every new novel. Recently he was chosen as one of the best young British novelists by "Granta". He has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book with, "The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts" (1991), and Best Book Eurasia Region for "Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord" (1992). Louis de Bernieres's first three novels are a trilogy of sorts all set in a fictitious Latin American dictatorship and while they are a great read, I strongly suggest starting with "Corelli's Mandolin"; it is the pinnacle to date of de Bernieres's talents and I think one of the best novels of the last decade. If you are buying the novel in Europe or Canada, it is distributed by Minerva under the title, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin". In the United States, publishing rights were recently picked up by Vintage and for some strange reason the title was changed to "Corelli's Mandolin". "The Bridge on the Drina" may be a little tougher to find. It is published by Phoenix Fiction through The University of Chicago Press and is deftly translated from the Serbo-Croat by Lovett Edwards (which is not to imply that I have read the novel in the Serbo-Croat version, merely that my version seems very smoothly translated, and so I surmise Mr. Edwards did his job deftly). A little closing aside: I'm a book junkie, constantly searching for the next great literary fix. I recommend these books to you not as an ivory towered academic quoting from The Canon, but as someone in search of the best in the written word--not just the most popular and accepted. Please eMail me with your own book recommendations or opinions about the books I entreat you to read in every column. If you have a favourite book that few people have read, or has been forgotten over the years, I'll do my best to find it and read it. I may not like it, but if I love it, I'll owe you one, and I'll spread the word. About the Columnist ******************* 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. News From The Front Lines ------------------------- John Freemyer, insipid reporter _Pro-Animal Group Claims Responsibility For Blast_ CHICAGO (CN) -- Today an animal rights group claimed responsibility for a fire bombing attack Saturday that burned the women's restroom at the Bloody Bard Truck Stop after a controversial poet smashed more than a dozen eggs on the podium during a poetry reading. The Animal Liberation Militia sent a fax to _The Champion News_ in Masterson and other news organizations saying the attack was on "behalf of the more than twenty-five living eggs being exterminated each night by the well-known slime poet Calvin Xavier at the Bloody Bard Truck Stop." Federal, state and local authorities were investigating the predawn incident at the truck stop, located near Masterson, which is 17 miles east of Venial Falls. The militia, which has sabotaged research laboratories, furriers and meat plants around the world, said incendiary devices were planted in the restrooms and below the podium to protest the "senseless killing of live eggs." It also said that sandwich vending machine units were sabotaged with exploding "blood red" paint cartridges. Only one fire bomb exploded. Damages were estimated at $2000. A one-time resident of Masterson, poet Calvin Xavier said he wasn't surprised by the attack. "I know how those Animal Rights bastards operate. They're too stupid to discuss the issues so they try to blow up the issuer. It's typical." Xavier deeply regretted damage to the Bloody Bard but says he will continue to perform his messy "Egg Slut Suite" performances despite the apparent attempt on his life. "I won't read 'Egg Slut Suite' without the eggs," the poet says, "unless you can find me a slut who'd be willing to do monkey head stands at the podium with me." Bloody Bard Truck Stop owner, Biff Monkstag says the poetry readings will go on as scheduled tonight. "Truckers love Cal's nasty sex poems," Monkstag explained. "And all this publicity has been good for business." About the Contributors ---------------------- Ben Judson is this issue's _Featured Writer_. Go to that section to read more about Ben. Michelle Ernst, an engineering student at Rutgers, has never been published before. She enjoys classic literature, philosophy, computer programming, and fine audio equipment. Misty Leigh McGuire lives in Madera, California. She has written many poems, stories and songs; some of which were included in "First Flights", a student literary magazine of Madera High School. Misty is currently at work on a short children's story. Dave Delaney is twenty-four years old and lives in Toronto. He has been writing short stories and poetry for about three years. Delaney has compiled his own 'zine called "Mashed Potatoes For Skinny". The 'zine is available by eMailing him at: . Richard Epstein's poems frequently pop up in obscure places on two continents, though of course he regards his appearances in POETRY INK as the crown jewel in his poetic regalia. He lives in Denver, Colorado; makes a rudimentary living as a freelance litigation paralegal; acts as chief cook, housecleaner, and chauffeur for his teenage son; and tries to locate a publisher for his most recently completed collection, "The Missouri Shores and Other Poems". If you are such a person, don't be reticent about it. Darren Lauzon is a twenty-seven year old researcher and writer in Ottawa, Canada. He is interested in so many things and people that he does almost nothing with his leisure time except read, write and talk. This his his first time in print. Matthew W. Schmeer is the editor of POETRY INK. He shamelessly plugs his own works in this 'zine. If you get sick of him putting his own stuff in POETRY INK, send in something better yourself! Audrey L. Smith works at a veterinary diagnostic lab as a necropsy technician. She has lived in several developing countries; loves reading, writing, and cave exploring; belongs to 4 cats; drinks her coffee with 2 oz. of cream and 3 tsp. sugar; and lives happily ever after with her husband Eric and their 8-month old son. Richard Parnell lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and sometimes attempts to write poems. John Freemyer lives and writes and programs multimedia projects in Redding, California when he is not covering events for the Masterson, Illinois "Champion News". Calvin Xavier likes milk because it does a body good. He lives in the backrooms and poolhalls of a small undistinguished American town, and his book of poems and prosody entitled "Who Fucks Screws" is scheduled to be published by catacomb pussy press as soon as they emerge from bankruptcy. Writing Rant ------------ by Calvin Xavier
**Taming Cerberus** I hate it when I have the urge to write but I can't think of anything to write. It happened again the other day, when I sat down to write like I do every day after dinner. Only this time, nothing happened. Oh, I wrote stuff, but it was all crap and I know it was crap but I wrote it anyway. Which is good, because that is the whole point of writing: to get it out on paper. As a writer, I write because I have an undying need to write: if I don't write, I shrivel up and die down deep inside where it counts. I have had this discussion with Matt (the fine young editor of this fine zine you are reading), and he and I have come to the same conclusion: if writers don't write, they are shit. It is an addiction. I have spent entire nights hunched over a pad of paper, scribbling away like a fool, not stopping to catch my breath or take a shit or grab another beer from the fridge. It is like God flipped a switch in my head that suddenly turned on a 24-hour, 7-days a week satellite channel of words that I can't shut off because I lost the remote and this station doesn't break for commercials and if you leave the room for a moment you are totally and helplessly lost and there is absolutely no way in the entire universe that you will ever be able to figure out the plot to this never-ending soap opera written like Joyce's "Ulysses", only that it's starting to make sense when your pen runs out of ink. And that's just how it feels to get it out on paper. After that, it's a whole different monkey you have to deal with. Once it's on the page, the spewings of your brain must be dealt with viciously and forcefully to mold them into form. It is not enough to just re-write your words in legible format, or even type them up using MicroSloth Werd 6.7.8.5.3.1b. No, you must use the Xacto(tm) Knife of Death and slice the dross from the gold and rescue the concise from the redundant. I am talking about that noblest of professions: Editing. Whereas writing is the process of getting it all out on paper; editing is putting that same said vomit on the page into edible form. I touched on this subject during last issue's rant; anybody can throw words on a page, but that ain't poetry. Poetry has to be shaped and sculpted into form; while the rudiments appear in the chunky green stuff on the page, it's up to you to make it make sense. And that is the difficult part. I hate editing. I hate it with a passion. But I must do it, because if I don't, all I have is garbage on the page that isn't worth the ink it is printed with. I hate editing because I have to get dirty to do it, and I hate to scratch out things I have written and toss away lines that I think are pretty good but really don't fit into the poem or story in any real context. You know what I mean: tearing into a poem and having to make those tough decisions along the lines of "should it be an 'either' or an 'or'? Will it matter? Which makes more sense? Which is more grammatical? Which gets the point across? Does it really matter? Will anyone know the difference?" That's just the way it is, and we have to live with it. The problem with editing is that you are slicing up your words, your poems, your stories, or as Gwendolyn Brooks puts it in one of her poems, her "babies." It tears me up to tear apart my spur-of-the-moment masterpieces and actually render them anew. It hurts. But it must be done. The reason it must be done is that no matter how great something initially looks on the page, it can always be made better. What comes out of the head, through the pen, and onto the page is a rough draft, and must be treated as such. All cases of divine inspiration aside, I cannot think of one writer who was/is ever satisfied with the first version of a poem or story that is put upon paper. Even Old Uncle Walt continually revised "Leaves of Grass", the "final" edition coming out only shortly before his death. Never happy with his work, he was always fleshing it out and trying to find a way to be more succinct. And therein lies the ultimate problem: when do you stop revising? For some folks, the revision processes is an everlasting endeavor. For others, myself included, the stopping point is around the fifth or sixth draft. Mind you, sometimes months or even years pass by between revisions. But I usually stop after six, because by that time I have lost the original 'oomph' that I had for the work when I originally placed it on the page. Which is the other major danger inherent in editing: losing sight of the reason you wrote something in the first place. As a writer, I want my stories and poems to be fresh, insightful, and most of all, genuine. As an editor, I want my works to be direct, to the point, and devoid of meaningless clutter. It is a difficult battle to reconcile these two distinct duties while being faithful to that third big bugaboo living in my skull: The Reader. Ah, yes, the reader. Remember, the audience is always listening and the first audience any writer ever has is himself. So ask yourself: would you want to read what you write if you didn't know that you wrote it? This is not a rhetorical question; if I always wrote stuff like the stuff I like to read, I'd go insane. I mean, sometimes I read some pretty insipid verse and prose, not to mention the occasional Danielle Steel "novel" just to assure myself that yes, you can get rich and famous by writing complete crap, which really helps during those times when I write twenty-three pages of a really intense once-act melodrama only to have it fall apart when the antagonist hangs himself in the final few moments in an act of asphyxiatic masturbation gone awry. Regardless of such moments, I, for one, enjoy reading the droolings of my brain--no matter how much of a pain in the ass it is to edit them into readable format. But I don't pander to any particular audience and I don't write for anyone but myself. And that, my friend, is for whom all writers ultimately write; that big three-headed beast living within themselves which is gnashing its teeth if you don't put the pen to paper. 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, CompuServe, and other various online services - as well as our own World Wide Web home page - we do not anticipate access difficulties. 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 Guidelines ------------------------- * 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 either plain ASCII eMail files (where you type the submission in the body of your message), or as BinHex 4.0 (.hqx) file attachments. BinHexed files should be in plain text format (the kind produced by SimpleText on the Macintosh and WinWrite on Wintel machines). Regardless of submission format, please use the subject line "SUBMIT POETRY INK: your real name" where **your real name** is your actual name and not the name of your eMail account. For example, it should look like this: SUBMIT POETRY INK: John Q. Public * Please keep poems under 3 printed pages apiece (page size = 8" x 11" page with 1" margins printed with Times 12-point plain font). Please limit short stories to under 5000 words. * Please limit submissions to no more than 5 poems or 2 short stories per person per issue. * Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please contact us if your work is accepted by another publication so that we may remove the work in question from consideration. 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.) Spill The Ink! -------------- Spill the Ink! Read POETRY INK, the electronic literary magazine! For details and complete submission guidelines, eMail us at with the subject line "SG Request." We encourage you to share POETRY INK with your friends, family, classmates and coworkers. ..