Live Performances/Recording Sessions/Radio Broadcasts

Call for submissions:
(Note: List is not restrictive nor preclusive of other themes.)
Dramatic Monologue (poetry: e.g. "My Last Dutchess"); Epigrams; Moving/Motion; Dust; Corridors; Insects; Cemeteries; Smoking; Infanticide; Montreal/Quebec (surtout francophone); Surrealism; Timepieces; Kites; Suicide; 'Lovesick'; Hands and Gloves; How the Other Half:  Rich vs. Poor; Wells; Windmills; and Small Town Wherewithal
(Bolding indicates features which are scheduled to appear very soon.)

Consult Submissions for guidelines, Masthead for editorial policy,
also Bridge City Lit and Big City, Little pages.
Please query first on articles over 750 words.

In This Issue:  February 2004
For advance notice of contents and events, send blank email to:
BigCityLit-subscribe@topica.com

Poetry:
This month we focus on Japan, drawing on contributions guest-edited by Michael Bourdaghs and Tomer Inbar and on our own editorial finds. Originally slated for Oct '03, then deferred, its timeless elements are just that; we hope the other mag sections read as ripened prescience.

Fiction/Short Prose:
In "Tourist and Resident," Christine Allen-Yazzie renders benign discrimination as spare and halting desire. Suzanne Cole's "First Trip to Tokyo" records short prose with shorter haiku—or vice versa.

Special: Longer Draughts
Asakusa Park (Asakusa Kôen)
a new translation by Seiji M. Lippit of Akutagawa Ryûnosuke's 1927 scenario

Essays:
Tokyo (Tong'gyông)
a new translation by Michael D. Shin of Yi Sang's 1937 essay

Highly Recommended:
"We're in the Army Now:  The G.O.P.'s Plan to Militarize Our Culture"
by Kevin Baker in the Oct '03 issue of Harper's
The destruction of the World Trade Cener towers enabled Bush and the Republicans finally, fully, to reclaim the mantle of national identity—to become the Party of Huah. Just what the Republicans' crowded hour portends has since become very clear, and it is disturbing for anyone who values our democratic institutions.

Articles:
Building at Ground Zero:
Zero-Sum or The Practical in Service to the Spiritual
by Christopher A. Miller


Reviews:
Denver Butson's Illegible Address
by Maureen Holm
Butson's work doesn't deserve superlatives; his grammar is so progressive them seem quaint.

The Enchanted Loom reviewed by Paul Lake
in Contemporary Poetry Review
[F]or all of their revolutionary posturing, postmodern critical theories and the literary avant-garde are rooted in a paradigm established by Descartes; Jonathan Swift satirized the absurd conclusions to which this method led.

Series/Event Reviews:
Alfred Corn and Mary Jo Salter at the 92 St Y (01/12)
Ms. Salter admires Mr. Corn's "Self-Portrait with Refrigerator Magnets," wishing she could steal the title. Haunted, she writes about a single magnet. It is precious and cold.

Other Arts:  Theatre
Foreign Affairs
Paul Camillus reviews Lost in Translation
The mask of irony is not the mask of tragedy. We must either see you bleed or recognize the blood stains left behind.

Hatch and Noguere's The Stone House, The Blues Legend Adapted for the Stage

Free Expression:
Attorney General Ashcroft Under Fire for Ordering Surveillance of Anti-War Movement

Legal Forum:
New York Civil Liberties Union Sues New York Police Department for Conduct During February 15 Demonstration

No Chad Left Behind:  Touch Screen Voting Machines
Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks. (NYTimes, Dec. 2, Krugman)

Big Government in Your Driveway:  A Honker Tax Write-Off for Hummers, A Bleep for Hybrids
The tax savings on that Range Rover? More than $25,000 in the top brackets. In contrast, those who buy ultra-efficient gas-electric hybrids for personal use get a tax deduction of $2,000, worth at most $700.

Print Series:
With thanks for all of your orders by email query, we now offer a convenient listing and order form. You may still inquire about any Headwaters Print Series or monograph you don't see listed here by writing to us. Query Monographs of work appearing in the popular Jun '01 Vietnam issue are now available again. We are preparing Big City Lit's Brightest Lights collection for 2003.

Letters:
(The editors invite for publication well-written letters or speakeasy pieces on any topic of concern or interest to the magazine's readers. See Letters Page for length, language, and other details.)

~ . ~ The magazine is intended to be read in Palatino, and preferably in Netscape. ~ . ~
Note to contributors: To cite your work in the Archive,
indicate the month, e.g. Jun2001/contents/poetrydusk.html.

Rain of One Ocean
The LyR 2002 Carnegie Collection
Poetry (64 pp) $15 (7x8.5 full color cover)


Degrees of Apprenticeship:
Sarah Lawrence mfa Collection
Poetry (56 pp) or Prose (64 pp) $10 each (full color)


Distance from the Tree
poems on fathers (64 pp $10) (full color)
Dana Gioia, Alice Notley, D. Nurkse, James Ragan, Ron Price et al.