Live Performances/Recording Sessions

Call for submissions:
(Note: List is not restrictive nor preclusive of other themes.)
CUBA; 9/11 (esp. anniv./commemorative); Colors; Erotica; Dramatic Monologue
(poetry: e.g. "My Last Dutchess"); Epigrams; Self-Portrait; Moving/Motion; Dust; Corridors;
Insects; Cemeteries; Smoking; Infanticide; Music; Japan; Montreal/Quebec (surtout francophone);
Surrealism; Monsters/Monstrosity (also images); Fall Season Hunting; Timepieces; Kites.
Consult Submissions for guidelines,Masthead for editorial policy, also Bridge City Lit and Big City, Little pages. Query first on articles over 750 words.
editors@nycBigCityLit.com.

The magazine's Spring poetry/fiction contest brought a far-fetched response.
DEADLINE: 6/21
Results posted by mid-August.

In This Issue: July 2002

This issue also appears in a full-format
32-page newsstand version.
[Orders/Locations]

Poetry:
This month's feature, "Shoes (Socks Optional)," is a mix of playful and poignant. The preface reviews cobbler history, from the sandal's preliterate antecedent to Flaubert's slippered mistress, from sqeu to motorcycle boot. Our hand-picked Twelve page features on-the-edge work by James Doyle and T.J. Desmond, both new to the magazine, joined by Mervyn Taylor, Brenda Morisse, Martin Galvin, and Patty Gordon. The cumulative Big City, Little page adds pieces on New York and Paris by Taylor and Desmond.

Fiction/Short Prose:
Norwegian Knut Hamsun is credited by some for creating the modern novel with the masterful interior monologue of Hunger,(1890), exemplified in the shoe scene excerpted here. Stephanie Hammer fits her anti-heroine out with jet-blades and shark teeth to attack a bleak future compressed into a 48-hour do-or-die urban scavenge hunt for black market "Vintage." Fairytale time warps and impromptu archaeology produce a drenched princess for the wayward husband in Valery Oisteanu's "Gellupka," while Thad Rutkowski's sock man and La Kesha Howell's shoe junkie are a nibble and pinch too real for comfort. With a click of the heels, we revisit "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," "The Shoemaker and the Elves" (Grimm), "The Red Shoes" (Andersen), and "Puss 'n Boots" (Perrault). With a wave of the hand, music paper undergoes Freudian misinterpretation in Paul Winston's "Apologia Paranoia." In Jenna Kalinsky's "A Good Life," the disorder is order, but not overanalyzed.

Essays:
Never Go Barefoot
by Bertha Rogers
Aunt Marge, Dan's immaculate Norwegian-American wife, still stands, mouth pursed, on the porch: … Such a mess, and how will I ever get it out of the towel?

What the Thunder Said
(excerpt)
by Kirk Kjeldsen
Through the glass, the plaza outside was eerily vacant. There was no one in sight, yet the ground was littered with personal belongings:  handbags and broken eyeglasses,  .  . .   shoes.

The Low-Down on High Moral Porn  …or
Walking In/Out on Unfaithful and Irréversible (Part Two of Two) [DEFERRED]
by Maureen Holm, Sr. Essayist


Articles:
Ursule Molinaro's Shoes
by Barbara Foster
Ursule was a throwback to the days when elegance and élan vital were prerequisites to gaining a place in the world of letters.

Pas de Doute: Composing Beauty & the Beast
by Paul Winston
I felt as I went through the ballet scores of the composers who preceded me that some masterpieces considered to be ballets were not really ballets at all. The Rite of Spring belongs in this category.

This Sonoma Vineyard, My Prison:  Dana Gioia Scalded for Essay, "Fallen Western Star"
by Maureen Holm, Sr. Essayist
There are single city blocks in Manhattan that generate more national literary opinion than all of Northern California. —DG

What was 'lyric'?
Huddled since mid-century as "global village" around a dominant source of imagery, sound, even meaning, we must make uncommon use of language to ferry us beyond its perimeter to the essential, shared harmonics. Many of this year's honorees achieved just that.
Ten Mile Meadow Project: A Conservatory of Land and Language (with photos).

Reviews:
Keep Moving: Pierre Joris's Poasis
by Richard Pearse
Through the boundaries of nations and their political lies, a poem by Joris breaks and points multidirectionally.
Surrealism of the Fittest: Richard Pearse's Private Drives
by Robert Dunn
The poems look normal enough on the page…but as soon as you're in the back of the cab with one of them, the surprise turns start.

Interviews:
Children's Book Author, Cynthia Leitich Smith (Indian Shoes)
Closing the Miles in Indian Shoes (Part Two of Two)
by Alexis Quinlan
For so long the industry has offered either stereotypical "savages" or eco-supernatural beings that many young readers have been misled to believe that Native kids don't have feelings or everyday problems or even exist in the contemporary world.

Series on Series:
The Hudson Clearwater Festival (June 15-16) offers a first-time Poetry Cordel

Series/Event Reviews:
Exoterica's New Annual Poetry/Music Festival Hits a Home Run in the Bronx
by Michael Carman

Other Arts: Film
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hit Man:  Bobby G. Can't Swim reviewed
Bobby G. is marked for misfortune. We know this about him, like we know it about Fast Eddie Felson or Rizzo, Terry Malloy or Harry Fabian.

The Nashville International Film Festival (June 5-9)
by John Gosslee

Free Expression:
The Idea of a University
Poem by Robert Klein Engler
The Idiot's Guide to War…or…War by Numbers: 'Extrapolate Them All' and
'Apocalypse Now Syndrome'
by Paul Murphy
America Will Be
by Margo Berdeshevsky
Breaking the Fast Food Chain: Upper West Side Neighborhood United in Self-Determination
Many Sleepless Over Brooklyn Law School's Dormitory in the Sky
Report and Appeal from Alyssa A. Lappen

Legal Forum:
Legislating God, with a Disclaimer:
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco, Calif.) rules that Eisenhower's 1954 monotheistic emendation to the Pledge of Allegiance violates the First Amendment.
Congress immediately resolved 99-0 to recite the Pledge for the press. Senator Byrd (D-WVa) vowed to "blackball" those "stupid" judges. Minority Leader Hassert called for "common sense" appointments. Chief Justice Rehnquist is sharpening his proven, chad-eyeing smarts. What result if their copies of John Donne's Pseudo Martyr (1610) were as well-worn as their leather-bound Federalist Papers?

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 on back-order. We are preparing Big City Lit's Brightest Lights collection for 2001.


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.

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.