C'est avec nous que tout vivra…
A votre tête viendront des hommes
Des hommes de dessous les sueurs les coups les larmes
Mais qui vont cueillir tous leurs songes
Je vois des hommes vrais sensibles bons utiles
Rejeter un fardeau plus mince que la mort
Et dormir de joie au bruit du soleil.
—Paul Eluard, "Nous Sommes" (Transl.)

Live Performances/Recording Sessions

Call for submissions:
(Note: List is not restrictive nor preclusive of other themes.)
9/11 (esp. anniversary/commemorative); Colors; Erotica; Dramatic Monologue (poetry: e.g. "My Last Dutchess"); Epigrams; Self-Portrait; Shoes (socks optional); Moving/Motion; Dust; Corridors; Insects; Cemeteries; Smoking; Cuba; Infanticide; Music; Japan; Montreal/Quebec (surtout francophone).
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.

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 6/21 FOR
OUR POETRY/FICTION CONTESTS: DETAILS

In This Issue: June 2002

Poetry:
This month's feature, "Distance from the Tree," collects an often dark diversity of poems on fathers from thirty-one contributors, with a preface by the senior editors. (Print Series available June 12.) Our hand-picked Twelve page features depth-risky reveries by Robert Klein Engler, D. Nurkse, and Michael Graves

Fiction/Short Prose:
When son is obliged to eulogize father in Terrence Dunn's story, "South," he finds his old man still has the last word—but he the next move. The companion story, "A Tornado of Birds," reverses the vantage, and reconsigns "quality time" to clinical jargon.
J. M. Coetzee's Dostoevsky, living in Dresden, receives a telegram with the news that his grown stepson, Pavel, has died under ambiguous circumstances in St. Petersburg. Russia's all-powerful author learns to respect in death the young man he treated as a runt, discovering that his own imagination is too limited to have written Pavel's life and his courage too slight to have lived it. (Excerpt from the 1994 novel, The Master of Petersburg(Viking).)
In "Thou Unravish'd Bride of Quietness: Marriage in Egypt," Patrick Henry layers the cake in his inimicable style as the buttonholed Wedding Guest in Luxor who meets Ancient Mariner and expatriate Scottish queen in a dervish of Keatsian excess and Hemingway-worthy cultural intrigue.
One-time son, Robert Klein Engler retrieves his father through negative capability, by quite nearly becoming the object particulars of his working life ("Fire at the Old Factory").

Essays:
The Low-Down on High Moral Porn  or Walking In/Out on Unfaithful and Irréversible
by Maureen Holm, Sr. Essayist
An hour and twenty minutes into this film, a Soho loft elevator provides the first hopeful lurch of narrative potential: Will [Richard] Gere be trapped in it until discovered with the rug-enscrolled, duct-taped remains of his wife's bludgeoned lover?

Photo Essay: Flag and Banner Fancies (with images by George Kunze, Margo Berdeshevsky, Robert Dunn et al.)

Articles:
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:
David Amram'sOffbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac
A Bridge on the Road
by George Wallace
As writers of history, a primary source's recollections are as good as the quality of the memory—and the predisposition—they bring to the task. Quite clearly, Amram is a primary source [but, distinctively,] one with a present and future to reflect on which is quite as fully loaded as is his past.

Interviews:
Children's Book Author, Cynthia Leitich Smith (Indian Shoes)
Caring Enough to Be Candid (Part One of Two)
by Alexis Quinlan
One of the biggest tragedies is when parents proudly push their children from middle grade novels to adult ones, skipping the young adult category. Worse, such young readers usually also have been encouraged to quickly abandon picture books for chapter ones.—CLSmith

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

Series/Event Reviews:
"Called Back": Emily Dickinson Receives Her Due at the Bowery Poetry Club (06/8,9)

The West Chester University Poetry Conference (06/5-8)
Panel on Hudson ReviewEditor Frederick Morgan
by Terese Coe

Other Arts:
Dance:
Hip Women: ASAMED Middle Eastern Dance Showcase (04/20)
by Zoe Artemis
The dance is made up of moving geometry: spirals, circles, figure eights, undulations, and snake-like movements. The ancient dancers were priestesses, sorcerers, shapeshifters, keepers of the mysteries and sacred ceremonies for their respective communities.

Free Expression:
Flag and Banner Fancies: A Wave to June 14
Breaking the Fast Food Chain: Upper West Side Neighborhood United in Self-Determination
Many Sleepless Over Brooklyn Law School's Too-High Dormitory

Legal Forum:
Chandra Levy's Remains May Haunt Others More Than Gary Condit

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.)

CONTEST DETAILS

Poetry Chapbook:
The magazine invites submissions of 16-24 pages of (primarily) unpublished poems, including title page, table of contents, acknowledgments, and bio note. Format: MSW 98 or 95 TNR 12 (14 for titles; initial caps only). Send hard copy (separate page for each title, but not section) with disc, SA postcard, and $15 check or money order to Big City Lit, Contest/Poetry, Box 1141, Cathedral Sta. NY 10025. MSS not returned; all work considered for magazine publication. Postmark deadline extended to June 21, 2002. Winner and finalists announced in mid-August. Publication by Headwaters Press, NY, cash award, plus magazine-sponsored reading and awards presentation in New York.

Individual Poem:
Relevant guidelines, as above, apply. Fee: $5/poem.

Fiction:
Relevant guidelines, as above, apply. Fee: Shorts (to 1500 wds) $10; standard (to 3500) $15; long (6000 max.) $20. Awards and magazine publication in each length category. Unpublished manuscripts only.

~ . ~ 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.