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Photo: © 2001 George Kunze (colaidian@aol.com)
~ The Imaginary ~
How long it took to recognize
The shameless modesty of our desire--
Only to possess what we already had.
(From Dana Gioia's "Time Travel")
~ The Unimaginable ~
I am an arrogance of windows: NYC.
I measure worth by length of shadow.
I breathe bellowing, airshaft of the lung.
(From Jay Chollick's "An Arrogance of Windows")
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Live Performances/Recording Sessions
The July issue, "Big City Lit Goes Country,"
is available in a 28-page, full-size print version.
September: The magazine completed its series of weekend writing workshops and readings in the Catskill counties, especially southern Albany and northern Greene, and, with The Author's Watermark, sponsored a retreat for working writers, Fri-Sun, 9/28-30.
October: The recording session for September's Asian American feature shifts to October 4th at the loft of the Asian American Writers Workshop in Midtown (7-9 p.m., 16 West 32nd, Suite 10A. (212) 494-0061). Christina Chiu, Sue Kwock Kim, Emmeline Chang, Rafiq Kathwari, and other September contributors will appear.
Call for submissions:
The Terrorist Invasion
also
The Desert; Confinement; Erotica; Poems on Paintings;
Dramatic Monologues; Colors; Epigrams; Self-Portrait
Consult submissions page for guidelines, masthead for policy, also Bridge City Lit
and Big City, Little pages. Query first on articles over 750 words.
Email: editors@nycBigCityLit.com.
In This Issue: October 2001
Poetry:
This month's feature on 'The Imaginary,' compiled and introduced by the magazine's senior editors, was quickly expanded by 'The Unimaginable,' and is illustrated by a photo by George Kunze. November will offer the first wave of work specifically on the terrorist invasion. This month's Twelve page features Joan Fiset's "Prelude," the imagist murmur of a child's isolation, together with Auden's "September 1, 1939" and e. e. cummings's "the glory is fallen out of." The cumulative Big City, Little page adds pieces on Beirut by George Dickerson and on Puerto Juarez by Valery Oisteanu.
Fiction:
Love-smitten, the laconic minimum-wage anti-hero of Michael P. Kardos's short "Bones" applies his imagination where green-dyed water laps up against the manufactured ice of moribund corporate fantasy. Welshman Robert Minhinnick's "The Jukebox in Uranium City" should become a new classic of the cross-country American bus ride. He renders our figures of ordinary tragicomedy with a narrator complicity too rarely seen since we turned from Fitzgerald's grimace to the Bill Moyers brow of cloying concern. Plus, the original pumpkinhead: "Sleepy Hollow" (abridged).
Essays:
Against the Imaginary
by Paul Winston, composer
Angels and Necessary Ambiguities
On the Strength of Reeds: Washington Irving's Christopher Columbus
Here is New York (excerpts from E.B. White's 1948 essay)
Billy Collins: The Heavy Hand of Slight Verse [publication deferred]
Articles:
Special: Imaginary Made Manifest
In separate treatments, two poets/psychotherapists, Elaine Schwager (I Want Your Chair) and Victor Schermer articulate the force within which alters the reality without.
The Imagination and the Psyche
by Elaine Schwager
~ .
Creative Imagination and the 'Inspirational Other':
The 'Dramatis Personae' of Writing
by Victor L. Schermer
Ten Mile Meadow Project: A Conservatory of Land and Language (with photos).
It was mowed lately--maybe to show off its contours, its stone walls, its natural amphitheatre. Some added wildflowers would be splendid, . . . A marker here or there, so children could spell all the names. A sky map too, for the nights lying on one's back, eyes on the layered stars.
Reviews:
Todd Moore's Working On My Duende
by Tim Scannell
Moore assembles and dismisses (often abruptly) the most variegated array of duende-seekers ever put to paper, their 'magnetism and charm' too often based on New Age-y fetish or loony shamanism. . . . [His] 3500-line 'poem' is one of the most skillfully sustained narrative accomplishments in late 20th century poetry. . . . Wonderfully illustrated by Wayne Hogan. Highly recommended.
The Continuation of History: Future Societies in Fiction
by Pete Dolack
There are as many potential future societies as our imagination will allow us. Yet, much of the genre consists of fetishized military engagements and thinly veiled technology manuals masquerading as stories. Two exceptions--Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson--tower above the field.
Interview:
A Conversation with Bob Holman: Dinosaur, Jabberwocky, Rapper, Shaman, and Kora
by Daniela Gioseffi (Part Two of Two)
[T]he poet, when performing, is the text exploded into the moment where the shards of meaning are flying around, like ping-pong balls in a mousetrap factory. But also to get at the essence of a text. . . . [T]o me there's no difference between analyzing a text to get at it, or preparing it for performance. It's the same process.
Series on Series: Exoterica: The Magic of Poetry by Rick Pernod
On a typical Saturday afternoon, I would go down to a long-running West Village series and hear language poets galore, and later that evening, in the East Village hear exclusively performance poets. Never did the twain meet, nor did they seem much to care.
Series/Event Reviews:
The First Annual Albany Wordfest
by Dan Wilcox
Free Expression:
The Albatross Shot Across the Bow or Whose Puritan Legacy?
Radio: The Battle for Pacifica
by Steffie Brooks [publication deferred]
Legal Forum:
TBA
Print Series:
Pending the load of a complete listing, please query regarding availability of monograph reprints of work appearing in June's Vietnam and other issues.
Letters:
Robert Mezey (author) vs. Tim Scannell (reviewer)
Letters on The Terrorist Attacks
Other Arts: Poetry Theatre
Edwin Torres's Gecko Suite: An Opera in Three Colors was produced in February at The Kitchen in NYC (See Review March 2001). It appears here in unabridged form.
~ . ~ The magazine is intended to be read in Palatino. ~ . ~
Note to contributors: To cite your work in the Archive,
indicate the month, e.g. Jun2001/contents/poetrydusk.html.
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