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.
editors@nycBigCityLit.com.

Spring-Summer 2003 Contest awards for poetry are announced and sampled in the November issue.

In This Issue:  December 2003

Poetry:
This month we continue our "Degrees of Apprenticeship" Series on MFA Programs and feature Hunter College faculty, alumni, and students, with a profile written by outgoing director Donna Masini. Contributors include Masini, Meena Alexander, William Pitt Root, and Amy Meckler. Our hand-picked Twelve 12 page features work by Andrew Glaze, Desmond Croan, and Bobbi Lurie.

Fiction/Short Prose:
Thomas Balázs's "Omicron Ceti III", winner of the mid-length category, is the second of three stories drawn from the magazine's Spring-Summer 2003 fiction contest. In this masterful interior adventure, Spock is lovesick, psychiatry is sci-fi, and habits are for the breaking. James Simpson's "Behind the Wheel" (long category), appears in January. Hunter MFA writers offer memorable day-trips into the commonplace of human anguish:  Jess Bacal's "Protein Diet", Nate Ouderkirk's "Deep Space", and Maureen Leary's "Can You Adjust?"

Essays:
The Poet's Phantom Limb:  Thomas Catterson (September 17, 1943 - December 1, 2003)
by Maureen Holm


Articles:
Highly Recommended—Article:
The Great Election Grab:  When Does Gerrymandering Become a Threat to Democracy?
by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker [Dec 8]
On December 10th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could alter the nature of redistricting—and, with it, modern American electoral politics.

Interviews:
Daniela Gioseffi Talks to William Pitt Root about 'Political Poetry'
The rhetoric of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is so elaborately figured and passionately fired that I, for one, even after hearing it countless times, still have no difficulty taking it as straight to my heart as I take the speeches of Shakespeare. In other words, as poetry.

Robert Klein Engler, Political and Religious, with Kathryn Wagner in The Adirondack Review
Poetry does not begin with an assignment:  "Write a poem about an apple." It begins with the poet's encounter with an apple, and the overwhelming necessity of the apple's presence. For a poet, that presence is so great that she is forced to raise up language to meet it. . . . Assignments throw words at things, with the hope some will stick.

Series/Event Reviews:
American Literary Translators Conference, Cambridge, Mass. (Nov 11-15)


Free Expression:
New York Civil Liberties Union Sues New York Police Department for Conduct During February 15 Demonstration
NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn said, "The filing of these cases marks the beginning of the campaign to protect the right to protest at next summer's Republican National Convention. The NYPD crackdown on peaceful protest that happened at the anti-war protests this past spring cannot be repeated at the Convention."

Attorney General Ashcroft Under Fire for Ordering FBI Surveillance of Anti-War Movement

Legal Forum:
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.

Howard Dean's College Financing Plan Explained (Village Voice)
Students will have access to $10,000 annually for college. After school, students would make regular payments on the full debt, but they'd receive a tax credit for any amount they'd paid over 10 percent of their income.

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 2002.

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.