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Photo: © 2001 George Kunze (colaidian@aol.com)
I sing, and the moon wavers.
I dance, and the shadow stumbles.
When sober, we were intimate friends;
now drunk, each of us separates.
Li Po (transl. Arthur Sze)
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Big City, Sad
September 11
Live Performances/Recording Sessions
On July 21, four of the editors performed Yeats and Wilde, joined by pipe and whistle at the Shamrock House in East Durham (Greene Co.) during the "33rd County's" annual Irish Arts Week, sponsored by the Michael J. Quill Irish Culture and Sports Centre. To support completion of the Irish village, buy a brick ($100).(Details at www.east-durham.org.)
The July issue, "Big City Lit Goes Country,"
is available in a 28-page, full-size print version.
September: The magazine continues its series of weekend writing workshops and readings in the Catskill counties, especially southern Albany (Preston Hollow Bookstore) and northern Greene (Greenville Library), and sponsors a retreat for working writers, Fri-Sun, 9/21-23. (Cabins, pines, campfire, pond. Cost $75. Email for details.)
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 (16 West 32nd).
Call for submissions:
The Imaginary
(Note: More than just the touch of imagination or originality that enlivens any
authorship, we want work that conjures beyond shared reality, e.g. Kubla Khan.)
also
The Desert; Confinement; Erotica;
Poems on Paintings; Dramatic Monologues; Colors.
Consult Bridge City Lit and Big City, Little pages
Consult submissions page for guidelines.
In This Issue: September 2001
Poetry:
This month's feature, compiled and introduced by guest editors Tina Chang, Rafiq Kathwari, and Ravi Shankar, is illustrated by a photo by George Kunze, just returned from China. Arthur Sze and Kathwari contribute to a special Translation section. This month's Twelve features Sir Iqbal's multi-part "Cordoba," in a translation by Kathwari. The cumulative Big City, Little page adds a piece on Old Delhi by Patrick Henry.
Fiction:
Each [of these stories] displays a virtuosic rendering of character, a precise awareness of the mechanisms that make fiction work, but, above all, a freedom, intoxicating even now, to move into the minds and plots of anyone or anything they see fit to explore. --Ravi Shankar
Essays:
On Lemons
Surely, a war has turned on the having or the not having of them. In a Chinese province or in old Siam, the region that is realm to the citric exquisite.
Articles:
On Cutting by Meredith Sue Willis
'Rivulets'--a very pretty word--calls too much attention to itself: you begin to think about water and the relative size of a creek and a brook when what I wanted was to describe something that exists in its own right and isn't even wet.
Ten Mile Meadow: A Conservatory of Land and Language (with new photo).
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 Reviewed:
Poetry Wales
Editor, Robert Minhinnick
Offshore subscriptions illustrate the universality of our writerly tools: telling trope and line-length (pitch/stress/juncture) in poetry, pithy phrase, the undulant unfolding of theme in essay or fiction.--Tim Scannell
Interviews:
A Conversation with Bob Holman: Dinosaur, Jabberwocky, Rapper, Shaman, and Kora by Daniela Gioseffi (Part One)
It's part of poetry's job to be that surprise which is at the essence of the haiku, to have that plop of the frog become the mushroom of the atomic blast.
Series on Series:
The Los Angeles Poetry Festival by Director Suzanne Lummis
If there is a central event, that might the reading at Beyond Baroque (Oct. 14, Sunday, 4 p.m.): "Noir, Post-Noir and Non-Noir," a two-part evening with several Los Angeles area poets followed by the featured reader, National Book Award winner Lawrence Raab.
Series/Event Reviews:
Spiritual Emergence in Northport: Giving Voice To Kerouac's Big Sur (7/22)
by Paul McDonald
I read Chapter 5. In this setting it was a hypnotic experience. . . . As the rhythm of Kerouac's words combined with Amram's improvisations, I felt as if I had become drunk on some shamanic potion imbibed through sound and speech. The chapter ends: So I tell myself, "Be Wise."
Free Expression:
A Breath of Hot Air (with photos)
In the John Casey story, "Connaissance des Arts," a snobbish young professor at a small town Midwestern university sheds tweeds, inhibition, reason as he races through cornfields and over bridges in pursuit of a guileless, air-headed student in a runaway balloon. By the time she touches down, he is hopelessly borne away.
Legal Forum:
Condit the Recondite
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.
Bookshelf:
Excerpt: Christina Chiu's Troublemaker (forthcoming from Penguin/Putnam)
Other Arts:
Painting:
Blank Space Draws at Museum
~ . ~ The magazine is intended to be read in Palatino. ~ . ~
Note to contributors: To cite your work in the Archive,
indicate the month, e.g. contents/Jun2001/poetrydusk.html.
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