Bong Son Bridges

Turning and turning in the widening gyre -- Yeats

Note call for submissions: Fairytales, The Kiss, The Dark, The Hudson.
Consult Submissions page for guidelines.

Poetry:
'Only the Dead' (... have seen the end of war.--Plato) is the title of our huge multi-section feature on the Vietnam War. Contributors include Yusef Komunyakaa, W.D. Ehrhart and forty others. Twelve is a perfect fit around the kinetic space of Gail Segal's multipart, "Vade Mecum." The cumulative Big City, Little page adds a piece on Quan Loi by Marc Levy (w/photo). The Bridge City Lit Paris page features "Anniversaire" (de la défaite à Diên Biên Phu).

Sorry we missed the boat.
Click here for the Photo-Poetry tour.
http://pzzzz.tripod.com/namtour.html

Fiction/Short Prose:
In "Doctor Death," Alan Catlin serves up a veteran bar fly's head from the inside out, and Ray is one loser you do want to know from. Short prose from Marc Levy and Vito Ricci frame Linh Dinh's on the human exotica at a home country market.

Essays:
Though a killer Vietnam War poem may take on political force, poetry written to ideological agenda is a dead letter. Tim Scannell makes the case against poet-politicos. Patrick Henry contributes a personal essay on the daily declension of France's humiliation at Diên Biên Phu. Paul McDonald explains how the draft dodged him.

Articles:
Martha Hess, author of Then the Americans Came, provides the thumbnail history of Chinese, French and American invasions of Vietnam. Marc Levy endures the protocol to find his in a file box at the National Archives. The Mekong River is Indochina's Old Man River, though longer and geopolitically Byzantine. In Bucharest: How many skeletons on the buffet at the global conference on surrealism where Valery Oisteanu served up his delicatesse? A new Cubist-designed facility will permanently institutionalize the movement which made its influence felt on all the arts.
In brief:
Bronx Accent garners an award.

Reviews:
The Clear-Cut Dragon: Bertha Rogers's Beowulf
by Barbara Simon
A Bad Review Had Still Better Be A Good Read
by Tim Scannell (with an afterword by the Senior Editors)

Interviews: Martha Hess with Vietnamese Survivors (w/photos)
The American and puppet soldiers were terrible. When they captured people, they tied them by the neck and dragged them behind their tanks, and then they cut off their heads. -- Tran Van Nhan
Why did the Americans come to destroy everything, to kill the people . . .? Don't the American people even know why? -- Phung Thi Tiem

Series on Series:
The Voice of Kerouac's Big Sur Heard Aloud
The West Chester Conference on Form & Narrative

Series/Event Reviews:
4/11 Tribute to Stanley Kunitz at Town Hall
4/18 Best American Poetry 2000 at Symphony Space
5/20 The New Yorker Festival Reading in Bryant Park

Free Expression: Abbie's Derring-Do, Kerrey's Derring-Don't
Marty Jezer's Abbie Hoffman, American Rebel is the definitive insider biography of the radical's radical. Then, does Jezer fold and spindle his anti-war credentials by giving Kerrey a pass? Brag or Gag: Only one vet opens up on Kerrey's mini-MyLai. Bodeen's "I-drew-the-line-at-the-rock" Marine Bears Rereading.

Legal Forum:
The Geneva Convention: High Contracting Parties Commit Low-Down Violations

Other Arts:
Film:
When the Meaning Doesn't Justify the Ending: Boy Meets Girl, Leos Carax