April 16, 7:00 Caffè Taci (B'way/110th) Staged reading of short verse play,"The Earthly Trinity". [See Essays, this issue] In from England, Patrick Henry joins Michael Graves, Pete Wolf Smith and other contributors for poetry/music related to this month's feature.

May 10, 7:00 Caffè Taci (B'way/110th) Alfred Corn (The Poem's Heartbeat) appears with distinguished alumni from Columbia University's Writing Division whose work is featured in the May issue. Reservations strongly recommended: (212) 678-5345.

June 15, 6:30 Housing Works Used Books & Café (126 Crosby St/corner Prince)
Our mid-monthly poetry/music event for June is 'Only the Dead' ("have seen the end of war." -- attrib. to Plato), on the Vietnam War, featuring a live preview of jazz violinist Billy Bang's CD, based on his tour of duty.

June 21, 7:00 Caffè Taci is the key to Big City Lit's 10-block Summer Solstice Free Expression Festival on NY's Upper West Side. Poetry/music event will preview work from "The Dark." [Submissions accepted until May 15.]

Poetry:
In this month of Easter and Passover, we take a four-faceted look at the sacred and profane. 'Light and Questions Through the Window: Masters of the Christian Devotional' spans the 13th to 20th centuries with poems by Herbert, Donne, Milton, Rilke, Eliot et al., framed by Yeats and introduced by Senior Poetry Editor, Nicholas Johnson. 'I Lift Up Mine Eyes' offers tradition and innovation on Jewish themes and stories. Wallace Stevens provides title and inspiration for 'Not this divided and indifferent blue': The Still Necessary Angels, a combined look at the edges of paradise, while Twelve experiments on the borderline between devout and blasphemous, spiritual and erotic. The Global Poem Zones series continues, with work by Patrick Henry, Paul Espel and Susan Scutti. The cumulative Big City, Little page grows, with work from the personal vantage on Paris, Prague, Los Angeles, and NYC. The Bridge City Lit pages feature outstanding work in French, Czech and Slovenian.

Fiction: William William by Reese Thompson
"Because, sitting on that swing, becoming who I am, and living in this town, I was susceptible to his questioning. I thought for a moment how it might be nice to be him, or to kill him. I thought I might feed him if I was someone else."

Essays:
Kinnell's 'The Supper After the Last': On Poetry and Blasphemy
"Believers who find this blasphemous perhaps miss the point that it is not in the celebration of some savage and debauched existence but a brush with Shiva the Destroyer, out of Hinduism, who combines the countervailing energies of birth and ruination. Here, the sublime is the terrible, and it kills you." (John Foy)

Mary's 9th-Hour Clemency Plea: 'The Earthly Trinity', An Essay in Verse
Angel never bidden, revisit widow former maid;
have with her the way of Lucifer,
though breeding aught but dry regret,
indeed, damnation,
if no less purchase his reprieve.

Articles:
Martin Luther Flings Theses at Mayor Rudi G
Faith-Based Funding: The Government Remake of Meet John Doe?
'Vain' or 'Meaningless': Different Takes on Ecclesiastes 1

Reviews:
Bill Kushner's He Dreams of Waters (Rattapallax 2000)
"Welcome to Planet Kushner where the world is language, not translated, not transcribed, but tongue in all its Rabelaisian bawdiness, free-wheeling, flicking in and out of grammar." (Karin Randolph)

Interview:
Struggles with the Holy in the Poetry of Michael Graves
"God offers no explanation for his rejection of Cain's gifts. So, I saw Cain was Job. In his Joseph books, Thomas Mann presents the idea that all beginnings are earlier than they are thought to be. Moving typology backward, Cain may be Christ." (M. Graves) Interviewed by Vic Schermer.

Series on Series: The Phoenix Series at Center for Book Arts

Series/Event Reviews:
The 92nd St Y's Rimbaud Brunch (2/25): "Shining Sounds"
Lilith Magazine's 25th Anniversary Event at Makor (3/1)
The 14th St Y's Int'l Women's Day: Molly Peacock and Sapphire (3/8)
Makor's Poetry & Mentorship Series:
Richard Howard / Lucie Brock-Broido (2/22); Agha Shahid Ali / Amanda Schaffer / Daniel P Ellison (3/15)

Free Expression:
Yo Mama!: Standing Up to the Anti-Arts Bullies
"The appeasement strategy adopted by mainstream arts organizations and their supporters in the wake of the Mapplethorpe controversy has clearly failed. (Neal Jahren)

Persecuting the Victims
"There is no Religious Right. It is a convenient fiction, manufactured by supposedly tolerant Leftists as a way of stereotyping anyone who doesn't twirl a baton in their humanist parade." (John Guthmiller, Ether Zone)

Legal Forum:
A Last-Minute Pardon from Clinton, A Last Value Meal from Bush

Book Shelf:
The editors comment on books that belong on the shelf of anyone who wishes to understand the linguistic music of poetry, its potential, and place among the arts. They are: Alfred Corn's The Poem's Heartbeat, Ellen Bryant Voigt's The Flexible Lyric, Mary Kinzie's The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose, Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter? Also discussed is Mary Kinzie's recent A Poet's Guide to Poetry.

Other Arts:
Theatre Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Flicks: A Poetic Sacrilege?