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Jul-Aug '03
Newsstand Issue

Monsters &
Self-Portrait
Cedar Chair by Romancing the Woods


Jun '03 'Strands
of the Hammock'
Cedar Bridge by Romancing the Woods



May '03 'A-Maying'
Lower Manhattan
(Patrick Henry)



Apr '03 'Music'
Turkish Siege of Vienna (Geffels)



Mar '03 'Departures'
Crusaders Enter Constantinople (Delacroix)



News on rebuilding
Lower Manhattan



Catskill Mountain
Foundation (Hunter)



Jul '02 Newsstand
(Bertha Rogers)



Granted June 2002

 

 

 
cornelia

 
CPR


Battle Plans:  Ottoman Cartographer's Rendering of Strategic Targets in Vienna (1683)

This is how we overcome the war.
Think walnut and strawberry and sugar-beet and cabbage.
Think gilded lace and mud, away and above the hunters' strides.
Think hare and pigeon and cats and babies — oh, beware.
When the blue noon explodes, a death and a lovely hour will parallel
and stretch their souls as well across this plain,
echo in its slope, no differently than our laughter.

(Margo Berdeshevsky, "Kiss and Kill")

Live Performances/Recording Sessions/Radio Broadcasts

Watch for the print version release of
Big City Lit's Brightest Lights collection for 2002.

Sat. June 14, 7/12, 8/9, 9/20  Big City Lit and The Author's Watermark of Medusa present What Regional Writers Eat, a rural series on regional writing (with regional food and music) at historic Conkling Hall in Rensselaerville (SW Albany Co.). Free series. Events start at 6:30 p.m.

6/14 — The Empire State, with poet, essayist, and BOA Editions editor Thom Ward plus pie-baking contest and NY cheeseboard.
7/12 — Appalachia, with novelist Meredith Sue Willis (Oradell at Sea). Music: Danny Lama on country blues harp and guitar.
8/9 — The Southwest, with Rebecca Seiferle, winner of the 2002 Western States Award and editor of The Drunken Boat.
9/20 — San Francisco, with George Wallace, novelist of Down Dream Road and poet of Swimming Through Water (and Kerouac scholar). Music:  special appearance by jazz composer-pianist Paul Winston. Maureen Holm (on Weldon Kees).

Mon 11/9 5:45 p.m. "Intermediating Surfaces:  The Sk(In) Between":  Contributors to the November feature guest-edited by Laurel Blossom read and record at Cornelia Street Café ($6, includes drink)

and,
Mon., March 22, 2004
 Lyric Recovery Festival™ 2004 at Carnegie's Weill Hall
Lucie Brock-Broido features at biannual event. Submissions to be postmarked by January 15, 2004. Top prize:  $1000. Semifinalists to be selected by a three-judge panel in public reading at Poets House in February. The LyR 2002 anthology, Rain of One Ocean, is available from Headwaters Press.

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; Japan; 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.

2003 Contest winners to be announced in November. See details.



In This Issue:  September 2003
Sep '02:  Degree 365—Year One of 9/11

Poetry:
Since 9/11, September has become a time to bring in the sheaves of the good and ill that we have sown. In this issue, we consider private articles of faith and their public experience, and offer Mark Dow's long poem, "Between the Lines and Above the Gaze", complemented by a new translation of Mallarmé's "Canticle of St. John". Our hand-picked Twelve 12 page features work by Wil Hallgren ("Washington Nachtmusik"), Paul MyGlynn, Daniel Gallik, Iain Britton and Catherynne M. Valente. The cumulative Big City, Little page adds Christopher A. Miller's poem, "An Invitation to Mrs. Maryanne McGuinn" to the Philadelphia section.


Fiction/Short Prose:

Ian Christopher Hooper's "Totems" and Elise Geither's "First Flash" capture big changes in small moments in Short Prose. Brian P. Katz's narrator in "That Will" speaks at Fiction length about the unendlessly unchanging one.

Essays:
My Religious Life
by James Hoover
I used to be an actor. Now I'm a novice in a religious order.

Highly Recommended—Notebook:  "Wild West Show"
by editor Lewis H. Lapham in this month's Harper's
When President George W. Bush moved into the White House in the winter of 2001, he let it be known that he intended to run the government as if it were a business, . . . [O]ur splendid little war in Iraq turns out to have been sold to the American public in the manner of a well-promoted but fraudulent stock offering.

Articles:
Enter as a Visitor, Leave as a Consumer:  Philadelphia's New Constitutional Center
(with sidebar update on the Libeskind design for Ground Zero)
by Christopher A. Miller
This is the Constitution new and improved, Constitution Version 2.0, and The Constitution:  Wow!

Sylvia Plath:  The Only Truthful Act
with remarks on Paul Alexander's play, Edge
by Elaine Schwager
For some, the suicidal act is the only truthful one possible. While this playwright presents the facts of the poet's life, he seems too little immersed in the contradictions and nuances of her creative mind to fully illuminate that mystery she touches in her poems.

Reviews:

Nick Fowler's novel, A Thing (or Two) About Curtis and Camilla
by Susan Scutti

Interviews:

Army-Navy Football Against Iraq:  Paul McDonald Talks to 3 AM Magazine

Series/Event Reviews:

Louise Glück (New U.S. Poet Laureate):  Minimalist Ennui
by Daniela Gioseffi
Glück is masterful with her simple language, but one can't find the passion of a rich emotional life.

Candidate Dr. Howard Dean's Housecalls on the Sleepless—Elixir with a Horse Pill

Other Arts:  Theatre
A Good Time with Chekhov
Michael Frayn's The Sneeze produced by the Watchdog Theatre Company
by Paul Pierog
The advice about acting mentioned in Shakespeare's Hamlet—to suit the voice and the action to the word—applies critically and exactingly to making Chekhov's writing come alive on stage.

The Three Faces of Sylvia
DR2 Theater Offers Paul Alexander's Edge
by Sharon Olinka
I was reminded, watching Angelica Torn, of young Joanne Woodward. Perhaps even Woodward doing Tennessee Williams. And why not? Plath was a Tennessee Williams character.

Free Expression:
A Term Recharged with New Meaning:  "Impressionism"

Breaking the Fast Food Chain: Upper West Side Neighborhood United in Self-Determination

Legal Forum:

[pending]

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.




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