ISSUES | winter 2004
27.3 (Winter 2004): "Solo"
Featuring work by Susanna Childress, Cynthia Coffel, Robert Gibb, Julia Glassman, Tom Ireland, Brigid Pasulka, Emily Raboteau, David Roderick, Steve Salerno, Peter Selgin, Cameron Walker…and an interview with Richard Wilbur.
CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Poetry
Dec 12 2004
Poetry Feature: Susanna Childress
Featuring the poems: It’s the First Thing Jagged with Love Muchas Gracias, My Love Finishing the House
Nonfiction
Dec 01 2004
The Courage to Be
I was raised in the kind of family in which just about everyone owned his or her own private copy of The Courage to Be.
Do you remember The Courage to Be from your freshman year of college and that class in contemporary religious thought? The book explores ways in which people might find courage to affirm themselves, their existence, their “Being,” in spite of their anxiety about death, their worry about the meaningless of their lives and their guilt about their moral failings.
Fiction
Dec 01 2004
The Bride from the Village of Deaf-Mute
“Mamye, how many times do I have to ask you to get rid of those Chickens?” Shrubek set the bags of groceries on the windowsill and stood to watch the five scrawny chickens scratching and pecking at the balcony, trying to unearth imaginary kernels from the concrete.
Nonfiction
Dec 01 2004
My Thai Girlfriends
In the dream I’m served by a Thai woman wearing a white plaster mask. She and I are the only people in a large hotel dining room: antique table setting, six or eight to a table, and white linen tablecloths.
Fiction
Dec 01 2004
Slow Motion
“You made me leave work for this?” Henry asked. I could tell he was trying not to look at me by how hard he stared at the road, by how his hands gripped the steering wheel where they usually rested, tapping out a tune that I never knew. I pressed the handkerchief he’d given me against my nose.
Fiction
Dec 01 2004
Rash
It’s better to share a rash with someone else than to endure one on your own. My brother Bernie and I had a mutual rash on two occasions. The first time was from the shoe polish we used to black up our faces in the middle of the night to go to vandalize Mrs. Turner’s lawn jockeys. The second time was from the quiche we mashed in each other’s faces on the night our father left. In between those two outbreaks, I suffered the rash over fifty times by myself.
Poetry
Dec 01 2004
Poetry Feature: Robert Gibb
Featuring the poems: “Wildflowers of New Homestead” Braiding Garlic Monet at Giverny Blues Passage
Fiction
Dec 01 2004
Color of the Sea
Tell me about loneliness.
At 1:45 in the morning, the sky, the sea and the horizon were all the same greasy black. Andrew Shields lay streched out on a life preserver casing, smoking a Lucky Strike, the diesel-tossed wind curling his hair, the ferry’s engines throbbing below him.
Foreword
Dec 01 2004
Foreword
Ray Bradbury’s letters to his English publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis, published here for the first time, show an interesting side of the American author.
Interviews
Dec 01 2004
An Interview with Richard Wilbur
This feature is not currently available online.
Nonfiction
Dec 01 2004
The Feel of Nothing
Observed on videotape at half speed, through the metal latticework of the batting cage, it is a perfectly choreographed pas de deux between man and machine.
Found Text
Dec 01 2004
Found Text: Ray Bradbury Letters to Rupert Hart-Davis
Ray Bradbury Letters to Rupert Hart-Davis
Poetry
Dec 01 2004
Poetry Feature: David Roderick
Featuring the poem: The Good Newes from Plimoth
Poetry
Dec 01 2004
Poetry Feature: Susanna Childress
Featuring the poems: It’s the First Thing; Jagged with Love; Muchas Gracias, My Love; Finishing the House
Fiction
Dec 01 2004
Tenses
We’d only been in Otsu two months when Greg stopped speaking English to me. Not cold turkey. A little less English here, a little more Japanese there–a little and a little, and little by little I realized that I never understood him, that instead of speaking he just made noises at me.