ISSUES | winter 1983
6.2 (Winter 1983)
Featuring work by Jorge Amado, Marvin Bell, Jeanne Bernhard, Michael Blumenthal, Don Bogen, Sidney Burris, Francois Camoin, Deborah Digges, Jack Hand, Jack Heflin, Lois Lindblad, Patrick Madden, Thomas McAfee, James McCorkle, Colleen J. McElroy, Martha McFerren, Kent Nelson, David St. John, Gregory Orr, Michael Pettit, David Ray, Peggy Shumaker, Ben Siegel, Jim Simmerman, Volodia Teitelboim, William Trowbridge, James Ulmer, Michael Waters, Gloria Whelan, Wendy Wieber… and an interview with Harry Crews.
CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Fiction
Sep 01 1983
The Secret Meeting with Mr. Eliot
Dear Professor Wally,
This is not a poem about a cat. It is my life. I graduated from high school during the height (depth?) of the depression. Three students in my class went to college. Although I was valedictorian (Latin: valedictus, bidden goodbye) and spoke on “The Promise of the Future,” I was not one of them.
Interviews
Jan 01 1983
An Interview with Harry Crews
I wanted very much to write the book [A Childhood], but wasn’t sure I could. It is first of all about people, many of whome are still alive, or their children are, and since I wanted to be true to that time and that place and that experience I put them in the book as they were. You and I know that most people don’t want to be set down as they are. They want to look better than they are. It’s a perfectly human thing, but you can’t do that when you’re writing.
Fiction
Jan 01 1983
A Hunk of Burning Love
Gene is already there when I come through the door of the New Deal Cafe and Bar. There’s a sausage speared on the end of his fork and he’s waving it in Rita’s face. Gene’s a fat man but a long way from jolly; he can in fact be mean as a snake if you give him half a chance.
Fiction
Jan 01 1983
Toward the Sun
Nieman runs in the mountains. He starts from our small house in town at seven thousand feet, and in a few minutes, I see his maroon sweat suit drifting among the dark spruce near the Ute Chief Mine at 7,500. When I returned from the garden with the day’s pick of beans, lettuce, and squash (we got no tomatoes at this altitude), he will be nearing the lip of Silver Lake, a cold, shallow, fishless sea at eight thousand feet.
Fiction
Jan 01 1983
from Internal War
The poet had come to the end of the road. He went down the Avenida La Paz. But, according to the Junta, the Internal War was just beginning. The strange cortege halted. Although the tune was distantly familiar, he couldn’t quite make it out.
Fiction
Jan 01 1983
from Dead Sea
Night was running ahead of itself. People weren’t expecting it at all when it fell upon the city with heavy clouds. The lights on the docks hadn’t been turned on yet; in the Beacon of the Stars sad bulbs illuminated the glasses of cane liguor;many sloops were still cutting the waters of the sea when the wind brought on a night of black clouds.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
This Is The Way It Will Be
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Leaving Home
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
In Bombay
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
In Her Bath
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Looney Tunes
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Esperanza's Hair
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Shoreline
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Fish Fucking
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Joseph's-of-the-Morning
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Belling the Flock
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
After the Splendid Display
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: Michael Waters
“American Bandstand”
“Monopoly”
“Green Shoes”
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: Jim Simmerman
“What Is Wrong With This Picture”
“If”
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Mimosa
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: Marvin Bell
“Balsa”
“Great Leaning Ferns”
“A View in the Rain”
“Shoulders of Tropical Rain”
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Homage to a Missed Season
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Iron
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: Gregory Orr
“Padua”
“Bright Light: Blank Page”
“The Gray Fox”
“Walking a Small, Frozen River in Sunlight”
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Walking Out
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
The Vigil
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Velasquez' Juan de Pareja
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Two Figures in Mt. Hope Cemetery
This poem is not currently available online.
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: David St. John
“Dancing”
“The Ash Tree”
Poetry
Jan 01 1983
Poetry Feature: Thomas McAfee
Featuring the poems: Trees Claiming Lost Dances To Miss X
Reviews
Jan 01 1983
Recent Poetry Selections
Each of these books is a recent winner or selection of a national competition; each is the first major publication for its author. All of the poets are young, and all live or have spent substantial portions of their lives in the Southwest of the South.
Nonfiction
Jan 01 1983
The Primacy of the Reader (II)
In my previous lecture I distinguished four areas of emphasis in literary criticism, but I discussed only two of these: criticism that is focused upon the literary work as an organism or a structure–some sort of verbal entity, give it whatever more precise term you may choose–and criticism that is concerned primarily with the author himself, whether the critic stresses his personal history or the various cultural forces that formed him.
Nonfiction
Jan 01 1983
Saul Bellow and the University as Villain
Few American novelists talk about the university as much as Saul Bellow. Certainly no other subject stirs in him equal rancor and resentment. He reiterates his unhappiness with the university in lecture and interview, essay and fiction. He has done so since early in his career. His views are not totally consistent, but they are clear and uncompromising. Bellow does not underestimate the university’s importance. He knows this country’s literary activity is not concentrated in New York or Chicago or any city, and its literary intellectuals are not molded on Grub Street or in Bohemia.