ISSUES | summer 1992
15.2 (Summer 1992): "Exotic Places"
Featuring work by Talvikki Ansel, Philip F. Deaver, William DeCosta, Carol de Saint Victor, Joseph M. Ditta, Gary Fincke, Henry Green, G.W. Hawkes, Norman Lavers, Emily Newland, Ann Packer, Sam Pickering, Jr., and an interview with Jamaica Kincaid.
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CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Poetry
Mar 01 1992
But The Earth Abideth Forever
This poem is not currently available online.
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1992
Fall
For two weeks Vicki weeded the attic and raked closets, stuffing toys into boxes in the front hall and building a compost of clothes in the basement. Then for four days she washed and folded. Finally, though, fall and tag sale arrived. On October 5, I got up early and lined one side of the driveway with bookshelves. On them Vicki stacked clothes: children’s shirts and sweaters priced fifty and seventy-five cents apiece and trousers from fifty cents to two dollars. Down the other side of the driveway were the furnishings of two rooms: lamps, chairs, tables, even two playpens. Against the garage door were toys: a one-cent box, a five, a ten, and finally a twenty-five-cent box.
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
With Don and Phil at the End of the World
Standing up straight is getting to be more and more difficult these days; always I am leaning into the gray south wind, the land and the sea are leaning, creaking like Greeland ice teetering, everything pale and on tiptoe and leaning downhill all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and find the whole thing tilting a bit too steeply and myself sent tumbling head over heels through Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, straight past the copper mines of Chile. What would happen if I were to just keep right on going, tumbling like a drunkard down the stairway of the world, all the way down to the bottom?
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
Le Voyage
What you have done is really wonderful. Fed me, put me up in your room, given me what you call a second set of clothes, but perfect so far as I can see. I was at the end of everything. And you haven’t even asked me who I am.
I’m delighted I could help a fellow, I said. It was very little. I’m delighted, really, just to have an intelligent person to French to.
Your French is magnificent.
Poetry
Mar 01 1992
In Fragments, In Streams
This poem is not currently available online.
History as Literature
Mar 01 1992
Around the Horn: The Journal of a Voyage to San Francisco
On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill on the American River near Coloma, California. When news of the strike reached the East it precipitated the first and… read more
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1992
Go Slowly and You Arrive
My first morning in India. I wake up at dawn and take a motor rickshaw to Old Delhi: just any street in Old Delhi, I tell the driver. It is as if I walk through familiar photographs and movies: men wash themselves at pumps, brush their teeth with sticks, sleep on rope beds; women prepare tea on open fires, sweeping a little space in front of doors; children run about; the continuous movement of people around carts past cows between rickshaws, seemingly without beginning and without end, contained only by two- and three-storey buildings of ground-level shops, upper-level living quarters and storage areas.
Poetry
Mar 01 1992
Drought
This poem is not currently available online.
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
The Old Lady
I had been reading The Arabian Nights at the fire station. At the turn of a peg in his side, no, with no more than a cut with a golden chain over the neck this marvellous black horse would rise to take his rider into the skies. His manger was filled with well-winnowed sesame and barley, his trough held fresh water perfumed with roses. As I read these words, I heard two heavy explosions close by.
Foreword
Mar 01 1992
Foreword
In the Peter Weir film Dead Poets’ Society Robin Williams plays prep-school teacher John Keating, whose theatrical talents and fresh attitude inspire his students to think for themselves. During their first class discussion of poetry, Keating tears out the introduction to the “J. Evans Prichard” textbook. Later, he stands on his desk and encourages each of his students to do likewise to “get a different perspective.” Keating’s popularity inspires a small group from his class to look through an old yearbook, where they discover their teacher’s affiliation with the “Dead Poets’ Society” when he was a student, and they proceed to recreate the society, gathering to read poetry in a cave not far from the school. While physically not distant, the cave is an exotic place for these teenagers, where they are carried out of their world into the eternal time of poetry.
Poetry
Mar 01 1992
Poetry Feature: Gary Fincke
“Booths”
“Forecasting The Dragon”
“Rounds”
“Squaring The Twins”
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
Tillman and I
“Name the quad cities,” said Tillman.
It was the middle of the morning and we’d just crossed the Mississippi and entered Iowa. I tried to remember the highway signs we’d passed. “Moline,” I said. “East Moline.” I was stuck. “North Moline and South Moline?”
“I’m sorry,” said Tillman. “You do not win the walnut dinette set. The correct answer is: Moline, Rock Island, Bettendorft, and Davenport.”
“Rock Island sounds pretty.”
“It’s the armpit of the Mississippi. How about a sandwich?”
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
Always Cold
Even though the flatness of Kansas is sometimes exaggerated, I’ll admit that it’s level in places. It’s particularly level around Oracle, so flat that the sunlight for a week at the equinoxes skips across town like a thrown rock. Women have to hold their skirts down to keep that light from jumping up. A wariness steals into their eyes, like when the man from the bank drives out, and they grip their handbags more tightly, and the men push their hands down into their trouser pockets in fists.
Interviews
Mar 01 1992
An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid
This interview is not currently available online.
Fiction
Mar 01 1992
Cassadaga
On a blue evening Skidmore headed north on the interstate to Cassadaga. He didn’t know what to expect, only that he needed to somehow connect with someone who’d recently died. He pulled the tab on a beer and popped in his Allman Brothers tape, “Midnight Rider.”