ISSUES | summer 1986

A Yellow leaf falls slowly down, spinning, to land soundlessly on the smooth surface of a slow-moving stream.

Woody Allen;s singularity as an important filmmaker results largely from his unique approach to philosophical problems. The New Yorker pieces, for example, are frequently devoted to reducing classic philospohic profundities to nonsensical, jargon-riden aphorisms.

In Virginia Woolf’s The Waves we hear the voice of a sort of super-soul, made out of seven individual persons, seven friends. Each contains a complete if blurred image of the other, and the coherent light of Woolf’s prose reconstitutes out of them the original shapes of their spiritual identity.

On a cold winter morning in Youngstown, Ohio, Ray (Boom Boom) Mancini, who had once been the lightweight champion of the World Boxing Association, said goodbye to his mother and father and left home for Nevada to begin training for the most important fight of his career.

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“Ninety-Six Line”
“Blizzard”

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“After Rain”
“Speaking of the South: 1961”

“In the Shtetl”
“Hollow”
“Dear Everyone”

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“Zimmerhouse”
“Flight to Canada”

“Vespers: The Balcony”
“Eclogue”

“For William Cowper”
“Blueprint”

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“For the Wren Trapped in a Cathedral”
“The Favorite Dance of the Deaf and Blind Beggar”

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“The Clowns of Shipolovi”
“Children of Sacaton”
“Tai Song”

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“Milk”
“The Transmigration of Souls”

Pauline was always the strong one as far as I knew. And I knew pretty far, from ’47 when I got off the train from VA in Wichita and first went to Chambers Famous Bar.

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Ginger had agreed to have a drink with that hairy, fat sales rep from Parkers, Herb what’s-his-name, first, because she had already refused him on at least five previous occasions, and she couldn’t risk losing the account.

The Venusian invasion is a takeover of the Egyptian seven souls: Ren is degraded by Hollywood down to John Wayne levels. Sekem works for the Company. The Khu’s are all transparent fakes.

This was 1963, this was spring, Warren just hitting fourteen and all of them sweating the lump inside his great-uncle’s cheek. As far back as anybody could remeber, uncle Rudi had smoked a little clay pipe, thin and black as a thorn.

“Any calamities?” Supervisor Barbara Henley asked.

“No.” Ross finished his last entry in Ward G-2’s daily notes, slid the brown notebook across to her, and lit a cigarette. Henley began copying into the master log.

“Don’t tell me about chicken slaughter. I’ve been there,” Jean shouted. She’d walked down the road and into Rochelle’s kitchen, for the first time in six years, return visit she called it, and there she was, in white shorts, sitting on a stool at the free-standing counter Rochelle called an Island.

A grand ship she is. Now July 4, 8 p.m. Latitude 32.7 North, Longitude 136.5 West. Sea smooth, weather pleasant. Crew attired in white. Thonight’s menu: spring pie, raw puffer , haggis pudding, Scotch chops, Rouen Duck.

It was the third week in July, nine days after my thirteenth birthday. My older brother Cal, and I were walking beans, the temperature up around ninety and humidity just as high, the afternoon sun sharp as a welding torch.

Featuring the following poems: For a Friend in the Hospital Arrival at the Cabin Hornet’s Nest Returning to Cuttyhunk Poem Butterflies The Peacock Flounder