Issue 80 | January 2009
"When you’re drawing pictures, and in my case it’s black ink on white paper, the tendency is to work in broad strokes. That’s why in mainstream comics there’s a lot of fights and explosions because it’s easier to get people’s attention and budget-wise it’s easier to draw that stuff. I became more interested in the smaller, more closely-observed details and the ways you could do that in comics. A big influence on me was Chester Brown. He’s a Canadian cartoonist who really slowed things down in a way I’ve never seen before. He would have something happen over several panels or have a whole page of a character staring out a window. And that changed the way a comic could be read."
by
Paul Morton
"I decided I would try to read Poemas Humanos. I was seduced and overwhelmed and quickly decided that I would create an apprenticeship to poetry by translating all the poems in that book. I felt that I would learn something about poetry by doing that that I would not learn by staying with English language poetry. Vallejo had something to teach me that I could not find in Williams or Pound. That was the beginning of this 48 year Vallejo translation saga. He’s become my great companion in poetry."
by
Jessa Crispin
"I’ve seen that depth, value and longevity of relationships are not dependent on marriage. Having economic and emotional interdependence in an intimate relationship for years or decades, gay people have proven marriage doesn’t determine whether one really is a family. Being able to marry shouldn’t mean that the people who marry 10 days after they meet get legal consequences and ones who live together for 20 years don’t. Because gay people have experience of longevity in relationships… we can see you don’t need marriage to have stable family lives.
by
Amy DePaul
Nancy Kuhl: I have mixed feelings about the term ["emerging poet"] -- on the one hand, of course, it might be said that we are all always emerging, but at what point has one emerged? And after emerging, then what? Has Nicole, with her third collection now forthcoming, slipped or propelled herself into that other dubious category: mid-career? I know other terms are no better or more accurate -- many who might be called emerging poets are not new or young or beginning -- but I do wish we had a reasonable alternative. Maybe simply "first-book poets."
by
Anna Leahy
"I have so much respect for people who have just turned their lives around, who have been in a negative spot and who have overcome it. I am certainly fortunate enough in my life to have a family that was understanding and [good] personal circumstances. After I finished college I had a job. There are a lot of people out there who don’t have any real means especially if they are kicked out of the house or can’t be themselves at home without the fear of being kicked out. I thought, 'What would happen to a person like this? What would they have to do in order to survive? It can’t go on forever. We’ve all seen things that end badly. What if it doesn’t end badly? At some point something doesn’t end badly.'"
by
Paul Morton
Reading [Orwell], circa the winter days of 2008-2009, this frighteningly late moment in the history of the human world, might be the only way for a thirty-four-year-old to get that “I can read!” feeling again, that sense that a book is a new, magical thing, and you know the secret of how to use it, like pulling rabbits out of thin air without any sleight of hand, like X-ray vision, like finally uncovering those elves in the moss.
by
Elizabeth Bachner
The kickoff article is “Are Women Evolutionary Sex Objects? Why Women Have Breasts,” by Fran Mascia-Lees. The title is catchy, and sure, sex sells. The focus on permanently enlarged breasts in humans -- versus all other primates -- raises intriguing “why” questions and encourages the use of the fun new vocabulary word “pebs.” It’s great, too, to highlight a cultural anthropologist’s collaborative work with a biological anthropologist and an endocrinologist. But… there’s a but.
by
Barbara J. King
"[M]any of the poets that I love often ignore culture. Look at Dickinson for instance compared to the more culturally minded Whitman. I think I prefer the culture-conscious poems when they assume the status of myth. The great example of that might be Lowell's brilliant "For the Union Dead," though I think poems like this are the most difficult to write. There seem to be thousands of failures for each success."
by
Andrew Wessels
"Before I opened my shop I thought all a person had to do to be successful in this business was to put good books on the shelves and wait for customers to buy them. But I found that word of mouth, at least in my case, does not travel at the speed of sound. And I have no money to advertise with, except through handbills and flyers. When I do have a little extra money, I spend it on books. I’m still trapped on that learning curve."
by
Gili Warsett
