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The Good Heavens

The sky is perfect tonight. The flawless close to a false Spring day in mid-February — an odd day with chirping birds, open windows, shirtless basketball and soft outdoor conversation before supper.

Energy

Passive Design

The first half of this article explains the movement of the earth around the sun and on its own axis and how that affects you and your home. (It will also help you to tell time and direction by the sun.) The second half gives some specifics on how to design to best use the sun.

No. 11

at work

The Dearest Jewel

The most important thing about small press poetry is probably direct personal contact with our readers. When I sell on the street or at fairs, I live for the occasional smile of incredulous pleasure from people who like poetry but have never seen a poet.

Ninety Nine Big ’Uns

Henry Huggins was one of the best liars in the county. He was a short, stocky, red-faced man with squinty eyes and a waxed handle-bar mustache. He wore bib overalls and a dirty broadbrim hat pulled down so far it bent the tops of his ears over. He read nickel Westerns and sat around the general store telling elaborate lies.

Publishing, Hopefully Not Perishing

The Small Press Movement

I can’t remember the first time I heard someone say that the conglomerates (giant U.S. corporations like Xerox) were buying out the big New York publishing houses, the ones that 20 or so years ago were a fairly reliable place to publish a first novel, a well-written book, something that might someday be known as a great book, as “literature.”

Photographs By Stephen March

“Only the love for this splendorous being can give freedom to a warrior’s spirit; and freedom is joy, efficiency, and abandon in the face of any odds. That is the last lesson. It is always left for the very last moment, for the moment of ultimate solitude when a man faces his death and his aloneness. Only then does it make sense.”

1977

New Year’s Day. No television, or newspaper, to remind me of the world outside. No news-of-the year in review. I can tell myself better lies than that. Nineteen seventy-seven. Seven years to 1984.

Another Appetite

The days of my life are inscribed in autumn’s diary; the leaves are pages burnished by experiences: some fiery red, some golden yellow, some mellow green, some dull brown.