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.

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.

Saving The Hunter From The Rabbits

“Watch out for the poor! They want to marry your daughter.” The Word: Anything that the poor want must come from the middle-class. The rich have somehow at once been bled dry while remaining wealthy.

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.”

Last Minute Musings

In the space of the four years following this small event, my consciousness has been assaulting itself with pointed questions who’ve led me into vast, unknown, and sometimes positively obliterating stretches of mind.

Shadow Dancing

My being reverberates with awareness. I take an idea, mold it into the shape that fits the keyhole of my consciousness, and I am changed in the transition of a new opening.

On Death And Not Dying

A Meeting With Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The word was in my mind all day. Pivotal. Not my favorite word, or one I often use. Everything seemed pivotal. The hour, the fuel gauge, an oldie on the radio, a yawn, the confusing streets of High Point.

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.

Christmas Emission

What to do next, we wondered. If our eyes met theirs across the dinner table, we might burn holes in their retinas. We might muscle a plug of ghastly recognition into their brains and sear their genetic codes with the breath of the big white god who breathed through us.

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.

Seventh Heaven

Every time Arthur Wazu got sexually excited his ear lobes turned lavender. This had just happened in the central power station, so he roller-skated back to his captain’s quarters to rest.

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.”

escape

The Pyramids, from a distance

Selected Poems

crossing

Canyon

at work

No. 11