This is not the old misogynistic story of
the mythic expulsion from the perfect garden
because we know that where knowledge is
forbidden to women there will be no perfection.
Poetry & Fiction
Paul’s Epistle on “Key West”
Your editor asked Wallace Stevens’ biographer, Paul Mariani, to comment on Bob Dylan’s new song “Key West”…
I Will Never Be
xxxxxOld white woman in the woods—could go at a POP!
But this I know—I will never…be shot by a cop.
Nine Minutes (i.m. of George Floyd)
Five hundred forty seconds.
Time in which an athlete
Can run a mile and a half.
A couple can have rushed,
Workday-morning sex.
A teacher can teach about the stars.
A killer can keep his knee
On the neck of a man.
America Hunkers Down
Hands scrubbed till they bleed.
School replaced with videos.
Carts crammed with toilet paper and guns.
Caught in the Myth: Poems by Alison Stone
Your editor’s response to Alison Stone’s new book Caught in the Myth, echoes the last s-y line of her poem “Dionysus”: “Let the words to every song be yes.” Stone has always done Dionysian better than most yes-men. That’s because she doesn’t shut her eyes and ears to what’s really real. Heroin or her cunt may have been her chariot to a “sacred other place” but she’s fully alive to what’s going on in our mean world (“thick with caste”).
Nile. Hudson. Rio Grande.
i.m. Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and Valeria Ramirez
Point Dume
The drive to Point Dume, like Joe, is astounding. That’s one of my words. If Joe was telling this story, he’d say a lot of things in a different way, like: I can’t tell you how many times I drove out there that week! He’d slap his face like Jack Benny and you’d wonder how somebody could look so innocent and capable of violence all at once. Astounding, isn’t it? The way his voice eats up the can’t-tell part and growls away with a moan of a laugh. That’s Joe and that’s Point Dume.