Summer 2016: “Maps & Legends”
OVERTURE: Every map represents both truth and imagination. No matter how carefully a medieval ship’s captain described a shoreline or how sophisticated a modern engineer’s tools, there is always space left for interpretation: “Here there be dragons”; “Somewhere beyond this line lies the kingdom of Prester John.” These are the mapmakers’ truths, but no one...
Dream Architecture: Big Houses
Prose poem by Judith Serin, art by Masami Inoue. I often dream of houses so big I must explore them. I discover boxes of old treasures, toys in a small room downstairs, a high balcony near the ceiling circled with statues and trunks of shiny dresses. Often they incorporate parts of my childhood house...
Weekend Reading: The Man Who Would Be Jaguar
Curious about what’s happened in the rain forest since the last time we heard from Glenn Shepard, intrepid author of “Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon” from our “Bedeviled” issue? He wrote for us about hard tobacco, ayahuasca, and new planes of experience. He’s gone even further in this fascinating article by Emma Marris from National...
Dream Architecture: Outside/In
Dream Architecture: Outside/In Part 4 of the Dream Geographies collaboration between poet Judith Serin and visual artist Masami Inoue. Herbert and I are in a large room, sleeping in separate beds. A weed with prickly leaves and purple yarrow-like flowers grows next to the foot of mine. I’m afraid the prickles...
Share This Poem: “Pretty Moon” By Lisa Dordal
Pretty moon, everyone said. Before the noise, before the fire. Two cars and the cornfields idle… From time to time, we re-present work that has been first been published elsewhere. This heartrending poem about nature’s imperviousness to human sorrow is worth more than one reading, and we are pleased to feature it as a Web extra…....
