Really, I’m so grateful for you all in this community. You’re every one of you, if I can distill it, writers who envision a different way of being, a different way of seeing, thinking, living than we get in the general mass media. When I get a new contribution from someone like that (I’m allergic to the word ‘submission’ in this context by the way), I want to shout ‘Hallelujah!’
Actually, sometimes I do.
I felt that way recently when I got a lovely little allegory, just the kind of thing that makes the hair on the back of my arms stand up, from a scientist, Galen T. Pickett. Check it out: “Broken Clock.”
I love getting contributions from scientists. And from philosophers, especially ones who have a secret passion for the works of L. Frank Baum. Looking at you, Bruce E.R. Thompson, and your great piece putting “The Wizard of Oz” in historical context: “Who was Dorothy?” Also from historians who look at history slant. Our favorite Brian Griffith, for example. In this issue, he’s got something from the latest book he’s working on: “Those Evil Spirits.”
The most charming story came over the online transom this issue: “Her,” by Zary Fekete. It tells the tale of a woman’s real life, so much more important than the politics going on hysterically around her. It asks one of my favorite questions: who makes up the life of a country, or even a world, anyway, but all of us, individually, living our everyday lives as best we can? I’m certainly hoping we hear from Zary again.
Another new contributor, Matias Travieso-Diaz sends another allegory: “The Screaming Baboon.” Did I mention how I love allegories? Allegories, fairy tales, stories that look deceptively simple but reach into complexity and hold it by the throat? Well, since there are three in this issue, by my count, it’s pretty obvious I do love them. Keep ’em coming, okay?
Then there’s Bettina Sapien, with her sort of poem, “Swan Lake,” another one that made the hair stand up on the backs of my arms. She says in her bio that this is the first time she’s been published. Not the last. Definitely.
I really have to send out a collective hug to all of you, to every one of you in the community who contributes another way of looking at things, sometimes strange, but always humane. Always about what it means to be human, which is the secret theme of everything in the EAP universe. I’m looking at you, David D. Horowitz, and all your essays trying to prop up sanity in a frequently insane world. And you, Sean Murphy, for your constant hard and varied work in the mines of wanting the world to be human, and what an artist needs to bring to that party. And to you, Charles S. Kraszewski, and your fight against arrogant abstraction, both in your own poetry, and in your beautiful translations of fellow poets. And to Tom Ball, and to Jim Meirose, both surrealist in their own way that is only their own and no one else’s. We need writers who stand up for themselves. They add so much richness to the conversation about who we really are.
The poets do that. Here’s to all of you for being, as Yahia Lababidi says in his aphorisms, ‘citizen journalists’. But most especially to Marissa Bell Toffoli who nudges, herds, encourages, loves, and meanwhile contributes her own lyric verse to the conversation. Thank you, Marissa, for being our tireless poetry editor.
Finally, I have to give shout outs to two oft-times EAP contributors, and their books that just came out. As different writers as the two of them are—Yahia Lababidi and his poetry, and Boff Whalley and his . . . well, his anarchic Boffness—they are, once again, writing about the same thing in the end. What it means to be human. What is art, what is love, what is true meaning, and what is sacred, and how those are the stalwart pillars of true humanity.
You can see a very small serving of Yahia’s aphorisms from his new book, “What Remains to Be Said,” here, with a link to the publisher where you can buy it. I was knocked out by the aphorisms. When you read the book, do it slowly, preferably while sitting by an early spring wood fire, alone but not lonely, before an afternoon walk involving trees and running water. That was what I did, anyway, so I recommend it highly.
And Boff is on a whirlwind US tour of indie/punk/anarchist/community bookstores for his quasi-memoir/visionary polemic “But.” I can’t say enough about this book. It’s got the energy entirely lacking in the general discourse these days, the optimism, the grit and the get-down-to-it belief in mutual aid in hopes of a world formed by it. You can find the book here. You can find a list of bookstores Boff will be reading at here. And if you find the book, and Boff, give him my love, would you?
There’s no future for humans without mutual aid. In fact, given the creep of abstract mechanism, there’s no future for humanity without it. So thank you all for not just giving it a try, but for working every day to make it a reality, in your own work, your own lives, and here at EAP: The Magazine.
Welcome back.