Todblog

When the Newport Public Library suggested I do a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, I was delighted. Of course. But I also had a secret hope for it. The present Emergency calls for as many of us who can to envision a way forward to a better world to get together and get going. And my secret agenda for EAP was always to seek out people who were striving, each in their own way, to understand what it is best for an individual to do, what is best for us to do. What our meaning is. What action that meaning requires.

So my hope was that I would get to meet a lot of EAP contributors and members, at least via Zoom, and that we could talk over the way things were, the way things are, and the way things could be. I wasn’t disappointed. Tim J. Myers was great to talk with in the first session. Chris Farago enlivened the second. But the third in the series was the best. We started out sad with what is out there in the world right now, but by the end, the energy quickened and soared, and we were all heartened to be together, pulling in the same direction. I know I was.

That session was a lot of poets, a couple of independent publishers, and then, of course, the people who’ve built EAP from the start: historian Brian Griffith, creative director Mike Madrid, poetry editor Marissa Bell Toffoli, and Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. Indies were articulatedly represented by Christina Ward of Feral House, and Steve Scholl of White Cloud Press. Poets. . .well, poets burgeoned, the way poets do: David Bolton, Barry Vitcov, and EAP’s favorite essayist David Horowitz. It was everything I’d hoped for and more.

This issue, too. Welcome to Peter Onelio, whose “The Christ Ultimatum” called up a response in me. And to Paul Jones, who has written a wonderful novel about a boy in foster care in Liverpool that is heartrendingly realistic—an excerpt is here. Also EAP’s resident philosopher Bruce Thompson has done a great job with ‘Yes, But’, bringing Peter Abelard back to deserved notice in “Sic et Non.” Welcome to Mark Benedict and his creepy “Bright Vicious Past,” and welcome back to Clarinda Harriss–we missed you.

Finally, if you want to know just what I think is truly important, and I bet you won’t be surprised to know it involves dogs, have a look at my “The Peace of Dog.”

Meantime, peace. Health. Safety. And onward together. Onward.

Welcome back.

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