by the Editor
The main Transformation we keep on hoping for, and cheerleading on, here at EAP is the one that will take us out of the fetid swamp of decaying ideas and corrupted default settings. The idea that everything is going to automatically get better and better, and grow bigger and bigger, and that no other course is available to us–that one's tapped out, guys. The subsidiary idea that the only way forward is to encourage as much competition as possible, with no allowances for either the advantages or the sheer pleasures of encouraging an atmosphere of mutual aid is one that's equally fetid. Anyone not clinging to those ideas as to sacred texts certainly must have noticed this.
Everything changes. What was useful and good a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, can be obstructive and downright evil as circumstances change. We know this is why customs change. Why art changes. Why the stories that try to express the eternity that we can never fully penetrate, that's why they have to change, too.
Have a look at all the changing points of view in this month's EAP. We've got a special place in our collective EAP heart for young writers, since they're the ones changing things next. Mary Daniels is nine years old, but her poem Noblesse Oblige already has the kind of surprise in it that makes us laugh. Rose Saltveit wrote Mind Racers when she was ten (she's eleven now, so this is early work), and the beginning of the piece is a model of how to draw the reader in. "The boy was playing the clarinet, and the girl was wearing sunglasses and stroking the fur of a strange looking bunny." Really, you can't ask more of a sentence than that.
Then there are the older writers among us, all looking around at different landscapes than the monotonous mass media one…little by-ways of unexpected pleasure and beauty, and yes, even a challenge to that dominant picture. David Budbill sends Mr. C. out to, er, discuss the monotony of a certain point of view in MR C AND POETRY (a monologue, by the way, that is part of David's upcoming 2012 book of poems, PARK SONGS).Brian Griffith , from HIS upcoming book (THE FALL AND RISE OF CHINESE GODDESSES, Spring 2012), looks at Women in Primitive Daoism , and don't be fooled by the dry title; it's fascinating, like all of Brian's stuff.
Mike Madrid has renamed his project NOTHING'S SACRED , and this month he interviews THE DEFECTOR . Mat Capper tosses a coin to decide which religion he should be putting after his name on the census form. Jody A. Harmon continues her SUNVILLE TIMES.
And EAP's favorite writing team, Marie and Margaret , look at A PUNCTUATED LIFE. Keep an eye on the punctuation in the story. It's important. Which is a good motto for life in general, come to think of it.
That's a lot of stuff. Not to mention Marissa Bell Toffoli , David D. Horowitz, Caitlin Simmons, and Aleena Deerwater.
Gosh, I almost forgot Kelly Stewart's How Chows Brown Cow. Not only is it chock full of information about beef 'production', not only does it include a great recipe for tacos, but it features the single best picture I have ever seen of a cow tattoo.
Don't miss it.
Welcome back.