To Hell with Hartsfield Airport

OK, I know it's not exactly the safest thing to say. I'm aware of the implications--the post-nine-eleven stuff. But I'm a loyal American, and understand this: My wife and I were delayed landing, burned fuel, and were finally re-routed to Augusta--where we waited 90 minutes to refuel and head back to Atlanta . . . after two airport closures and the departure of our scheduled flight.

Now that's not so bad.

Continue to understand: This was Thursday. And after missing our flight to my sister-in-law's hometown for her wedding, we were abandoned (no food, no hotel, no flight, no blanket or pillow, after 8 hours of airplane confinement) to suffer the night away until our next flight.

For which Delta eventually lost 50% of our luggage.

You are beginning to understand why I use the expletive?

Imagine now that you are using the corner of a laptop case as pillow and you are shivering against paper thin, poly-whatever "carpet" and concrete. Carpet that smells like shoe soles and rubber luggage wheels. Imagine that CNN is endlessly piped through speakers which you can never seem to escape, and every twenty minutes the same airport security announcement blares away any hope of a restless sleep.

Imagine, further if you will, that you meet Joe Lieberman at nine o'clock the next morning in Dulles. Imagine that (although you think he's a Republican in Democrat's clothing and you'd like to tell him to help the party you loyally support rather than sabotage it) you say nothing, thanks to lack of sleep and a wife who all too well understands your id, and who with a flick of body language encourages your silence.

Imagine, next, that after an exhausting trip you return--via Delta and through Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport--only to miss your flight home to San Diego by a minute or two.

Now some of you might rightfully point out this is not Hartsfield Airport's fault. Touché. Yet forgive me if, subsequent to this injurious weekend, I hesitate to fly through it again.

All of which makes me wonder, is there a story in this somewhere?

(R J Woerheide)

Pay Attention

Poets & Writers has--this issue, along with many other things--published a very apt article under the teaser "Confessions of a Lit-Mag Editor."

We recommend picking up a copy and reading it. At the very least.

Fun with Fibonacci

If you're a blogger (or read the New York Times art section today) you may already be aware of a new poetry trend sweeping the web. Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author in Los Angeles, recently posted a blog entry outlining a new poetic form: One based on the Fibonacci number sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8 ... ). "Fibs"—as these poems are quickly becoming known—possess 1 syllable in the first two lines, 2 syllables in the third, and so forth.

(From the Wikipedia definition:)

     One
     Small,
     Precise,
     Poetic,
     Spiraling mixture:
     Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

Why not try your hand at telling a Fib? Post one here or submit one through our regular submission process via Perigee's newest issue.

(c/o Sue Fellows, Editor)

Excursions with Poet Larry Levis

If you haven't taken an adventure with the poet Larry Levis, I'd like to share his poem "Lost Fan, Hotel Californian, Fresno, 1923" (53-54) and recommend his book The Dollmaker’s Ghost.

I love where this poem takes me. And where, you might ask, is that? To a variety of visual and, yes, sensory excursions. As Levis unravels his infinite imagination, the poem's "looking glass" seems to fluctuate between a magnified lens and a telescope in a series of miniature vignettes. The effect is dreamlike. Each literary sketch melts into the blossom of the next:

      In Fresno, it is 1923, and your shy father
      Has picked up a Chinese fan abandoned
      Among the corsages crushed into the dance floor.
      On it, a man with scrolls is crossing a rope bridge
      Over gradually whitening water.
      If you look closely you can see brush strokes intended
      To be trout.
      You can see that the whole scene
      Is centuries older
      Than the hotel, or Fresno in the hard glare of morning.
      And the girl
      Who used this fan to cover her mouth
      Or her breasts under the cool brilliance
      Of chandeliers
      Is gone on a train sliding along tracks that are
      Pitted with rust. (1-16)

In these first sixteen lines, we've ventured to three different locations by the way of a simple motif: the Chinese fan. As the poem dilates and expands, we take several excursions along its narrative—riding through entertaining and associative images, traveling from one cinematic frame to the next, and gathering emotional and intellectual momentum along the way. Read this great poem, and see what comes up next. The price of the book The Dollmaker's Ghost is worth every penny considering the many excursions you’ll take in the poems of Larry Levis.

(Jensea Storie, Poetry Editor)

On Your Marks, Get Set . . .

The new issue is 98% complete and ready to launch. It's a darn good issue, if we do say so ourselves: It's packed with 36 poems (including the four winning poems from the 2005 Poetry Contest), 6 prose pieces (among them 3 blog prompt responses, and Lawrence Lawson's eagerly anticipated second Ukraine Peace Corps installment), and 6 new pieces of visual art.

If you're a contributor you should have already received notification of an online proof of your writing, along with a link to view said proof(s). You should have also received your "contributor's access key," for free access to the full issue. All others will have to fork over a dollar to get the full 12th issue. Money well spent.

That's all for now. Here at Perigee we can hardly wait until this Saturday. How about you?

In for a Dime, In for a Dollar

In an effort to finance ambitious new projects for Perigee and in the hope of one day compensating hard working writers and artists, Perigee will begin charging a small fee for each issue--beginning with our 12th issue, due out this Saturday.

For only $1.00 visitors will be able to access the complete issue of Perigee--including all the verse, prose, and artwork--along with the downloadable PDFs many of our readers have demanded. There will be a free "teaser" version of the issue available for readers who want to get a feel for Perigee, but this version will only contain approximately 20% of the writing.

We hope all will agree this change is fair and farsighted. Ultimately we believe it will benefit both writer and reader.

So: In for a dime, in for a dollar?

Contributors, Issue 12

Perigee's upcoming twelfth issue--our third anniversary installment--will include the following contributors:



   Anirban Acharya, for "Different Lines at 4:32PM"
   Jeffrey Alfier, for "Language Arts"
   Margaret Babbott, for "Fuji and Blossom"
   Alex Cigale, for "There are Birds Flying in my Vagina"
   James Curtis Dunlap, for "For Billy Boy"
   Jason Lee Huskey, for "Butterface," and "Home Opener"
   John Irvine, for "Libra Man"
   Christopher Karl Konrad, for "Night Wanderers"
   Maria Lupinacci, for "Illusion"
   Chris Michalski, for "Late Summer Afternoon in Southern Kentucky" and "End of Season"
   Caroline Misner, for "The Old Quarry"
   Jeff M Phelps, for "Totem," "Fragments," and "Dead Dogs and Jollyranchers"
   Amanda Reynolds, for "Man and Dog," "Pasture on Sunday," "Black and White Nude," and "Bus, 4 a.m."
   Tracy Rogers, for "Exposure"
   Tom Sheehan, for "Magnolia and Maxine Heading South," "The Sugaring," "Small Boats at Aveiro," "Born to Wear the Rags of War," and "Smoker's Holiday" (A Blog Prompt Response)
   Linda Simone, for "Learning to be Invisible," and "Redemption 1959"
   Randy Stark, for "The Driver's License Mug Shot"
   Adam Tavel, for "Jim Morrison Grows his Last Beard," "The Chicken Pluckers," and "Monday Morning at McDonald's, Federalsburg, Maryland"
   Stephen William Krewson, for "Out of Focus," and "My Office"
   Marc Scott, for "20 Dollars in the Me Decade"
   Michael Coblenz, for "Honeymoon on the Key" (A Blog Prompt Response)
   William Joseph Williams, for "Hussy"
   Carol Brennan King, for "Vacationing in Key West" (A Blog Prompt Response)
   Paul Ecdao, for "Warped" (Visual Art)
   Barbara Hilal, for "Black Eyes Crying in the Cosmos," "Julie in Pastel," and "Julie in Acrylic" (Visual Art)
   Bruce New, for "Sacred Heart" (Visual Art)
   Lisa Paully, for "Empire Island" (Visual Art)

The issue will be released on Saturday, April 15th. Be sure to check it out!

Naysayers

It has recently come to the attention of this editor that a few literary types dismissed Perigee when I founded the publication three years ago. What's more troubling is that these same people were employed with my literary tutelage. Juvenile, they called Perigee; we'll see how long that lasts, they said. Of course they said all of this behind my back.

Well, we're alive and doing well three years later. And those same naysayers (who've never bothered to take in even a single issue of Perigee, they admit) are still plugging along--doing whatever it is naysayers do. Naysaying, probably.

Isn't part of our job as artists and writers to help proliferate the arts? To support them not through criticism but through activism? I think yes. I think definitely. So I challenge the naysayers to put something new into the world--something other than pessimism, there's a surplus of that. Oh, and why not read our next issue?

(R J Woerheide, Editor)

Countdown

The new issue of Perigee--number twelve--is only nine days away. The editors have met and decided on which poems and prose will be included; those of you who submitted work before March 15th will hear from us shortly.

We've got lots of new content and a couple surprises. Those of you who took the time to write from the Key West writing prompt will be included in a special, blog response section of the issue. We think everyone will enjoy this new department of Perigee.

Check back on April 15th to read our third anniversary issue, and help us kick off year number four! (And they said we wouldn't make it.)