In Memoriam: George Plimpton, Frederick Morgan

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781888889406

INTRODUCTION

by BILL HENDERSON

First the good news. Edward P. Jones, Pushcart Prize winner for “Marie” ( Paris Review), his first published fiction and the lead story in Pushcart Prize XVIII, this year won not only the National Book Critics Circle Award but also The Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Known World (Amistad/HarperCollins). He was a finalist for The National Book Award. Recognition for Jones and The Known World is very heartening for all of us.

More good news—the sixty-two selections from forty-eight presses that follow in our annual celebration of little magazines and small presses, including first-timers, Noon, Rivendell, River Teeth, Triplo-pia and Tumrow (Desperation Press). The down side of this news is that we ran out of room to reprint all the extraordinary stories, poems and essays that were nominated. This was a vintage year. Because of budget constraints Pushcart has to keep the PP volumes to under 600 pages, and that very sadly excludes our reprinting of all the “Special Mention” work listed at the back of the book. We urge you to read these authors in the original. In fact subscribe to the journals that printed them. Go on, you can’t afford not to.

Final good news: our Pushcart Prize Fellowships, just established to provide the series with a substantial endowment, has received enthusiastic support—gifts from ten dollars to fifteen thousand dollars have poured in. As I have mentioned here before, this celebration is published from an 8' x 8' shack in Pushcarts backyard, built with scrap lumber and windows from the dump. It receives no government or corporate funds and is sustained only by the readership and the volunteer efforts of its contributing and nominating editors. Except for minuscule honorariums for our fiction, poetry and essays ed-

itors, nobody gets paid. Reprinted authors and presses are reimbursed with copies, and copies do not generally put food on the table or wine in the cup, although they may lift the spirits, which in any case is a central idea of this project.

Our spirits can fall rather low, we have noticed, when the rest of the country clamors only for the buck and conglomerate media lies inundate us constantly. As Askold Melnyczuk, past editor of Agni , puts it in a recent Agni edition (the new editor is the esteemed Sven Birkerts), we have entered into a new age of feudalism—there’s the giant corporations and the rest of us. In short, we have become serfs, 21st Century serfs, tilling the fields or occupying office cubicles for our masters, with only token power.

Melnyczuk states: . . a writer’s job is to keep the language efficient so that it communicates. But words wear out: through misuse and overuse, they grow unmoored from meaning. When slaughter is defined as liberation, when justice is color-coded, when governments feel free to pull a bait-and-switch in a matter so serious as a war costing thousands of lives . . . then language may indeed have reached a dead end.’’

We hope not. And we small press editors and writers resist allowing words to be debased by the power addled.

Small is still beautiful. We will not be ground under or cubicled by the national propaganda machine. That’s what the small press movement has always been about. And our endurance is rather amazing. Started in the 50’s and 60s by those dubbed “hippies” with mimeograph machines publishing not only literature but political tracts as well, the movement expanded in the 70s and continues to grow today in print and on-line. Our revolution is here to stay, it seems, and it can have a real impact.

The Pushcart Prize Fellowships, by endowing the Pushcart Prize series, hopes to do what it can to champion and sustain that revolution. In our concluding pages (524-526) you will find the names of our Founding Members. If you would like to join us, write to Pushcart Press (PO Box 380, Wainscott, New York 11975) and we will tell you how.

Then there is the bad news. We miss George Plimpton, always will. He died last year at age 76, just as we were going to press with PP XXVIII. Plimpton was enormously generous to all little mags and small press authors and editors, Pushcart included. Often he opened his New York home to parties honoring this series. And, almost

single-handedly he kept The Paris Review alive for fifty years, un-sinkable in his fund-raising and editorial enthusiasms.

The New York Tunes obituary, after a chronicle of Plimptons life as a "participatory journalist” (he played tennis with Pancho Gonzalez, was a third-string quarterback with the Detroit Lions and once boxed with Archie Moore—who bloodied his nose), noted: "His alter ego was as the unpaid editor of The Paris Review, an enduring, chronically impoverished quarterly, . . . that avoided using such typical little magazine words as "Zeitgeist” or "dichotomous” and published no crusty critiques about Melville or Kafka but instead printed the poetry and fiction of gifted young writers not yet popular.”

My favorite George story is the night the power failed at a Paris Review reading in a lower east side pub. Somebody produced a lamp that worked and for an hour George alone, at an advanced age, held that lamp aloft so that the poet at the podium could make out what he had written and proclaim it. I can still see Plimpton now, his left arm raised high, refusing to grimace or give way or so much as lower the lamp a fraction, as his author read on next to the man who gave him light.

Frederick Morgan, founder and editor of The Hudson Review died February 20, 2004 at age 81. I remember him as another friend who was with Pushcart from day one—a small gathering at a rather fancy New York restaurant signaling the start of this series. From that day on, Morgan and his wife, Paula Deitz, who carries on as Hudson Review’s editor, encouraged Pushcart with nominations and support.

Morgan founded The Hudson Review in 1948, with Joseph Bennett and William Arrowsmith, to publish established and unknown writers, review books and cover news of music, theater, dance and the visual arts. With no academic affiliation, political ideology or backing beyond its founders’ bank accounts—and a circulation that never climbed above 4,000 copies—Morgan, after his co-founders left in the 60s, kept his journal thriving for fifty-five years and also wrote a dozen volumes of poetry, most recently The One Abiding (Story Line Press), which appeared last year.

"He was a great gentleman and an elegant scholar and man of letters,” said Alice Quinn, Executive Director of The Poetry Society of America.

We also miss Ted Weiss, editor since 1943 of the Quarterly Review of Literature Press and author of eleven books of poetry. Ted was

one of the great small press survivors and champions. In moving tributes published this year in American Poetry Review and the Princeton University Chronicle, Reginald Gibbons, former TriQuarterly editor, remembered his teacher and friend: “Simply by example, Ted taught the modest ordinary priceless human worthiness of revering what is humane, merciful, loving, of memorializing the sufferings of others, of forgiving the failings of most people—although not of bullies in print or in person, nor of rogues’ greed for their power and indifferent to the harm they do.”

Ted Weiss died in April, 2003, at age 86. His wife Renee carries on the work of the press.

From Hawaii arrives a tribute by Contributing Editor Tony Quagliano, editor of Kaimana , for William Packard, the late founder and editor of New York Quarterly , the “brilliant and ornery poet” who published 58 issues before his death in 2002.

Packard was “absolutely fearless and he engaged poetry with wit, scholarship, pugnacity and a great generosity,” Quagliano writes. New York Quarterly #59, a posthumous tribute edited by Raymond Hammond, contains new and old poems by Packard, interviews and a sample of his editorials over the years.

The lives of these editors prove that it is still possible to survive and make a big difference with a little light held high, even in the new age of feudalism.

Pushcarts thanks for this 29th celebration extend to all of the “People Who Helped” and the Founding Members of our Pushcart Prize Fellowships endowment, plus Monica Heilman, Jack Driscoll, David Means—fiction editors—and Tony Rrandt, our essays referee, plus guest poetry editors for this edition, Jane Hirshfield and Dori-anne Laux.

Dorianne Laux is the author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions— Awake (1990), What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Smoke (2002). She is also co-author with Kim Addonizio, of The Poets Companion: A Guide To The Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton & Co, 1997).

Recent work has appeared in The Best American Poetry , The American Poetry Review, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Barrow Street and Five Points.

Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize for poetry, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fel-

Laux is an Associate Professor in the University of Oregon’s Creative Writing Program, and a member of The Lead Pencil Club. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, poet Joseph Millar— fondly remembered by Pushcart from long ago pub days—and her daughter Tristem.

Jane Hirshfield is the author of five books of poems, most recently Given Sugar ; Given Salt , a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, published by HarperCollins in 2001. Other titles include Alaya (Quarterly Review of Literature Series, 1982), Of Gravity O Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); The October Palace (HarperCollins, 1994), and The Lives of the Heart (HarperCollins, 1997).

Hirshfield is also the author of a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997), and editor and cotranslator of two collections of poetry by women writers of the past.

Hirshfield has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and has also held residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Djerassi Foundation, and the Bellagio Center for Scholars and Artists. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, and many literary periodicals, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

Hirshfield s books, all of which have gone into many reprintings, have appeared on bestseller lists in San Francisco, Detroit, Canberra, and Krakow. Her poems and translations have found their way to such homes as the New York City Transit Agency’s “Poetry in Motion” program, a John Adams oratorio, a Philip Glass symphony and a brass plaque at a San Francisco bus stop. She has served as judge, panelist, or guest editor for the National Book Awards, the National Poetry Series, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

My profound thanks to Jane and Dorianne and our other editors and to the presses and editors that submitted nearly 8,000 nominations for this year’s Pushcart Prize. To select sixty-two works from so much that is excellent is, of course, impossible. Here then is our version of the impossible.

As Jane Hirshfield wrote of herself at the end of this process. “She is very very tired.”

And elated.

THE PEOPLE WHO HELPED

FOUNDING EDITORS— Anai's Nin ( 1903—1977), Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), Charles Newman, Daniel Halpem, Gordon Lish, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian (1918-1991), Paul Bowles (1910-1999), Paul Engle (1908-1991), Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz (1915-2001), Tom Montag, William Phillips (1907-2002), Poetry editor: H. L. Van Brunt.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS FOR THIS EDITION —Jim Moore, Rosellen Brown, Jewel Mogan, Daniel Henry, Richard Burgin, Melinda McCollum, Dana Levin, Paul Maliszewski, D.A. Powell, Jeffrey Hammond, Sherod Santos, Jim Daniels, Philip Levine, Thomas E. Kennedy, Jim Barnes, William Heyen, Bruce Beasley, Tracy Mayor, DeWitt Henry, Nancy Richard, Paul West, Mark Wisniewski, Margaret Luongo, Marianna Cherry, Christie Hodgen, Beth Ann Fennelly, Kent Nelson, Rachel Loden, David St. John, Ted Deppe, Cleopatra Mathis, Kira Henehan, Elizabeth McKenzie, Ben Fountain 111, Kristina McGrath, David Zane Mairowitz, Ryan Harty, Julie Orringer, Kristin King, Ron Tanner, Marie Sheppard Williams, Martha Collins, Judith Hall, Ellen Bass, Antonya Nelson, Lucia Pe-rillo, Maxine Kumin, John Allman, Mark Irwin, Ed Falco, Maura Stanton, Arthur Smith, John Drury, Kathy Callaway, Jeffrey Harrison, Edward Hirsch, Michael Dennis Browne, Kay Ryan, Michael Waters, Jana Harris, Robert Boswell, Colette Inez, Pamela Stewart, Kim Addonizio, Tom Filer, Dan Masterson, Karl Elder, David Jams, Nancy McCabe, Robert McBrearty, Katherine Taylor, David Baker,

Carl Dennis, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Mattison, Katherine Min, H.E. Francis, Stacey Richter, Richard Garcia, Valerie Taken, Stuart Dis-chell, Joe Ashby Porter, Mike Newirth, Andrea Hollander Rudy, Julia Kasdorf, Michael Palma, Diann Rlakely, Robert Phillips, John Kist-ner, George Keithley, Jim Simmerman, David Jauss, Donald Revell, Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Betty Adcock, Jessica Roeder, Terese Svoboda, Wally Lamb, Michael Bowden, Renee Ashley, Junse Kim, Robert Coover, Salvatore, Scibona, Joseph Hurka, BJ Ward, Andrew Feld, Janet Sylvester, Joan Connor, Robert Thomas, John Kulka, Eric Puch-ner, R.T. Smith, Claire Davis, Jane Brox, Joshua Beckman, Jennifer Atkinson, C.E. Poverman, Timothy Geiger, Maureen Seaton, Linda Gregerson, Peter Omer, Kathy Fagan, S.L. Wisenberg, Roger Wein-garten, Gibbons Ruark, Eleanor Wilner, James Harms, Jane McCaf-ferty, Jack Marshall, Linda Bierds, Ed Ochester, Matt Yurdana, Reginald Gibbons, Kenneth Gangemi, Kirk Nesset, Marianne Boruch, Donald Platt, Carolyn Alessio, Gerald Shapiro, Kevin Prufer, William Olsen, Barbara Hamby, Gary Gildner, Wesley McNair, Christina Zawadiwsky, Robin Hemley, Tony Ardizzone, Bob Hicok, Jean Thompson, Alice Schell, Len Roberts, Lee Upton, Toi Derricotte, Carl Phillips, Ralph Angel, Karen Volkman, Katrina Roberts, William Wenthe, Michael Heffernan, Rita Dove, Debra Spark, Philip Appleman, Daniel Hoffman, Tony Quagliano, Laura Kasischke, Kent Nelson, Christopher Buckley, Fred Leebron, Claire Bateman, Erin McGraw, Judith Kitchen, Melanie Rae Thon, Elizabeth Spires, Thomas Lux, Robert Cording, Charles Harper Webb, Christopher Howell, Molly Bendall, Sylvia Watanabe, Alan Michael Parker, David Rivard, Rachel Hadas, Michael Martone, Lance Olsen, Vern Rutsala, Floyd Skloot, Gerry Locklin, Richard Jackson, Grace Schulman, Susan Hahn, Brenda Miller, Dara Wier, Lloyd Schwartz, Marilyn Hacker, Sharon Dilworth, Josip Novakovich, David Kirby, Robert Wrigley, Marvin Bell, Rebecca Seiferle, Kathleen Hill, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Sharon Solwitz, Michael Collier, Antler, Gary Fincke, Paul Zimmer, Joan Silber, Christian Wiman, Eamon Grennan, Daniel S. Libman, Kirn Barnes, Emily Fox Gordon, Elizabeth Graver, Judith Taylor, E. S. Bumas, James Reiss, Stephen Corey, Ladette Randolph, Dorothy Barresi, Morton D. Elevitch, Glenna Holloway, Pat Stra-chan, R. C. Hildebrandt, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Len Roberts

PAST POETRY EDITORS— H.L. Van Brunt, Naomi Hazard, Lynne Spaulding, Herb Leibowitz, Jon Galassi, Grace Schulman, Carolyn

Forche, Gerald Stern, Stanley Plumlij, William Stafford, Philip Levine, David Wojahn, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Philip Booth, Jay Meek, Sandra McPherson, Laura Jensen, William Heyen, Elizabeth Spires, Marvin Bell, Carolyn Kizer, Christopher Buckley, Chase Twichell, Richard Jackson, Susan Mitchell, Lynn Emanuel, David St. John, Carol Muske, Dennis Schmitz, William Matthews, Patricia Strachan, Heather McHugh, Molly Bendall, Marilyn Chin, Kimiko Hahn, Michael Dennis Browne, Billy Collins, Joan Murray, Sherod Santos, Judith Kitchen, Pattiann Rogers, Carl Phillips, Martha Collins, Carol Frost

ROVING EDITORS— Lily Frances Henderson, Genie Chipps EUROPEAN EDITORS— Liz and Kirby Williams MANAGING EDITOR— Hannah Turner

FICTION EDITORS— Jack Driscoll, David Means, Monica Hell-man

GUEST POETRY EDITORS— Jane Hirshfield, Dorianne Laux ESSAYS EDITOR— Anthony Brandt EDITOR AND PURLISHER— Bill Henderso?i