1983-Vol19

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fume Nineteen ΐίησ 1Q«1

Γ QDAk IO The Literary Magazine of the School of General Studies Columbia University

Mr. J.R. Humphreys Director, Writing Program

r SUBMISSIONS INFORMATION Quarto is edited by students enrolled in Quarto, Literary Magazine Editing and Publishing; Alan Ziegler, instructor.

Current and recent General Studies students—including special students and students in other branches of the University who are taking G.S. writing courses—are encouraged to submit.

Manuscripts may be submitted elsewhere while under consideration at Quarto; please notify us of any acceptances.

Each submission should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope in order to ensure its return. Please also put your name, address, and phone number (optional) on at least one page of the manuscript.

We welcome poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays, including excerpts from longer works. Writers may submit in more than one genre, but each genre should be sent in separately.

Artists should query before submitting.

Address all submissions and correspondence to: Quarto 608 Lewisohn Columbia University NewYork, N.Y. 10O27

QUARTO 608 Lewisohn Columbia University NewYork, N.Y. 10027 Alan Ziegler, Faculty Supervisor Coordinating Editor Production Manager Manuscripts Editor Prose Coordinators Poetry Coordinator Business Manager Associate Editors

Joanne Furio Marko Schmitt Steve Shiffman Andy Whitehead Rob Seidenberg Mary Leou Janet Ellis Beth Bingham, Terry Burton, Jaimie Epstein, Erich Fuchs, L. Anthony Goffe, Julia Gruen, Linda Mahon, Patsy Martin, Neil McGuffin, Andrea Phillips-Merriman, Laura Sachar

© 1983 by Quarto ISSN 0735-6536 Quarto thanks the following for their generous assistance: Dean Ward Dennis, Dean Frank Wolf, Joan Nishiyama, Dick Humphreys, and Gary Glover from the School of General Studies; Jennifer Moyer from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines; Larry Zirlin from Philmark Lithographies; and Mark Roberts, the previous editor of Quarto, and his staff.

Volume Nineteen Spring 1983

Table of Contents Yaedilgnatow The New World Robert Talabac Poems of an Uncommon Cold Anne Fitzpatrick Conversation with God Barbara Milton Bundle Chad Atkins Two Poems Hattie Myers A Little Love Story Richard Crose Two Poems Michael Mason Story Kevin Jensen Of Mice Bonnie Jacobson Over Responsibility N. CaldwellKing TheMail Andre Boissier In Wake of Adonais Shelby Berryman The Magician's Knife KarindelaPena ADayOff Kenny Fries Urban Erotic Jo Henry We Would Be Winter C.A. Pearce The Dream Phyllis Raphael Creative Writing at G. S CONTRIBUTORS'NOTES Cover Photograph by Jian Chen

Dana Walrath

6 8 9 10 17 20 26 28 30 38 40 42 45 52 53 54 56 65 70

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Yaedi Ignatow THE NEW WORLD Nowl am in the new world.

Here I am, and safe because suns shine through into every clearing.

I am forgetful of days living to notice only the light directly before me.

There is only one sun— I walk into any clearing— there it is lighting another landscape.

That is a sign, and I have sat for many strange moments to think how it can be everywhere at once.

If I created the sun it would not be shining everywhere.

This is a magnanimity I did not know about.

In this new world I need little attention from others.

The choice to walk in any direction is amazing, I am calm, too awed by and glad of freedom to be anything but quiet.

I am also happy to be alone:

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I am deeply silenced by the quiet.

My elbows and knees form angles; the points of an infinite star.

If someone could travel into me I would be infinitely wide and deep, as I have heard the fourth dimension is.

They would never know when to return.

Nor do I. I think the point of my life is never to return.

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Robert Talabac

Anne Fitzpatrick

POEMS OF AN UNCOMMON COLD

CONVERSATION WITH GOD: ON BEING TWENTY-EIGHT

O n e late November Winter fell upon Jade Mountain.

Look—on a moonbeam.

Ghosts Ascend.

• Three months ago The old boiler coughed, Then died.

The repairmen came today But poor widow Darcy On the fifth floor Could not be fixed.

• A winter cat Brushed its snowy coat Under a leaning pine.

Above, sparrows shiver In icy nests.

• Awakened by a thousand Screaming gulls.

Gripped by an uncommon cold.

The lighthouse keeper Staggers to the lookout— Driftwood pounds the mist-lined shore.

"A woman are you?"

He said.

She nodded, offering up Her poem.

Coffee-stained and Unfinished.

"No children, no husband?"

He said, Gazing around her room.

The cat purred Under the lamp By the typewriter.

Diplomas hung in A dark corner, Collecting dust.

"It's all I have for now," She said, looking into His face, Seeing only The antique clock, Ticking on The bookshelf.

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F i v e y e a r s a g o Rundle splurged and bought his first gown. The Nagra tape recorder could not capture his grace or the color of pink taffeta or the star on his wand, but it did pick up the inflection of the South in his voice and the swish of taffeta as he rolled through the crowds.

Rundle skated to music of his own selection and spoke with the people he met in the park. He was an outspoken man with views about everything and he had served in Vietnam so his voice had authority. Several New York radio stations had played the tapes twice. The tapes won awards and there were ceremonies to attend and Rundle was touted as the city's ownTitania.

At five-thirty on Friday afternoon, Rundle, via skates, rolled up through Central Park. He had just turned down 90th St. and was gliding past Fifth when a gang of queer-baiting roller-skaters spotted him from the corner.

Rundle sped down the Avenue straddling potholes and holding his hat. He turned down 84th St. dodging the Crosstown and swooping under a saw horse that blocked off the traffic. Just when he thought he had finally got free of them, two pulled at his skirt and one reached for his knapsack. He beat them over the head with his wand and rushed down the street with long strides and frantic wrist action. When he came to Lexington, he turned left to Frankie's.

Thank God for Frankie's. Rundle leaned against the bar door and panted ferociously. "They'll get theirs," he said to Frankie behind the bar.

Back home in his apartment, which was the size of a large closet, Rundle sat down beside himself on the bed. He smoothed his knees, patted the bedspread and looked around at the Japanese calendars.

With trembling fingers he picked up the phone. He had to get a hold of those tapes.

Mordicai Maccabee was the man who had made them. He had followed Rundle around the city with a microphone in hand and sat with Rundle in his room recording his philosophy. The tapes, which were a big success, would mean grants and fellowships for Mordicai, and most of all the opportunity to control his own projects.

For Mordicai the difference between working on his own projects and working on somebody else's was the difference between being an artist and being a technician. Mordicai had no life outside of his artwork. For him, artwork was a matter of life and death.

While Rundle was sitting on his bed calling Mordicai, Mordicai was unpacking his things from a trip. He had just returned from the state of Georgia where he had been recording the words of the men on Death Row. He let the phone ring until the answering machine picked it up, then he laid out his Nagra and put on his earphones and hooked up the Death tapes and pressed his Nagra to play.

He looked out the window at the passersby on the street while a wife of one of the prisoners, one who was in for rape and murder, said, "I'm not saying he did it or nothing, I'm just saying he should be punished if he did."

Géraldine hoping it was Mordicai, picked up the phone on the very first ring. When the voice said, "This is Rundle" she felt disappointed, but she listened as he told her, between sobs, of his mugging. He described the way his heart had pounded and the smirks on the faces of two Irish doormen. He went into detail about his deteriorating mental condition and blamed it entirely on the broadcast of the tapes. He also blamed Mordicai who never returned his calls.

As Géraldine listened her feelings went out to him. The fever in Rundle's voice was in harmony with her own.

At first Rundle and Géraldine had considered each other rivals for an extremely small sliver of Mordicai's time. Rundle used to ask Mordicai what made Geraldine so pale and sickly, and Géraldine asked Mordicai if he had gotten a whiff of Rundle's gown. One afternoon the two arrived together just as Mordicai's neighbor was walking in the door. Jack was a producer so talk was work and work came first and Mordicai sent Rundle and Géraldine out for coffee.

Both of them were silent, feeling the humiliation of their trivial task. Then Rundle spotted a dirty book in a bookstore and Géraldine

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Barbara Milton

RUNDLE

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admitted that she had read it too. For the next several hours they sat in a coffee shop and talked about sex. At the end of that time they made a date to go skating.

The following Saturday they met on the stoop in front of Mordicai's. Rundle went upstairs to change into his full regaha. As he came out, wearing his gown, carrying his wand and a small transistor radio, he delicately reached out for Geraldine's hand. She helped him down the six stairs of the stoop and then they waited for Mordicai who wanted to get their takeoff on tape.

Mordicai recorded everything: the rain, the thunder, waves crashing on the beach. He recorded the sound of voices in a giant cafeteria and the sound of traffic at a busy intersection. He recorded the sound of eggs frying in the morning and the sound of Géraldine sleeping at night. He was always on the lookout for new sounds and new voices, and as Géraldine and Rundle skated off into the distance, he recorded the dissonance of their two pairs of skates.

But as the two continued to skate, though Géraldine was wearing an old pair of clip-ons, the discord of their rhythms turned into a sort of harmony. Mordicai would have been surprised to hear how little they spoke and how great a distance they traveled. How Rundle graciously took Geraldine's hand, pausing while she got her balance, showing her how to turn and how to stop.

After that Saturday Rundle called Géraldine often. He called from the office to complain about Mordicai. He said he was thinking of taking the tapes back. He said he wouldn't have made them if he had known what would happen, It was as if a part of his life was locked up in an absentee's storeroom.

"And do you know how many calls he's returned out of the last twenty-six messages I left on his tape?"

"How many?"

"One." Géraldine would call Mordicai and tell him to call Rundle. "His feelings are hurt," she would say. He'd say, "Then have his feelings checked,"

"I have friends," Rundle went on. "Big, tough men who don't like to see me hurt."

"What are you trying to say Rundle?" asked Géraldine getting exasperated with the go-between role.

"I've told them how Mordicai treats me and I don't think I'll be able to restrain them. They want to break into the house and get back those tapes."

"Rundle, this sounds like a threat," "Every day I read in the paper about another building burning down, I don't think all these fires are accidents."

"Rundle!"

When Rundle got off the phone, Géraldine immediately called Mordicai though she had been waiting for him to call her. She told the answering machine to call back immediately, "It's an emergency!" she added as though it ever made a difference.

At eleven o'clock Géraldine went to bed. She lay on her back listening to the sounds of the street. She decided that if a car drove by in the next sixty seconds she would tell Mordicai she never wanted to speak to him again. He could take his tapes, his success, all the girls who now drooped on him, and shove them up his answering machine for all that she cared.

Before the minute was over headlights unfolded across her ceiling like a Japanese fan. Four seconds later the telephone rang.

"I never want to speak to you again," said Géraldine and without waiting an instant she hung up the phone. Five minutes later she called back to tell him that he was in big trouble and he had better watch out.

"I thought you were never going to speak to me again," said Mordicai with a hint of amusement.

"I'm not, after this," "Why don't you come down here?"

Weeks passed. It went on like this. When Rundle was accosted in Central Park he couldn't help but think it was Mordicai's fault.

"I want those tapes back," said Rundle to Géraldine just after he told her of the chase by young teenagers. "And I'll do whatever I have to do to get them."

Géraldine took a deep breath and looked out the window. If you were lucky you could hear spring between the bickering of two grey birds.

About an hour later she was sitting up in his bed and he was at his editing table listening to tapes. One of the mothers of a man tried for murder was pleading for her son's life in a flat, tired way, Mordicai lowered his earphones and spun around to look at Géraldine, "What," she said.

He didn't answer, "What!" she almost screamed.

That was it! he was thinking. That's how a man's mother should plead for his life, "What what?" he asked, "What are you going to do about Rundle?"

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"I wasn't thinking about that."

"What were you thinking about?"

"I wasn't thinking. I was feeHng." "What were you feeling?"

"I don't want to put it into words."

"Mordicai, are you happy?" Géraldine whined because she wasn't.

"No," he said firmly, spinning away from her on his four-wheeled editing chair. "And I'm not unhappy either. That's the problem with you. You think you're supposed to be happy. As if God owed it to you or something." He re-donned his earphones and tuned back to death.

When the phone rang at two in the morning Géraldine felt Mordicai beside her in bed. After three more rings she reached over him and picked up the phone and propped it up on the pillow. She lay her head on one side and Mordicai lay his on the other and together they listened to the distant tirade of Bundle's threats.

"Are you going to give them to him?" she asked replacing the phone on its cradle.

"Why should I give them to him?"

"He's suffering."

"I'm suffering too."

"Don't you feel sorry for him?"

"Who am I to feel sorry for him?"

"Young teenagers are chasing him."

"If young teenagers are chasing him it's not because of the tapes."

"He thinks he is the tapes."

"He is not the tapes. He is not even the person on the tapes. That person is someone / put together. I cut twenty-four tapes to make that one tape. I invented the person on the tape."

"Will you invent the men on Death Row?" "In some way, I'll have invented them too. The person on the tape wouldn't exist if I weren't there to catch him on tape."

"But the tape is still only a tape. You can always make another.

Meanwhile Bundle is falling apart."

"You don't understand," said Mordicai lying on his back, his neck cocked against the bedboard, his arms folded tightly across his heaving chest.

"What's there to understand?"

"You're dying, that's what. And there's no way out." He got out of bed and went back to the Nagra where he heard himself ask Omar Johnson why he killed his common-law wife. "She was with another man and that hurted me. That really hurted me," Omar said. But even Omar Johnson didn't understand that he was dying. All the

men on Death Bow thought that somehow they'd be saved.

The next morning Mordicai and Géraldine took a walk through Central Park while Géraldine decided what Mordicai should do.

Mordicai was not really listening to her words, but to the singsong of her convictions and a certain triumph in her voice.

"If only I could make copies and give him the copies," said Mordicai.

Géraldine turned to him. "Of course! Give him copies! Why didn't / think of that?"

"It wouldn't have made any difference. He doesn't want copies."

"How will he know?"

"He'll know, I tell you, he'll know."

"Not if you don't tell him."

"He'll ask."

"Lie!" "I can't lie."

It was true. For as long as she had known him he had never been able to lie.

When they got back to Mordicai's they found Bundle on the doorstep. He was wearing tight shorts and his nipples pressed out against his T-shirt like a girl's. Mordicai turned to walk away but Géraldine moved forward in unflinching compassion.

"I've come to pick up the tapes," said Bundle. "And I'm not leaving until I have them."

Mordicai unlocked the door and walked up the staircase ahead of the others. He stopped at Jack's apartment and knocked on the door.

"Help me," said Mordicai.

Jack followed Mordicai and Géraldine followed Jack and Bundle followed Géraldine into Mordicai's apartment. Jack reached into his breast pocket for a Camel.

"Give me one," said Mordicai who hadn't smoked in years.

"Mordicai!" cried Géraldine.

Mordicai smashed the cigarette into the dirt around a dead plant.

"What's going on?" asked Jack, lighting his Camel with an old silver lighter.

"I've come to get my tapes," said Bundle.

"Your tapes?" asked Jack, who knew all about them.

"Without me those tapes could never have been made."

"They could never have been made without Mordicai, Bundle."

"Those tapes are me\ They're my voice, my words, the sound of my skating. He's filching my life! I'm taking it back."

Mordicai strode back and forth across his apartment. He went from side to side, then back and forth perpendicularly. He stopped

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in front of Jack and looked to him for the answer. But Jack kept his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. Mordicai's thumbs were hooked through his belt loops. Géraldine was poking her fist with a finger. Bundle's fingers were splayed at his sides. Mordicai started pacing again.

"I can't take it anymore!" screeched Rundle.

"Oh, Rundle, don'tl" cried Géraldine.

"I can't take it! I can't take it! He's killing me."

"Mordicai!" pleaded Géraldine. "Just let him have the tapes."

"Calm down, Géraldine," said Jack.

Géraldine turned on him. "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS." "It's your business then?" Jack asked calmly.

At which point Rundle crumpled up on the floor. Géraldine threw herself on him like the Mother in the Pietà. "Please, Mordicai, please," she chanted through her weeping. And Mordicai went to the cabinet and took out the tapes.

"Here," he said dropping the box on the floor beside Rundle.

"Take them and get out," and then he opened the door.

Rundle left, and after him Jack, and Géraldine went up to Mordicai, who slowly backed away. He placed his hands protectively over Death's tapes. Bundle's tapes had been so full of life and rainbows.

"I'll get them back!" said Géraldine. "I'll run after him right now.

He couldn't have gotten far. I'll chase him all the way home if I have to."

Mordicai stood at his window watching Géraldine down below.

She ran first in one direction, then in another, then she turned a corner and went out of view. For two minutes there was absolute silence and then a garbage truck got stuck between double-parked cars and traffic jammed up to the end of the block. Horns started honking and car doors started .slamming and a man took the lids off of two metal garbage cans and smashed them together.

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Chad Atkins

THE KNIGHT OF WANDS A t night in my room, curtains d r a w n against the city night I remembered May on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, a swan kicking its w a y through waves to die ashore. O n the beach, its neck lurched out from feathers and d o w n , heaved an arched p a t h to the ground. Like the sun, its bill burrowed into sand.

In the last light, wings, absurd feathered fins, raked furrows in the sand with their flapping.

I listened to waves reach and recede along the beach, a gull keen across the water.

And recalled the legless osprey that circled Lake D u b o n n e t . Her talons lost to a hatchery gull t r a p , she lived for a week, diving dragging her shattered stumps through water until; starving exhausted she lay floating on her back, wings spread, the perfect reflection of an osprey soaring.

• At twelve, the youngest of my grandfather's pallbearers, the smallest h a n d a n d step guiding that casket through the light rain. Drops stained grandmother's black dress, pulled April cherry blossoms from jeweled branches to the ground.

And I dreamed of walking h o m e late from a diner, dreamed the date of my death, saw all the strength that bore my grandfather's casket buried. Four uncles, m y father, I saw the rose

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each held at his death, another figure approaching. I saw my mother staring out an empty window, my eyes hfting to meet a stranger's, returned after many years.

Chad Atkins

WALKING IN OCTOBER Having not been together since August we wake early, and leaving our own gentle turnings, rise, walk out into dawn.

Before us, tobacco, cut and hung this summer, ripens on rafters strung through the barn. Above, Venus wanders through the last minutes of her walking, to sleep in cottonwoods nested beyond the fence line of this field sown new with winter wheat.

Awake in their coop, chickens ruffle feathers, cluck from knotted locust poles, wait for the crowning light of this morning. We pass unnoticed and easing back the field gate pause in the stillness of young grain that will not top till spring.

Venus sets. Behind the barn, light slinks through ironweed, thistle, and up the eastern wall. A call grows in the cock's throat, crows drift from cover across the field. And walking toward them along that new planting, we cap those rows where new grain sheds husk, for a hold in the brown earth.

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Hattie Myers

A LIHLE LOVE STORY

C a n d a c e hit her son Michael whenever he did something wrong.

Once Candace beat him so badly that a doctor in the emergency room at the hospital put stitches in Michael to keep his head from falling apart.

For both of them everything was difficult.

Several times Michael ran to his father who lived in Queens with another family. The last time he told his father he was scared when Candace hit him. His father's wife, who smelled like ripe can­ taloupe, called the Bureau of Child Welfare. A man came and asked Michael questions about Candace. He told Michael to stay with his father and his father's wife and their little girl who Michael never talked to. The man told Michael that everything would be all right.

For three weeks Michael missed Candace. He worried that she was angry with him for leaving her Who else did she have? He wor­ ried that she was drinking and that she hit her head on something.

In his dream he saw blood in the living room and remembered that he was asleep. He looked again and remembered that it was his blood, not Candace's, on the floor.

Candace called Michael on the telephone every day and pleaded for him to come home to her. The man had come to her asking ques­ tions. Candace was angry with Michael because the man thought she was a bad mother.

"You told him I was a bad mother?" asked Candace.

Michael said, "No, no, no. I never said that."

"Just remember who you have," said Candace, "no one but me, Michael. Your father's never been anywhere."

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Candace came to Michael's new school. She saw her son in his new snow coat, carrying his new notebook which his father's wife had bought him. She said, "Michael it is time you come home with me." Her voice sounded sad. Michael nodded, there were no words in his mouth. Here was his real mother with her long yellow hair standing in his new school. Her face looked sad and beautiful.

Michael hugged Candace there in the school.

"You didn't know what you were doing," said Candace. "You are just a child and how are you to know the trouble you cause."

Michael knew then Candace wasn't angry with him. She had come all the way to his new school to find him and take him home.

Michael was sure his father would never have done that. He had heard his father tell the man and tell his wife, "I don't need Michael but if Candace is hurting him he is my son and he can stay with me."

Michael knew his father wouldn't look for him if he disappeared.

Candace needed him. He clung to his mother's hand all the way home. Michael was glad that he didn't look big like some of the children in his class. He was glad that he was still small enough to grab her hand without anyone on the subway thinking he was too big. Candace was all right. She still wanted him.

Despite the fact that the man said it would be better for her if she had no contact with her son, Candace was drawn to Michael even though she knew he was well living at his father's house. Michael had dragged her down for ten years and at age twenty-five Candace wanted her own life, her own friends, work. She knew this. Michael had been so clinging and so nosy she was surprised she missed him.

Candace didn't understand what compelled her to pick up the telephone just to hear Michael's soft voice. She didn't understand why she felt pulled underground into the train that would take her to Queens and to Michael. The whole of Queens became Michael.

She tried to stop thinking about him. She walked the streets which Michael walked to school without going into the school. She did this for several days until she could no longer. She knew he missed her as much as she missed him. She was his mother. Besides, now things would be different. Things had changed for Candace while Michael had been gone. Jaim, who owned the Candy Store, had become her friend.

Candace had not been interested in any man for the ten years since Michael's birth. She had met Michael's father when she was fourteen and before she knew anything. Michael's conception was a complete surprise and Candace felt she had been tricked somehow.

Michael's father said that Candace had tricked him. He was angry with her and wished Michael dead. Candace left him. Candace

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didn't care. After Michael was born, Candace stopped caring about anyone. Michael was hers. Michael wouldn't leave.

Candace was surprised how deeply she could care about J aim after Michael left. She didn't know what Michael would think about this. He will be angry, she decided, and she decided not to tell him if he ever came back. It would be the first secret.

"You are sweet," she told Jaim. But her interest in Jaim got con­ fused with her anger at her small son. When Jaim kissed her Can­ dace kissed him back furiously, thinking in her head, "See Michael, I can be without you. Who needs you?"

The nights after Jaim would leave her were black and quiet. The wintry days left her looking everywhere for Michael. Jaim gave Candace a brief reprisal from her grief, but when he left, waves of dizziness and nausea overpowered her and she cried on Michael's pillow.

When Michael and Candace got home Candace said, "I don't know what to do with you. You make me so tired."

Michael said, "I'm sorry Candace," and he was.

Candace said, "Well you are just a child and nothing is your fault.

It is your father who should have known better."

Michael thought she was thinking his father should have known better than to call the man. Candace wasn't thinking of anything in particular. She had just said the words because the words sounded right. Michael was a child. Nothing was his fault.

Candace broiled Michael his favorite chicken with orange jelly.

She had cleaned the whole apartment and had bought her son a small toy car which the commercial said flicked to do wheelies.

Michael crawled around on the floor and played with his car.

Everything smelled good. The room was warm and familiar.

It wasn't until after dinner, when Jaim came over, did Michael realize that time hadn't stopped between the day he ran away and the day he returned. Something had changed terribly in the three long weeks he had lived in Queens with his father.

Michael knew Jaim from the Candy Store where the Space In­ vaders were. Sometimes Candace would give Michael a quarter and he would practically become the machine with rockets on the screen. He would play against himself until he was defeated or until Candace would pull him home. Jaim was the man behind the counter.

Michael didn't understand why the store was called a Candy Store because there was hardly any candy in it. As long as Michael could remember there were only three Baby Ruths and an old Hershey Bar. Still there were always people in the store. Young men

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would slap each other on the backs and on the hands and drink from cans of beer. Young boys played the machines after school and past dinner until the mothers came to get them or Jaim told them to leave. Michael had never been there by himself but he had been there many times with Candace, who would give him the quarters as she talked with Jaim. Once Michael asked Candace why it was called a Candy Store and she had laughed at him and had said that some things seem to be what they weren't. Michael didn't under­ stand this answer because there was nothing candy-store-seeming there at all. There was so much that made so little sense to Michael that he had stopped thinking long ago about such things.

Jaim looked different without the candy counter in front of him.

It was wrong to see him in Candace's apartment. He came over and patted Michael on the head.

"So you are home now?" he said.

Jaim had never spoken to Michael before. Michael realized that Candace must have told Jaim that he had been away. He wondered if Candace had asked Jaim to look for him and for a moment Michael was full of love for her.

Then Jaim turned to Candace and didn't say anything else to Michael at all. Jaim sat on the sofa and Candace warmed up some of Michael's leftover chicken dinner. Michael watched Jaim eat the food quickly.

It was the first time Michael had ever seen anyone in Candace's living room who wasn't Candace's brother or one of the neighbor­ hood ladies. Michael watched Candace laugh and talk to Jaim and he realized that Candace hadn't cleaned the apartment for him at all. The little toy that he had been given, that he had thought came from her happiness to have him back and some promise of things be­ ing better, didn't mean that at all. Candace had given him the little car because she had found a man. Michael knew all about women who found men from the stories that the neighbor women had told.

His eyes filled with tears for poor Candace.

He hated Jaim. Michael turned his back on the two adults and began crashing the toy car into the wall. Candace told him to stop.

Michael didn't stop at all. It was as though her voice was coming through his ears which were filled with thick socks.

"Michael, stop it now," he heard Jaim say. Jaim's ugly voice was loud. It stung him. Michael glared at Candace and Jaim as he stood up. Then he kicked the wall very hard with his foot and ran into his bedroom slamming the door.

Candace looked at Jaim and tears were in her eyes now. "You see?" she said. "You see what Michael puts me through?"

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Jaim put his arm around Candace and again for a few seconds Candace thought everything would be all right. Because Michael was in the other room and with the door closed, Candace let Jaim kiss her. This time, with Michael home, with someone else having seen how difficult her son could be, Candace let herself soften into Jaim's embrace. Candace let her body soften against him and her mind was, for the first time in weeks, drained of anger and worry.

Jaim left and Candace knocked softly on Michael's door. She didn't hear anything. Candace opened the door gently and saw Michael lying on his bed hiccuping and crying, his hands clenched in white fury. She sat down on his bed and stroked his hair until he stopped gasping. Then she put her hands over his hard fists and waited until his hands relaxed under hers. He turned to look at her and she saw his eyes were swollen and red. Neither of them said anything. They knew each other. They were each other. There was not even space for words between them.

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Richard S. Crose

Richard S. Crose

HARRY

RIDING DRUNK AROUND BUSH LAKE ON A BORROWED MOTORCYCLE

H a r r y Balls drove a '51 Ford that smoked blue oil.

His house smelled like rotting old people and his garden grew wild.

We threw rocks at the yellow stucco and ran when the sun reflected off his thick glasses in the window.

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Lines radiate from the pavement the sun is down and lingers.

A low spot the swamp rises with an eerie chill.

A frog belches A lake nears, unseen Fish farts burn the nostrils.

A flick of the wrist tears in the eyes a slow curve and a rotting forest.

Speeding asphalt a bootstep away keep the eye on line.

The shortest distance lies over the high side.

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Michael Mason STORY Roger Goss turns twelve early in August, Three nights past the new moon.

The night his pop's brother's family hits the place For two soft weeks on an Indiana farm.

Leslie Ann, the daughter,'s twelve too, but unbeLievably stuck-up: Paris poems ballet blahblah— Rog feels like a hick.

(They were six when they last met.

He hit her with a really small truck, And mygod what a racket.

He got in big trouble, and still minds.) Now, For Pete sake, he has to camp up in the attic, A spooky, drafty place with no lights.

Just kerosene. His Grandparents' bed—narrow, stiff, Canopied—won't let him sleep. The meagre moon Pours in the window.

Virgil, the Scottie (also called The Boss), hops On and off the bed.

Outside trees sigh. The canopy flaps. Virgil Whines. The Ught... Oh— Rog remembers how to fly.

He knows the trick at night sometimes.

But this time he flies the bed; it knows how too.

Up—easy—Virgil huffs, whines, wants to come— Down again, "Come on, Virg." Up. Look out! the rafters, careful.

They bump around a while, push, and— Right. The roof lifts like a lid.

They float out into moon country, Dark trees, shining fields.

Rog and Virg fly higher.

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When the farm is toy size, August or no.

The wind bites; they're near the clouds.

They share the quilt.

Watch the moon flood the misty countryside. Virgil, Moved, howls.

They're back by light, sleep till breakfast. Rog Starts to tell the folks his dream over oatmeal.

Realizes he thinks it's real, stops.

Blushes, what a jerk. Later snob Leslie Asks him nicley what it was.

He tells her. The bed, the moon, the cold wind.

That he thought he was awake. She stares; A skinny stick, hair a yard long— "Magici" "Oh hell, it is not." But he thinks She's right. All day he talks, she Talks, What could it mean?

And that night Leslie Ann, with Bog's last year's Winter coat, sneaks up to see, with Rog, Was it real? They wait.

Wait. It gets late. Was it?

Yes. Rog remembers the trick.

Virg hops on, the roof lifts. They fly all night Through light. Clouds, wind, leaves, overviewing The whole world, shivering, thrilled, embracing.

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Kevin Jensen

Where's your father?

Excerpt from the television script Of Mice

BATELEUR CARY

Out back, in the yard.

BATELEUR Doing what?

CARY Cosmology, I think. Shhhh! This is important!

CUT TO TV Screen

SYNOPSIS Dr. Nivek, a biophysicist, conducts his experiment to radically in­ crease the intelligence of cognitive organisms on himself, and then destroys it to keep it out of the hands of Congressman Wittke. After undergoing a drastic transformation, he and his son Gary disap­ pear. He soon surfaces, indestructible, and associates with Prof.

Dan Bateleur, a physicist at MIT, in an effort to disseminate the knowledge he has acquired. His dominant research interest becomes cosmology, and he bends his formidable intellectual powers towards unraveling the mystery of creation. Bateleur soon realizes that he, Gary, and soon, Sandy Landau, a newscaster, are being experimented on by Nivek. Bateleur can only guess at the reason why Nivek desires to understand Bateleur, Cary, and Sandy's emotional constitution, but the answer leaves no one untouched.

NEWSCASTER A month ago, when Dr. Nivek presented his theories about interface fields, fusion, interstellar travel, and genetic engineering, there was a considerable stirring in the scientific community. However, a group of military scientists from the Santo Mentir think-tank in Arizona claim that the derivations of Dr. Nivek's theories rest on faulty postulates.

GARY (angry) Bullshit!

NEWSCASTER If such is the case, then any engineering application of the theories is useless. (Bateleur stares in disbelief) Congressman Wittke, who authorized the investigation, gave this interview before announcing his intentions to run for a sixth term.

The newscaster turns to face the screen behind him, which shows a stilkhot of Sandy Landau and Congressman Wittke. CUT TO Bateleur reveals a mild interest in Sandy Landau.

SCENE

SANDY (as stillshot comes to life) Isn't the authorization of such an investi­ gation. Congressman Wittke, outside your jurisdiction?

TWO SHOT of Bateleur and Gary, sitting in an easy chair watching TV. The room behind them L· dark, and their faces are illuminated by the flickering images of a news program. Quick CUT TO Newscaster

WITTKE Not entirely, but I felt that the circumstances dictated my actions.

NEWSCASTER Good evening, this is the "10 O'Glock News" with the Action Newsmaker team .. .

CUT TO Bateleur with Cary

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SANDY And what are the circumstances?

WITTKE As you know, a number of soldiers were killed by Dr. Nivek after his transformation as he escaped with his son from the Biophysics Research Center. Given Dr. Nivek's unique ability to defend

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himself, we haven't been able to capture or prosecute him for these murders. It occured to me that Dr. Nivek may be using his "theories" to divert attention from the murders. I've worked with Dr. Nivek before. I don't trust the man.

BATELEUR (shrugs) Politics. Perhaps tight control of the contracts will get Wit­ tke some money or power. What can I say? Science takes a back seat to personal advancement. Anyway, it's time for you to hit the sack.

SANDY (sneers at Wittke's last comment) Would you tell the viewers the nature of Santo Mentir's findings?

I want to discuss this further.

WITTKE The scientists of Santo Mentir ran a feasibility analysis on the documents Dr. Nivek submitted to Professor Dan Bateleur and the MIT conference. They found a few of the initial postulates, and many of the conclusions erroneous.

SANDY (pulling out a newspaper and a pad) It has been reported that the scientists who conducted the research were chemical engineers, not physicists, who would have more familiarity with the work.

WITTKE Santo Mentir is the finest research facility we have.

SANDY (realizing Wittke is hedging, tries a new approach) In The New York Times today, a story was leaked that Israel and India exploded nuclear warheads above minor towns. .. (Wittke interrupts) WITTKE (snapping) And satellite photographs revealed that the towns were undamaged. That story is merely speculative, and the photographs were of different areas than the test sites. I repeat: none of D r Nivek's work has found application.

SANDY Could you explain the recent increase in the Pentagon budget?

WITTKE (snidely) Defense contracts, (pause) Why? Bateleur turns off the set. Gary stares at the blank screen. Bateleur watches Gary for a moment, and Gary looks back.

CARY Why is he trying to snow my father?

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CARY BATELEUR (eyebrows raise) Cary, as long as you're my guest, you'll do as I say.

They get up, and Bateleur flicks on a light in the hall as Gary walks in front of him to the staircase. Gary takes a few steps up, turns, quickly gives Bateleur a kiss, and bolts up the stairs. Bateleur, sur­ prised, smiles, and continues walking down the hall to the back­ yard, then outside. He squats beside Nivek's sitting form. Nivek's black elliptical eyes gaze heavenward, and Bateleur follows his gaze to the clear star-studded night sky. The neighborhood is a small, somewhat cramped suburban setting. The area is dark and noise­ less. A few office buildings of no great height are in the distance. A rifle shot is heard, and a brilliant yellow flash occurs in front of Bateleur, who only mildly jumps, as Nivek vaporizes the bullet. In­ stantly, a red beam from Nivek fires off into the distance, to the top of one of the office buildings. Bateleur watches silently.

BATELEUR (looking at the building) Domestic talent or imported?

NIVEK Unimportant.

Bateleur shakes his head, then continues to look at the stars.

BATELEUR You were in the news again.

NIVEK I monitored it.

BATELEUR Wittke is trying to discredit the research papers you submitted to the Conference.

NIVEK To be expected. He will acknowledge my work when it becomes profitable for him to do so.

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BATELEUR

BATELEUR Doesn't that bother you?

Got a light?

NIVEK Knowledge interests me, not how others choose to treat it. Does the loss of your professorship bother you? (Bateleur flinches, but says nothing.) It also appears that most of your neighbors are gone. Gary and I seem to be quite a burden to you.

Nivek, without looking at Bateleur, reaches out and touches the end of the cigarette. Bateleur puffs, and the cigarette lights.

BATELEUR

Thanks.

Bateleur holds his cigarette and squats. He doesn't smoke, but just watches the cigarette burn.

I am a physicist.

I've been thinking, Nivek.

NIVEK That is not always a sufficient excuse in your world.

How dangerous.

BATELEUR You always use it.

NIVEK

NIVEK BATELEUR Knock it off. (pause) Your research seems to be taken awfully lightly...

BATELEUR (pause) Do you know why I invited you to stay with me?

NIVEK You would have me believe that you were just observing Gary and I. But actually, you want the first look at my researches. You want distinction and a chance at recognition worldwide.

NIVEK Scientific research in your culture has yet to be divorced from politics. You stress the industrial applications, but ignore the aesthetics of science. Even then, the applications of my knowledge, which is merely for aesthetics, will only be seen by the elite.

(Bateleur protests; Nivek silerwes him) How naive I was a month ago when I thought to save the world. My interface devices are being fitted on Soviet and American warheads so they can't be shot down. Nuclear fusion is being exploited by the military, and is years from being made commercial. The genetic engineering knowledge I divulged is not being used to create resilient foodstuffs, but to create germ warfare and carcinogens. I was wrong to think knowledge changed people.

BATELEUR (haughtily) I am known worldwide.

It changed you.

NIVEK Only in the scientific community.

NIVEK I desired change. Humanity isn't so inclined.

I have the power to.

BATELEUR And that gives you the right, too, eh?

NIVEK Those with the power rarely need the right.

BATELEUR

BATELEUR

Bateleur takes one long drag on his cigarette, then chucks it.

You make me seem base.

BATELEUR NIVEK

You could change all that.

Just like everyone else.

NIVEK

Bateleur hesitates, then pulls out a cigarette and searches jor matches, but cant find any.

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Oh?

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BATELEUR You have the power to prevent warfare. You could feed everyone.

You could stop the violence worldwide as you've stopped it around yourself!

NIVEK In your cellar, Bateleur, is a mousetrap with a mouse in it that was caught not long ago. It still isn't dead.

NIVEK Don't be so ignorant, Bateleur.

(unsure) So?

BATELEUR How is it ignorant!?! You have a chance to help people! How can you refuse?!?

BATELEUR

NIVEK Exactly, yet you damn me for expressing a similar disposition.

The force of it hits Bateleur. He stands, angered.

NIVEK I didn't cause the suffering.. .

BATELEUR I should throw you off my property.

BATELEUR (cutting him off; miffed) That is no excuse, Nivek!

NIVEK I would most enjoy watching you try.

NIVEK (looks at Bateleur) I am not finished. With my power, I can alter everything I touch. I have the power to mold this planet into anything I want, or to vaporize it completely. Humanity could be made to bow before me, but mankind would wither and rot in my sterile monarchy. And when my monarchy ends, then men like Wittke will attack the flock of humanity with grisly glory. I will not change human nature by governing mankind. My power will only stifle the growth, put a lag in the evolution of man. Suffering existed before me, and it will exist long after me, but with me, it will only lie dormant.

Bateleur, speechless, turns and heads hack for the house.

BATELEUR But with your intelligence, you could change that! You see the problem! Derive a solution!

NIVEK You, Bateleur, are an idealist. You seem to think infinite intelligence makes one more compassionate. Intelligence brings apathy, and at times, contempt. I will not teach those who do not wish to learn. I merely unfold the secrets of nature for men to appreciate, but the choice to look is theirs. Researching is more enthralling than teaching.

BATELEUR That's selfish and contemptible.

Nivek looL路 away from Bateleur, at the sky, then back at Bateleur.

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Dr. Bonnie Jacobson

OVER RESPONSIBILITY

I a m a g o o d g i r l . I conform. I hate conflict. On the other hand I secretly never give in, I am always in control. You might understand now why I have never been able to get pregnant. Secretly I resist giving myself over to the unpredictability of sex. I always hold onto myself. I won't let go.

As soon as I entered the plane I knew that I was in trouble. I always have terrible fears when I have to fly. Since childhood I have resisted giving up control to anyone, and on the other hand I am a passive person. So you can see how much anxiety I generate in myself.

Back to the airplane. I entered with my usual panic, but I anticipated sitting down quietly at my window seat, locking myself into my seat belt, ordering a martini, opening up my briefcase, and putting on the earphones. There was an exquisite Mozart opera that I looked forward to including as background music to lull me.

Luckily I had a day's work to accomplish. Usually when I get into the complex and convoluted issues connected to making loans to foreign countries as well as to large companies in foreign countries, I can begin to soothe myself into a calm state. Numbers are so kind, I love them. They are always obvious. I never have to second-guess them. All I have to do is patiently, seriously, and committedly stick by a problem, and solutions will soon emerge.

When I put on the earphones a cruel turn of fate presented itself.

American Airlines offered to its passengers the opportunity to listen into the cockpit. They kindly decided that there was no reason to exclude the passengers from the same opportunity that is offered to the control tower. I was a prisoner from then on. It was a horrible feel-

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ing. On one hand I knew that I could not actually influence either the pilot or the navigator if I overheard some problem that they overlooked, or on the other hand suppose I did pick up some obscure but significant warning signal which I could communicate to the stewardess and then she could relate it to the cockpit. I am so good at picking up fine details that are at times significant. That quality has often turned a losing business into a sale. In all my many school experiences I have been rewarded for leaving no stone unturned, for being a more thorough member of my class. At home my sister was wild, I was an "A" student, never any trouble, always there.

Over an hour has passed since we have been airborne. Lucy, let go of the cockpit—put on Mozart.

What is the matter with you? You're not getting any work done.

When you land in Toronto you go straight to the customers. You've got to be prepared. You neatly parceled out this work to take your mind off flying. You could have done it last night. Let go of the cockpit, Lucy. What's the matter with you? You're sweating, you're messing up your silk blouse. You're going to have sweat marks under your armpits. You carefully planned out this trip so you would he calm and composed upon landing. Can't you let go of the cockpit? I think you're crazy.

You now have a half hour left before landing. You have hardly moved a muscle in two hours. Your left calf is beginning to cramp up. This is a living hell. Your lower back is strained. You'll never get a good night's sleep in the strange hotel room in Toronto. You know what happens when your lower back goes into spasms.

I can't even get up and go to the bathroom. After the martini and two cups of coffee my bladder is painfully full. I can't leave my appointed place.

The man next to me is trying not to stare but he can't help noticing the tears pouring down my cheeks. I am so humiliated. I bet he can't wait until the plane lands. Doesn't he realize that I am listening for his benefit, for everyone's benefit including my own.

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Ν. Caldwell Kins

On the latch, two magazines with all Of the last year on their covers—no worse For waiting out cold all night—and a Christmas card Addressed 'Resident'. Too late.

THE MAIL 1.

What am I dying to find There anyway? Dash to the box.

Syringes? Sprigs of Hlac, A newschpping? Something Always comes at three o'clock.

A summons.

5.

I sealed the shutters Pulled the door locked And to her said: Forward the handwritten, the crucial.

6.

A note arrived.

Come get me, it read.

Naked winter trees Stripped by the birds clawing In the wind, booted feet sounding In the snow, no jacket, nothing But the stick of butter she left Beside the mail-order pamphlets and The phone company bills. All of it Cold, leaves you cold, chills the afternoon.

3.

She lost two Of her back teeth, my neighbor, the morning Her car battery conked. She said She returned the butter, and left. Cold I opened the box. Alumni news: '56 Arthur Brumtwist lost His heart high up on a ladder.

I'll come after.

4.

A freshfallen blanket one day.

Frosted limbs along the walkway I found No tracks to the box but mine: Too early.

It stayed till morning, a lip of snow

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The cautious snowplow of a family flexing its thighs again.

The air so cold, tears turn to crystal.

But there will be no tears—just exercise.

Time to get in shape, you say.

And you promise a mile.

Andre Boissier

IN WAKE OF ADONAIS Stefan, the way you grin in defeat reassures me that death is not a dirty word.

In the absence of hair your skull is cool and smooth as marble and fuller than any apple this spring.

And your fingers.

You beat the anger and fury and futility of fear with fingers that are firm and full.

Fingers that have thickened overnight into manhood like a Polaroid racing through phases to reach its final form.

The one of your little sister in her graduation dress perched so tenderly between your thumbs: She smiles beyond the gloss, as if tickled.

You smile back, Stefan, forever tickling.

• The Hotchkiss blue of your sweatshirt and the blue of your favorite faded jeans remind me of your last Saturday— also blue. So beautifully blue, I could swear the clouds had been inked in.

Then it hit you: E aster 1 A trip to prepare for. The Swiss Alps.

Corn snow and glacier skiing.

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Promise whom, Stefan?

Is it the thrill of being able to walk without a forest of I.V.'s rooted to your side?

Oh, puppetl You shed your strings long ago, the day you decided cancer rhymed with dancer.

So you waltz your mother down 5th, headbone rubbing breastbone almost to fire, right foot dragging like an ice skate, or as if heavy with tar.

People look and avoid you like a drunkard but by noon and 72nd it is your mother who is drunk. With love.

Just one more block, you say, one more block! And when the fresh air hurts too much, you tell her to talk— about anything: her bridge, her borscht, her honeymoon night— so you won't have to concentrate on the distance left.

Gotta get in shape...

Oh Stefan, in your dignity you drove that monster to madness!

My last memory.

Propped in satin clouds, the polish of your moon softens to a fine bristle.

Your father pulls a tired hand

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across your scalp as if to caress this five o'clock shadow away.

Corralled in the casket, your smile gallops away with itself and the hoofbeats leave dimples that no wake can ever erase.

I w a n t my bug-eyed sister to remember w h a t it is the world has lost tonight and for all those children w h o dare to sleep, there is a match beneath their beds and every tulip this last day of March is a flaming vowel and every puff of baby's breath a w a r n i n g to the stars: You did not die in vain, Stefan.

As soon as the snows melt, you will take your trip.

Your ashes will be scattered on the Swiss ground still wet.

You will still be grinning, as cool as confetti glowing in the palm of paradise.

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Shelby Berryman

THE MAGICIAN'S KNIFE

I t s n o t b a d actually, kind of like spending a lot of time in bed cuddled under heavy covers pretending I'm somebody else, another body another place. I have thought of going away for a while but I know that if I stayed out of the trunk even for a whole month when I climbed back in it would seem as if I had never been away so what's the difference.

Inside the trunk it is kind of limited though, not much to do or much to see through the little holes. For some reason the magician can't seem to fit his fingers through the little holes even with his magic. One thing about being in the trunk is I get to do a lot of thinking. Mainly I think about magic or I wonder about outside, the other side.

When I first got this job I was looking for freedom and excitement. I had this skill with my body so the job seemed like a perfect fit. And in the beginning it was. I saw a lot of places and I only had to get in the trunk in the afternoon. This was when Myra did the night show.

Myra hired me and my first day she took me into her trailer to show me where to put my things but I didn't have any. So, she said, all you've got is that long body. I nodded eagerly and she smiled.

Let's see what I can find for you she said and she opened her trunk. I sucked the straw in my soda and watched Myra while she pulled costumes out of her trunk. One by one she held up the costumes and told me the story of each one. My favorite was covered with pink sequins and when Myra had first worn it in Baton Rouge someone threw a gold watch to her. Later the man came to claim the watch but he changed his mind and let her keep it and he continued to visit

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her in her trailer every night until the magician found out. Myra's costumes sparkled in and out of her trunk and the ring on her finger glittered so regularly that after watching a while I fell into a trance and tried to keep my mouth from falling open. When she finished, Myra tucked me into the bunk that was mine and I listened to her jangly bracelets and watched her pale fluffy head float around the trailer for the few minutes it took me to fall asleep.

The next day Myra took me to the magician's tent to show me how to fold and fit myself into his trunk. It was black with a shiny gold lock and was lined with blue flowered cloth. After she closed the lid on me she talked to me through the little holes in the trunk and she told me how to choose a hole by covering it briefly with my finger so the magician could see my pink tip wink at the hole before I removed the finger and she told me how to avoid the hole with my body as the magician threw his knife into its assigned slot. How fast is the magician's knife I asked. Faster than a tall building she laughed. That reminds me of the nursery rhyme I said the one about the witch's knife and I sang what I could remember: How sharp is the witch's knife witch's knife, witch's knife Sharp enough to split a hare Try it on your wife.

Can it take a slice of life slice of life, slice of life cut the glare and slash the fare Try the witch's knife.

Perfect for a hit of strife bit of strife, bit of strife a touch of mayhem, stirring scare Try it on your wife.

I never heard that one she smiled and she gave me the pink sequined costume for my own because she said it made her feel sad.

Besides she said, it matches your hair.

I wore it for my first performance. The magician held my hand that afternoon as I stepped into the trunk then closed the lid and we each did our work. When he had thrown all his knives the magician lifted the lid and held my hand again as unscratched I stepped out to wild clapping. I saw the trunk studded with knives, each one in the hole I had chosen. I bowed to the audience with my long body

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and they never guessed how I could twist myself around to avoid the magician's knives. Sometimes he threw two at once. I thought him handsome and dark but he never spoke to me and I rarely saw him except when he touched my fingers before and after the trunk each afternoon. Whenever I thought he was looking at me I blushed and I felt calmed only when he touched my fingers. I was proud each time I stepped from the prickly trunk unscratched, a tribute to his magic.

I guessed he stayed in his tent most of the time and when Myra wasn't with me I figured she was in his tent with him. Every night I watched their show and I hoped he thought I looked as beautiful as Myra did when he opened the trunk and she stepped out whole.

When I wasn't watching Myra and the magician I watched the other acts and, making friends with the performers, I learned to help them out. I handed Lloyd the flaming sword for him to swallow and Sam taught me how to transform his own face into Elizabeth Taylor's beauty or Abraham Lincoln's sorrow. On Sam's face I built up layers of the new face with putty which I painted and bewigged, yet underneath all those layers Sam was still alive. When I finished Sam would look in the mirror and guess who he was while I tried to guess who I was. I often went to visit the fat lady and I wondered who she was beneath all her putty. She fed me candy and I matched her fudge for fudge while she told me that she used to look just like me.

With the exception of the magician we all took care of each other sharing what we had, mainly smiles of one size or another. I never saw the magician smile at Lloyd or Sam or the fat lady or even stop to drop a few words. I thought he must be lonely but Myra said he just didn't like talking to people. When Myra was sad I cooked scrambled eggs for her. She liked the fluffy way I made them. I wanted to feed the magician too but Myra told me he didn't care about eating.

All that year we toured the country, Myra and I alternating stints in the trunk and eating scrambled eggs in our trailer. While she ate, I watched Myra's ring with the pink stone glitter back and forth to her mouth. The places we passed through became just names after a while and I stopped looking out the window when we travelled.

At Christmas it was warm because we were in Mobile. Myra gave each of us a present wrapped in blue paper decorated with little child angels dressed in white triangles. I saw the magician's hand tremble as he untied his ribbon and opened the little box. He pulled out a gold watch and suddenly his face looked a lot like Sam being Abraham Lincoln instead of full of Christmas cheer the way it

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should have. His face weighed me down and I thought that if only I had Sam's putty and paint I would change the magician into Danny Kaye.

My present from Myra was her ring with the stone that glittered like a pink sequin. I was thrilled but it seemed to me the magician looked at me and shook his head. I blushed as usual. The ring was a little tight and I haven't been able to get it off since, not that I really want to.

When we got to Baton Rouge Myra was gone. Nobody seemed surprised although the magician looked less dark than usual. I cried but the fat lady patted me and said let her have her chance, let her try the other side. I wondered why the magician didn't bring her back, pull her out of his hat, but I didn't dare ask him. I wonder if Myra found someone to make scrambled eggs as good as mine.

In Natchez the magician asked me to stay in the tent after the show so we could discuss my work. While the audience dwindled away I waited anxiously for the magician behind his curtain. There were a lot of blond wigs lying about but no bed and I wondered where he slept. Soon he appeared before me and spoke: would you care for gootay he said. I didn't know what this gootay was. I thought it must be some kind of pig Latin but I couldn't make sense of it even backwards. I have since learned that it means having afternoon tea in French but I had soda and cookies which came close to the real thing I suppose. The magician ate nothing. He told me I was doing a fine job and he would like me to do the night show too. For the night show he said I would like you to wear this blond wig which he was putting on my head. No he said this one won't do and he tried another wig.

While he tucked my hair into the wigs his fingers passed regularly over my cheeks and neck and his words ran on softly. I couldn't understand what he said but in my trance I didn't mind. When he was satisfied with the fit of the fluffiest palest wig he led me to the trunk and removed one of the knives. Get in he said and let's see how you fit now. I folded myself into the trunk the same as usual.

Good he said, some of the silver hairs are sticking out of this hole.

When the knife enters the hole it will sever the hairs and they will fall lightly to the floor; a subtle touch. I began to unfold myself.

Wait! he said, I have a new idea for our act. Put on this silver costume. He thrust it at me and closing the lid on me he continued speaking: if you can change at the same time as you are avoiding the knives you will appear to the audience to be two people. A pink girl

will enter the trunk and after the knives a silver girl will emerge: before and after.

After much effort in the trunk I was ready and I knocked on the lid. He lifted the lid quickly and looked in. That's fine he said but you'll have to practice and do it faster and he closed the lid. Again I knocked when I was ready and again he said faster. I struggled in and out of the costumes faster faster. You are making progress he said but you need some fast hints. I followed his instructions and took heart from his encouragement and I tried to keep track of which color I was, pink or silver. But I lost track and I called out: why don't you just change me with some magic words? No he said kindly, you must do your own work faster and take pride in it. But now you need rest and he opened the lid. My how you glow and glisten he said and I looked down and saw that I was all silver instead of myself.

I didn't go so often to see the fat lady anymore; I stopped handing Lloyd his flaming sword and Sam had to make his faces by himself.

One way or another I was always in the magician's trunk and I never wanted to leave it. Same old story I guess except it was new to me then especially the part with the knives. I had to wear makeup on my body during the shows because the magician said the scratches I got when we were in the trunk together were bad for business.

Let's get rid of these knives I said to him one day when we were in the trunk, it's too crowded with them in here. I'm sorry he said firmly but we need my knives: my magic is in my knives. You and your magic I said why don't you turn yourself into Danny Kaye or why don't you swallow your knives like Lloyd does—I never get cut on Lloyd's sword. At this the magician paled. I don't want you to get cut he said but it's the only way.

Another day I pleaded again: at least take some of the knives out I said, eleven or twelve perhaps. He agreed in part and removing half a dozen knives he held the lid open for me but when the lid closed on us all the knives were back in place. We argued over the knives daily.

The surface of my body progressed from a few lacerations to a plaid and after Lloyd cut his mouth I had nightmares about the knives. I told all this to the fat lady. She shook her head sadly and after that the rest of the folks avoided me the same as they did the magician.

The magician grew thinner and his darkness seemed to seep away leaving hollows and dents in his face. I noticed this with a concerned eye and I kept my other eye on his knives.

I had to take steps to save us. I waited until one day when the magician went behind the curtain after the show. Quickly I re-

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moved all the knives from their holes and I locked myself in the trunk with them. I heard him walking around looking here and there for me. He called to me but I didn't answer. There followed a long quiet and I lay in the blue flowered lining of the trunk cuddled with the knives. I awoke to his voice. What are you doing in there he said. Keeping your knives warm I answered. There was a pause while he noticed the knives were missing from their holes. You must come out he instructed. I won't I said. I will make you come out he said and I saw the light which came through the holes flicker on the blue flowers as he tried to press his dark fingers through the holes. I watched the blue flowers dance about for quite a while. He did not give up.

I wanted to let him in. I will make a bargain with you I said and all the holes became light once more. I will trade you for your knives I said, you can come in if the knives go out. There was silence and the light remained steady in the holes. I opened the lid and dumped the kiuves on the floor and the magician's pale face climbed into the trunk with me. The lid closed over us and I waited. I waited quite a while but we didn't go anyplace. At length he turned to me in the dark trunk: you see he said I cannot be separated from my knives.

I burst from the trunk and ran to my trailer and locked the door.

But he came after me and making a hole in the trailer with one of his knives he reached in and touched me with his fingers so that I had to open the door.

He led me back to the empty trunk which bristled once more with his knives. We folded ourselves together and closed the lid and the wind whistled in our ears. I wasn't sure we would come back at all but when we did the magician opened the lid and saw me and he hid his face in his hands. And when he uncovered his face the dents and hollows were filled with water. He helped me to the fat lady's trailer and left me at her door. Poor thing she said what a brute and she took care of me for several days and I didn't go into the trunk. I thought the magician came to see me but it turned out to be Sam wearing the magician's face.

I got bored with the fat lady's fudge and this morning I went back to my trailer and covered up my wounds. At showtime I went to the magician's tent and found him throwing knives into the empty trunk. A few people were watching and snickering. Some of the darkness came back into the magician's face when he saw me and he lifted my hand gently as I stepped into the trunk. After the first performance more people came in. This time I got in the trunk pink and I came out silver. The audience cheered as I got in once more and the

magician threw his knives. I lay there pink waiting for him to open the lid. I heard him fiddling with the lock. The audience began to murmur. The show is over I heard the magician announce and the grumbling grew louder.

As I lie here amongst the barely visible blue flowers and the sharp points I twist my pink ring round and round and I wonder why he doesn't let me out although I must admit the idea of staying here with the blue flowers appeals to me. Perhaps I could seal myself in here and plug up the holes with Sam's putty. Foolish dream. As if soft putty could withstand the magician's knives. And now I've lost my ring. After fiddling with it all this time it has come off and fallen to the bottom. It is somewhere in here amongst the flowers and the points but it is dull and I can't feel it.

I touch the sharp points of the knives and I wonder if they could be turned against the magician: the next time he throws the knives I could fail to avoid the holes. Then when he lifts the lid I will be lying in pieces and he will be ruined.

The audience has gone silent now and the magician is opening the lid. He helps me out and I see that the people have all left.

Where is your ring he asks quickly. I lost it in the trunk—why wouldn't you let me out? I don't know he says, I'm tired of this work and I'm tired of this trouble; let's get in the trunk and find your ring.

I can see that he is tired and I realize that I have a chance to escape his magic. I have a choice to make. I'm thirsty I say to him please give me to drink. And while I suck on the straw the magician sits quietly beside me with his dark eyes closed. I tell him I am ready and he smiles and takes my hand. You're tired I say you go first and I will hold the lid for you. He pats my hand and as he folds himself down into the trunk I close the lid with a ferocious bang and like lightning I pull out all the knives, all his magic, and I flee on fast tears before I can let him out again.

So now I have the knives and he doesn't and I have lost his fingers and Myra's ring but I keep telling myself that this is my chance to try the other side.

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Karin de la Pena

Kenny Fries

A DAy OFF

URBAN EROTIC

A day when eagerness curls and bubbles through her veins.

When the sun and she straddle her bike by the fountain in the country of the city.

Allowing the memory of the blue-burn of your eyes— before the chill crept in.

Gently touching the tender places which haven't healed yet— loving the hurting love still in her.

The brazen leaves snatch her breath— soaring her falling her.

While the changing pressure of the bicycle seat holds her to the earth.

h e stands against a pole at the end of the subway platform sixteen with a slim brown cigarette hanging on the edge of his lips I light it with my eyes following him into the train we jolt forward the hairs on his arm brush against my elbow the train stops between stations and our eyes meet just as the lights go off his palm pressing on the back of my hand and the light goes on in my bedroom as I reach for a Salem smoking gently as he starts picking up his clothes scattered on the floor my hand touches his naked shoulder brings him back into my bed the light stays on till morning I put him in a cab and take one alone downtown

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Jo Henry

WE WOULD BE WINTER Some would take you to summer's sands and oil your body and let you bake in the sun until your skin burned red.

And the sand became impossible to brush away from your toes and fingers.

We would invert ^he^seasons for ourselves and the season of death would become the season of life and the snow would be blossoms.

I would be your blanket and you would be mine and we would be winter.

Some would hold you close on a sultry night until your skin couldn't breathe and your hair clung to your face and the damp sheets made you restless.

Abandoning your bed you would stand naked near a window with no breeze.

But I would turn the skies to winter and wrap you warm and woolly till only your eyes were peeping.

And lead you out to show you winter's lace draping the forest pines.

I would brush the snowflakes from your clothes and lay you down by a fire in a room of scented candles.

Sharing the shadows we would talk in silence and with our bodies.

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C. A. Pearce

THE DREAM

W h e n s u m m e r s g o t m e a n in Shelbume and leaves hung silent on heavy, moist trees and nothing moved on Mill Street where Louis lived with his nine brothers and sisters except the occasional goat cart carrying fruits and vegetables, the Italian goat man calling "DEE DEE DEE DEE WADIE-MELONS," and his goats leaving little black pearls behind on the street glistening like sweat balls, those were the times when money and ice cream linked in Louis' mind and started him wanting his very own ice cream store with an unlimited and unending supply.

He couldn't remember how old he was when he sold his father's coat to buy ice cream, though that's when the dream got really solid. It probably happened before Teeny Baby was born and died; long before his much younger brother, Harry, got hit by a car on the highway; before the war surely, but after Father Divine's white women helpers moved into a barn one block over with their son Thankful Obedient Love who became a fast buddy to Louis even though he was white. Louis and Billy, his brother a year younger, sometimes shot beebees at Thankful's barn windows from their house, since they were all friends; and it was about then and in between, among all these things, that money, ice cream and the face of Louis' mother suffering from the heat began to interweave.

It was around the time Louis tried to beat up his pal Black Rascal for ratting him out to some bad guys he'd been yelling at from behind a thicket of bushes, "See your hiney black and shiny." And it was around the time Louis almost died from eating green pears from Mrs. Huffs tree; but a stranger, a mysterious woman, came to their door, told his mother how to make a certain mixture that

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would save him, then walked down Mill Street and was never seen again, but Louis got better.

Ice cream mixed with these events as the best memory of all because it brought back the sight and smell of his mother wiggling her toes as she spooned up the mixture gone somewhat soupy on his trek from the store, and certainly by the time she reached the cardboard bottom it looked like milk but she didn't care. Wiggling, wiggling her dusty toes, she ate, this particular time, the ice cream Louis bought by selling his father's coat. She never asked, how'd you get the money, son. But his father learned.

From working the ash route, running behind the huge trucks, picking up cans heavy enough to stop most men, hoisting them to his shoulder, then heaving them into the back of the truck where they were emptied then tossed back, at the same time as he struggled to build a congregation in his church, Reverend Oliver brought home clothes plucked from boxes and pails set out along the sides of the Shelburne streets. Thelma washed the cotton things, threw the others into the basement. From the washing machine, the clothes line, she stacked the cast-offs behind doors where they formed tangled, unsized, unironed mounds.

Getting ready for school, Louis, like his brothers and sisters, either wore what he had on the day before or else dug through the clothes hills to find something that looked close to fitting.

Those garments in the basement, woolly and stiff, never did get washed or worn, just lay there as though waiting for the benediction of cold weather. That's where Reverend Oliver's black coat rested. It was "Poppa's coat" from the time it appeared simply because it was too big for anyone else. The coat lay to stinking with the other woolies; the stack mildewed, dried out, mildewed again with the black coat right near or on the top, depending on whether somebody bumped the pile or not as to where the coat lay from one season to the next, in one shape or stretch, arms straight, curled, outflung, fake fur collar snarled and mean looking, the coat lay waiting.

For him, Louis decided on an especially muggy, breezeless August afternoon while his father was at church. Waiting for him to buy his mother's ice cream, that's what that coat was doing. The rag man was due, which meant to Louis' mind that the good Lord had added up two and two for him and was just waiting for him to take advantage of the arithmetic. Louis hopped down the stairs; he bundled the coat with several other items from right underneath.

"You don't want to go traipsin off to the rag man all alone, do you coat?" Louis talked as he wrapped the smelly clothes around four bricks, for the rag man bought by weight. Louis kept the bundle out 57

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of sight till he heard "RAAAAAAGGGGGS" from the end of the block, and the clomp, clomp of the mule rattling the wooden cart along toward his house on Mill Street. Louis darted out, dangling his heavy black wool ball of clothes and bricks, ran straight to the old rag man who sat, eyes nearly closed under white bushy hair and brows, a hook nose, never looking at Louis. He seemed to know rags by their smell alone.

Louis handed over the huge knot carefully, noted how neatly he'd tied it together with the arms of his father's coat which looked as if they belonged on some deacon. Louis shifted, foot to foot, as the rag man plunged his hand into the tangle and plucked out the first brick. Louis looked away, mumbling, "Wonder how them things got in there, umm, ummm," but the rag man never spoke just stuck his hand back into that itchy mess and came out with another, the third, then finally the last brick fell down to the dirt. Satisfied at last, the rag man placed the much lighter offering onto his swinging scale, pulled out some coins and without warning poured. Louis stretched his hands out just in time to catch the booty, then he bent for his bricks and ran.

When the bricks were safely stashed in weeds back of the house, he tore off to Sampson's store where he handed over all but the last cent of his father's coat money. Happily, giddily, he swung home with the white paper bagged treasure and handed it over to his mother.

Thelma Oliver looked at Louis for a moment with eyes that looked just like horehound candy to him, so sweet and brown; then she slowly pulled off the lid, licked its underside round and round with a tongue turning white as Louis laughed, spun on his toes, wobbled his head and yelped, "OWEEE, OWEE, OWEEE." "Richard," his mother always called him Richard but nobody knew why, it was just something she did, "Richard, calm yourself."

She found a chocolate section nestling halfway to the bottom, and she ate the whole quart as Louis watched. One spoonful went to Louis who reverently took it into his mouth and held it there as long as he could before the stuff just insisted on disappearing down his throat, making it sticky. "Look, my tongue got brown," he said, and laughed.

Next morning at dawn, he always got up at dawn, Reverend Oliver rampaged through the tiny house on Mill Street, "WHERE'S MY COAT," he shouted, ram, pam, rip; yanking open the door to where the kids lay, jumping in sleep with the bites of bedbugs that got fat and round, brown, shiny stomached from feeding on them all night. Louis had discovered long before that when he rolled over

on one it popped blood. The girls, all mashed into one bed, the boys stretched out side by side on the floor, began blinking and yawning at the sound of their father's voice from faraway real life.

"WHERE'S MY COAT? COAT, COAT," he repeated, then stamped into the living room. "I need that coat."

"Pops wants his coat, brother," Billy stated quietly to Louis who lay next to him, eyes closed.

"I hear him," Louis said. "Nothin I can do now. Why is it anyway, he only needs that coat when it's gone. Why don't he ever need nothin no time but when he can't get it, and how'd he ever see it missing anyway. He never notices that pile of clothes downstairs that I know," unless he's hiding money, Louis thought.

Reverend Oliver hid small brown paper sacks of coins in the chinks of the basement ceiling beams, and every so often, Louis would pry them out, count the money and replace the sacks, just to keep track. In case he ever needed something really bad. This time he'd thought taking the coat was safer. He didn't want his father to realize he knew about the money.

"Your father needs that coat for a ministers' meetin for tomorrow," his mother told Louis before leaving for the Morris house.

"Why do you tell me about it, Mumma?" Louis asked, eating a bowl of beans at the table.

"Cause the kids say you kno.w where it is. You sure better bring it right back—if you can."

"What kids—Billy, right?" He never could tell Billy anything but always made the mistake of telling him everything. Tales just slipped out of him. Louis loved to talk.

"I aint namin names. I only heard that you know where it is, so if you do, you better git it on back or else your father's gonna be mad when he gits home, you know how he can be." Thelma closed her lips tight. There was nothing more she could do about the events she saw spreading out ahead of her involving her son.

Louis had no idea where the rag man lived, so that night when the Reverend got home from church, he pulled off hLs belt and called all three biggest boys and the oldest girl. Cookie, into the living room, told them, take off your clothes cause he was going to give them a whippin, figuring if anybody had done it, they must have.

Cookie started to run as the belt connected, raising red stripes across her naked back and buttocks; stomach; tiny, unformed breasts. Her skin gleamed with sweat as she ran around the small room like a cow in a pen.

Billy fell instantly to his knees, started to cry and pray out loud.

"OH GOD, I'LL DO BETTER, JUST DON'T LET MY FATHER

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BEAT ME FOR SOMETHIN I DIDN'T DO. PLEASE GOD, SOFTEN HIS HEART. THE HEART OF MY POPS. I'M SORRY. BESIDES IT WAS LOUIS DID IT ALL. HE STOLED THE COAT GOD AND YOU KNOW THAT TOO. AMEN, AMEN, AMEN. " This was an old act, quite familiar to Louis as well as his father, but it sometimes worked for Billy when his father got out the belt.

Groveling was something Louis refused to do, so he generally got hit the worst. He stood straight, grim mouthed, not saying a word, not crying, not pleading for mercy or shouting or praying even though the goddamned belt hurt worse than bites from the devil's teeth in hell, the way he imagined them. Not giving in, not falling down or fainting, just standing, arms crossed, as swack, swack, the belt came down across his back with all his father's might behind it, all those ash-route muscles straining into the swing of the strong belt, and Louis began humming a song like he was just passing the time of day. "Hurry up sundown, see what tomorrow bring," he hummed and half sang, and only if you stood right up next to his face could you see the pain lurking in the recesses and shadows behind the sheen of moisture that glazed his eyes; in their deepness lay the revulsion and the anger he hid from the satisfaction of his father.

Swack, swack.

Johnny saw who was getting the worst, and copied Billy. He fell to crying, too. Just the sight of those welts and gashes, purple blotches and jagged rips, the sight of the blood trickling down Louis' arms, backside, the backs of his legs, well that sight scared Johnny half to death. "GOD PLEASE DON'T LET MY OLD POPS HIT ME, I'M JUST A KID," he started in praying. Cookie just kept running, nobody knew why. She never tried to escape through the door, just ran, bumping into the sofa, the chair, the table like she was blind, madly trying to escape the buckle at the end of the belt, afraid to go whole hog and make a break out of the room.

Louis didn't blame Johnny and Billy, that was their way; but he could never forgive the sight of Cookie scrambling without a murmur, taking the buckle lash on her bare belly and breasts and across her face sometimes, with the chorus and hum of the two boys in the background, both of them kneeling by the chair where their mother usually sat but not that night, kneeling there mumbling, "DON'T HURT US; GOD DON'T LET HIM HURT US," like a Greek chorus, Louis decided later when his mind was clearer, like a goddamned Greek chorus. For all her blind panic, Louis respected Cookie more.

His father's arm finally tired, eventually it always did. He put the belt back on around his waist, walked to the doorway and paused.

pointing his finger. The praying stopped and the crying; Cookie paused, holding onto the arm of the sofa, swaying just a little. Louis never turned his head; he stood totally still, fists clenched exactly as he'd stood for the entire beating like nothing was happening.

"THAT WAS MY COAT," their father shouted from back of the pointed finger. "I want the thief who took it to bring it back by tomorrow morning less there's going to be more whippins around here. Now go out and clean up the yard you boys. Cookie, take care of your sisters. Make some supper."

Slam bang went the door, footsteps down the porch stairs; a quiet of summer leaves once again claimed the Mill Street house. The two praying brothers got up, wiped their noses on their arms and slunk into the kitchen to put on some clothes and play jacks. Louis, feeling like a piece of hamburger meat, limped toward the bathroom to wash off his back with a cloth he pulled from a clothes pile in the corner, hoping it was clean. Cookie followed. He wiped off her blood rivers, patted her cuts gently before tackling his own. Neither looked into the other's eyes.

Reverend Oliver went to the ministers' meeting next day wearing a plaid sports jacket, black bow tie; but no fuzzy, fake-fur collared coat. There was no beating that morning before he left, though Louis had his mind set for it, and was prepared again to keep from crying.

When he spotted his father returning that night, Louis climbed high into the tree out back, waited until his father had eaten the leftover steak Thelma had brought home from the Morris's where she cooked and kept house, waited until the lights went out and snoring came from the middle window. Louis crept back home, creaking the doors open as softly as a mosquito, then lay on his side and a bent arm next to a sleeping Billy tangled in a wrinkled sheet on the floor. A bedbug nipped one leg without respect for the welts as he began, "Now I lay me down to sleep.. ." and the prayer melted the pain behind his eyes, letting him float on over into a dream.

He stood behind the counter of his own ice cream store. Starwhite containers of vanilla ice cream drifted about like balloons as Louis dipped cone after cone, handing them out free to his brothers and sisters, then all the kids on the block. The tube he dished from had no end. Beside him in a velvet rocker, his mother sat nodding and smiling. He handed her a three-tiered butterscotch sundae lavished with whipped cream, covered with so many maraschino cherries that the cream turned pink in puddles.

Louis felt grasshoppers of excitement jumping in his chest, living

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for a while in this place where he was headed, where life would be good not only for him and his family but for all people of color.

Everything happened for a reason, the dream soothingly conveyed, and life's too fine to be true sometimes if you just wait.

"Thank you God, indeed it is. Amen," Louis' lips moved in the night without making a sound, letting that dream take him on through the darkness.

Jan Sosnowitz

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Phyllis Raphael

CREATIVE WRITING AT G.S, THE BACK OF THE BOOK The Back of the Book, a new section of Quarto, includes features and contributors' notes. For this issue, Quarto invited Phyllis Raphael, an instructor in the School of General Studies Writing Program, to write a brief history of the program.

Phyllis Raphael is the author of They Got What They Wanted, a novel, and Beating The Love Affair Rap and Other Tales From The Village Voice, published this spring by Orca Press.

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The history of Creative Writing at Columbia's School of General Studies reads like a well-crafted plot. An innocent, young writing department soars to early success, rides the crest of the wave, suffers a devastation in middle age, but fights back and emerges wise and triumphant.

The drama opens in 1911 when Professor Walter Pitkin of The University Extension Program—which became General Studies in 1949—offered his first class in The Theory of Fiction Writing, making Columbia the second school in the country, after The University of Chicago, to include Creative Writing in its curriculum. University Extension, with its weekend and evening classes, was an outgrowth of "Home Study" and was created to serve the working community of New York City.

The Theory of Fiction Writing was designed for students who wanted to write and publish in the flourishing short story market of those years, when readers were enchanted by the tales of O. Henry and De Maupassant. Accordingly, catalogue copy for The Theory of Fiction Writing promised that "details of construction [would] be investigated and the student called upon to contrive plots, depict characters and incidents and write at least three stories of 3,000 words each during the year."

By 1923, less than fifteen years after Professor Pitkin's experiment had attracted an initial twenty-five students. Creative Writing at Columbia had blossomed into a program of over a thousand young writers able to choose from among thirty-nine course sections. In addition to beginning and advanced classes on short story writing 65

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taught by two graduates of The University of Chicago, Helen Hull and Dorothy Scarborough, there were offerings in Juvenile Literature, Magazine Article Writing, Dramatic Construction, Writing The One Act Play, Critical Writing, Essay Writing, Biography, Prosody, and Technique of the Novel. Helen Hull's tenure at Columbia was to span five decades. According to legend, she stormed the campus one day shouting, "Let me teach."

In 1924, the thriving department took a step into the future when Departmental Representative Frank Patterson established The Writers Club and initiated the tradition of inviting working authors to speak informally before student audiences. Still going strong today, the student-piloted Writers Club has hosted eveningswith Wilham Carlos Wilhams, Carson McCullers, James Michener, Dwight MacDonald, Arthur Miller, Scott Spencer, and David Ignatow.

The same year, 1924, also saw the publication of the first edition of Copy, a volume of student writing, as well as Ms., a literary monthly containing articles and essays by the staff as well as contributions from the men and women who addressed The Writers Club.

A page opened to at random in that publication advises that "A piece of writing suffers no sea change by being printed and paid for.

Neither will it change from something rich and strange to something cheap and ordinary." Although both publications were discontinued during the depression of the 1930's due to lack of funds, their influence is alive in the annual issue of Quarto. Today, literary magazines and readings by writers abound; the School of General Studies was a pioneer in both areas.

In 1928, Professor Donald Clark, a scholar, took over from Frank Patterson, and the next twenty years was a golden age for writing at Columbia. Clark brought in Budd Schulberg, Dorothy McCleary, Carohne Gordon, Louis Paul, Whitt Burnett, Oliver La Farge, Leonora Speyers, William Owens, and John R. (Dick) Humphreys to teach, while the student body produced two of its most celebrated alumni, Carson McCullers and J.D. Salinger, characterized by his teacher Whitt Burnett as "a young man who sat and gazed out the window all the time." Hallie Burnett recalls writing a story in her future-husband's class which, after its publication in their famed Story Magazine, won a third prize in the O. Henry Award Contest.

It was during this period as well that The O. Henry Short Story Collections were edited by another staff member, Blanche Colton Williams.

Faculty lore is abundant. One anecdote reveals Whitt Burnett's teaching method: He is said to have acted out stories in class and if they were illogical, the staging made them ridiculous. William

Kunstler, the famous attorney, once taught in the program. He had had a short story published in The New Yorker and is said to have read it aloud to his class without revealing its authorship. As the tale goes, his class was unsparing in its criticism and Kunstler reportedly emerged visibly pale, saying, "My God, they ripped it to shreds."

Helen Hull was extremely successful both as a novelist and short story writer and is rumored to have opened each semester by announcing to her packed classes, "1 made a zillion dollars writing last year and you can do it too. Just listen to me and do exactly as I tell you." William Owens recalls her wry comment, "Young writers write. Old writers steal."

Donald Clark broke new ground with the introduction of courses in editing, marketing, publishing, and book promotion, but his most enduring contribution to General Studies was Structure and Style, described in the 1944-45 catalogue as a course planned "to bridge the gap between a first year academic class in writing and such professional courses as short story, novel, playwriting, and article writing." Brilliantly refined and honed by the present Director of The Writing Program, Dick Humphreys, the course, which now includes poetry, is the cornerstone of The Writing Program and required of all writing majors. Structure and Style stresses the imaginative point of view and is recognized as a model approach for every novice writer who wishes to experiment with fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, and poetry aรงd learn the rudiments of characterization, plot, voice, rhythm, dialogue, and imagery.

Helen Hull became Departmental Chairman in 1950; upon her death in 1956, the post was passed to Professor William Owens and then to novelist Daniel Dodson. In 1962, Dick Humphreys took control of the program he had been affiliated with since 1946. A faculty anthology between 1950 and 1966 would register such luminaries as Pearl Buck, Rust Hills, Martha Foley, Susan Sontag, Harvey Shapiro, Stanley Kunitz, Grace Paley, Richard Yat&s, Anatole Broyard, and William Goyen, and the students numbered the young Mario Puzo and Peter Feibleman among them. However, the University attitude towards creative writing at General Studies was changing, reflected in the gradual decrease in writing courses. By 1966, sixteen or seventeen pages of course offerings had been reduced to two or three sections of Structure and Style and a fiction and poetry workshop. That same year, the University formed the Writing Division of the School of the Arts, but, unlike General Studies, this new program was restricted to graduate students.

Opinion is divided as to the reasoning behind University decisions

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that diminished the ebulliently healthy General Studies Writing Program—the only place in the University where outsiders who weren't degree candidates could study writing. One theory holds that because writing courses are seen as "creative" rather than scholarly in nature, their place in an academic environment is questionable.

Dick Humphreys, Director of The Writing Program, contends that the best explanation for the conflict is one that divides theories of education into the "English" and the "Germanic." Humphreys says, "The English has always made allowances for creative courses but the Germanic has not; and while Columbia started out as an English type institution, it became under Nicholas Murray Butler more Germanic in philosophy and it was necessary to contour the program to that philosophy."

Presently, the controversies of more than a decade ago appear stale and irrelevant in view of the current vitality of The Writing Program. Since its low point in the late Sixties, recovery has progressed steadily and not a year has passed without the addition of new courses or sections. Along with eight divisions of Structure and Style, the 1982-83 catalogue boasts fiction, poetry, playwriting, scriptwriting, creative nonfiction, science, narrative forms, and news and feature writing workshops, as well as an innovative course in small press publishing, which produced this issue of Quarto.

An incomplete list of the rotating teaching staff drawn from the literary resources of New York City includes Walter Abish, whose How German Is It? won a PEN-Faulkner Award last year; Nora Sayre and Maureen Howard, authors of the recently-published Running Time and Grace Abounding respectively; and Bollingen Award winning poet David Ignatow. Add to that string of names those of fabled journalist Seymour Krim, Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times, fiction writer/editor Gordon Lish of Knopf, and Samuel Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Doubleday, and the roll call is still incomplete.

While much of this abundant good health can be attributed to the tenacity and sensitivity of Director Dick Humphreys—whose recent Subway to Samarkand was praised as "an adult success story touched by grace"—Humphreys is modest about his contribution.

He attributes the achievements of the program to such gifted students as Gerard Shyne, author of Under the Influence of Mae, a collection of short stories, and Barbara Milton, whose short story "Stars Over Alaska" appeared in a recent issue of Paris Review and who has a story in this issue.

Novelists Gwyneth Cravens and Nahid Rachlin and short story

writer Steven Schrader are other examples of recent students who have gone on to publish notable books. Another former student, Glenda Adams, author of The Hottest Night of the Century, has returned to teach as well. "We attract a very talented group of young writers," Humphreys says. The truth of those words is apparent in this issue of Quarto, and there is no happier updating to the history of The Writing Program than the stories, poems, and plays in its pages.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: With special thanks to Dick Humphreys and to Paul Palmer of The Library of Columbiana for their invaluable help in researching this article.

Quarto

Quarto

CONTRIBUTORS* NOTES CHAD ATKINS is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he studied with Jack DriscoU and Alan Ziegler.

SHELBY BERRYMAN is at work on a novel. Still.

ANDRE BOISSIER has just completed a Literature-Writing major at General Studies.

RICHARD CROSE is from Minneapolis. After working for ten years, including a two-year hitch in the Army, he moved to New York to attend General Studies, where he is majoring in English and has studied with Michael Stephens and Louis Uchitelle. He has had a paragraph printed in the "Humor in Uniform" section of Reader's Digest. These are his first published poems.

KARIN DE LA PENA is not working on a novel. She thanks Austin Flint for a wonderful two semesters.

ANNE L. FITZPATRICK was born in New Haven; she is a graduate of Barnard and has an M.A. from Columbia. She has taken fiction workshops at the School of General Studies, is working in corporate communications in New York City, and is writing a novel.

KENNY FRIES has studied with David Ignatow at General Studies while working towards his MFA in playwriting at Columbia's School of the Arts. Originally from Brooklyn, he is devoted to the plays of Tennessee Williams, the poems of Adrienne Rich, and the voice of Billie Holiday.

JO HENRY is from San Francisco and lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and their St. Bernard, Jack. This is her first published poem.

Howard and Dick Humphreys and is at work on a novel and a new collection of poems.

BONNIE JACOBSON, Ph.D., is co-founder and associate director of Park East Psychological Associates, P.C., a group practice and training institute which deals with all aspects of psychotherapy. She also has a large private practice. "OverResponsibility" is excerpted from Making Waves, a book in progress about how to institute creative imbalance in your life.

KEVIN JENSEN is working towards a doctorate in Physics from NYU. He received his B.S. from Columbia, where he took a number of writing courses, most of which were with Gary Glover: "It was in one of Gary's classes that this script was written. Thanks, Gary!"

N. CALDWELL KING was born and grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and has since lived for spells in San Francisco, Wyoming, and Chicago. He now lives in New York City, where he earns his keep by driving people places. A student in General Studies, Mr. King is pursuing a lessened degree of confusion.

MICHAEL MASON is a psychologist with a private practice.

He is currently working on an eerie novel.

BARBARA MILTON teaches math and writes novels in New York City. Her stories have been published in Paris Review and Some; this is her second appearance in Quarto.

HATTIE MYERS is currently working on a novel etc.

C.A. PEARCE, a freelance writer for national magazines for the past five years and a published poet, spent two years in Dick Humphreys' workshop putting together the novel (just completed) titled Louis from which this chapter is taken.

YAEDI IGNATOW is a graduate of Southampton College, where she won second prize in a poetry contest. Her book of poems, The Flaw (which includes "The New World"), was recently published by Sheep Meadow Press. Her poems have appeared in Plainsong, Confrontation, Jewish Dialog, American Poetry Review, Fireweed, Survivor's Manual, and Poetry Now. She has studied at General Studies with Maureen

ROBERT NICHOLAS TAL ABAC earned his B. A. in Professional Writing at Lehman College and is the winner of Lehman's 1981 Grace A. Croff Memorial Prize for Poetry, the Mercury Prize for Journalistic Writing, and the Aaron Hochberg Award for excellence in creative writing. He is currently enrolled in General Studies.

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IheWiitinei

Program

Beginning and Advanceof Classes Evening and Daytime

Creative Nonfiction, News and Feature Writing and Science Writing:

Offering small classes taught by distinguished authors, editors, and publishers:

ED EDELSON SEYMOUR KRIM PAMELA McCORDUCK NORA SAYRE LOUIS UCHITELLE LAWRENCE VAN GELDER KAL WAGENHEIM

Fiction and Poetry WALTER ABISH GLENDA ADAMS Αυ5ΉΝ FUNT MAUREEN HOWARD J R . HUMPHREYS DAVID IGNATOW RAYMOND KENNEDY GORDON USH PETER RAND PHYLUS RAPHAEL LOUISE ROSE MICHAEL STEPHENS

Scriptwriting and Playwriting: GARY GLOVER SPALDING GRAY

Publishing: SAMUEL S. VAUGHAN ALAN ZIEGLER

The Writing Program at the School of General Studies, Columbia University's liberal arts college for adults, serves students with or without degrees.

Fall Classes begin September 6th, 1983 and Spring Classes begin January 23, 1984 For information on a two-year fAFA Writing Program, write School of the Arts, 404 Dodge, or call 280-4391.

School of Geneml Studies 303 Lewisohn Hall Broadway and 116th St. New York, N.Y. 10027 (212) 280-2752

(Munitria University