Foreword

Foreword The trials of love or attachment is a theme running through many of the stories in this issue—attachment to the way things were, to self-images, and to the previous nature of one's relationships. AbigaU Thomas's "Modern Love" depicts a conflict of passion with practicaUty. Jeanne Dixon's "Down Among the GiUy Fish" portrays a loving famUy trying to hold onto its previous order in the face of breakdown, whUe Anthony Giardina's "A Rented Room" concerns a quest for love that is disabled by reticence. Buddhism is a phUosophy which directly addresses the paradoxes of attachment, and Robert Owen Butler's suspenceful "Open Arms" is a Vietnam story with a plainly Buddhist theme. Many of this issue's poems, on the other hand, concern themes of childhood—chüdhood memories and the raising of chUdren. Notable is Bruce Bond's magnificient lyric "Prayer." The longest poem here, Mark Doty's "Wings," draws on RUke's angehe orders and Wim Wenders' cinematic angels to explore the work of poetry—reclaiming what wiU be lost, affirming the world of things. In an interview, Scott Turow recounts the odd path that led to his writing Presumed Innocent, one of the more deservedly popular works of fiction of the eighties. As a young man he was disappointed in his efforts to become a noveUst. He chose a different profession. After working as a lawyer, however, he rediscovered his earUer ambition, and he tells interviewer Kay Bonetti how he began piecing together what became the blockbuster crime and courtroom novel. Among the essays, George Garrett in "Uncles and Others" describes his roots, which are every bit as colorfuUy nourishing as one would expect; Sharman RusseU examines the issue of home birth; whUe Karl Berman's "Reading in the Ruins" takes us on a journey to a book fair in Nicaragua, where he surveys the phenomenon of pubUshing in a distressed country. This issue's found text is Lydia Rudd's diary of her famUy's journey along the Oregon traU in 1850. Her famUy was part of the early wave of that last, climactic stage of American inhabitancy—the leap from Missouri aU the way to the Pacific states, across a land that was stiU defined as much by myth as by map. Hers is one of the clearest depictions of that dangerous passage, and we here print it in its entirety for the first time. Like many authentic chronicles of mythologized events, Rudd's diary contains refreshing surprises. SM "Sir? I suggest we discuss our cash flow situation in light of the obvious thematic parallels it has with several classic American short stories I" ...