Hope Jeffrey Bjune from Car Max and our other drop-in visitors will join us again. Jeffrey is friend of John Kingsbury, who arrived late because he was selling a car. Way to go, John!
Hey, hey...Gene Fehler's new book is out. "Readers clamored for more of the runaway success stories from Gene" (straight from the publisher's mouth) so you may now sate your baseball hunger on More Tales from Baseball's Golden Age. Congratulations, Gene!
And Nancy Parker related Ray Blanton's success story. Ray wrote a story about a guy who goes to church to meet girls (Says someone in our group, "So why else does a guy go to church?") Baker Books has accepted Ray's manuscript for publication. Way to go!

Our next meeting will be TUESDAY, JULY 9th, 6:00 at The Open Book. Double your pleasure...plan to join SCWW friends after the meeting for post-critique commentary at Rafferty's.

Sue Renault continued with her Elecphonse story. Her imaginative story keeps unfolding with her clever use of new words. "Car-carruppy, splutter pok, spicker spicker splot" aren't in Webster's but they surely catch the feel of her story. (I won't use SpellCheck since I know they will reject those words.) Give us more details about Dank's struggles on the ropes. We liked the light bridge, but want a better idea of how it works. Sue, you left us holding our breaths as Lacey started to climb the blue light. Bring in the next chapter in July and tell us more!!

Carolyn Rice read her three poems: "Roses and Elephants," "Peacock Display," and "Blues in Black and White." Suggestion: use a better word than "dainty" to begin the poem. One listener called it hackneyed. I stumbled over "caparisoned" until I looked it up. Do you mean "an ornamental covering for a horse" or "rich clothing"? The context didn't tell me, but that may just be my problem. I related more to the other two poems. (I ran into Carolyn the next day and she told me she had stayed up till 2:00 a.m. after the meeting working on her poems. That's a real writer!)

Nan Lundeen read three poems: "Walking into my Bedroom in the Dark," "Not Quite Still Life," and "Sister Spirit." "Walking" tells a word story that is very interesting and scarey. My uncle, Edgar Allen Pigg, use to write poetry like this. "Still Life" and its use of the image of "like in a pot" was neat. I just thought it should end with all of the ingredients "in a bowl." The third poem, "Sister Spirit" was easier to follow after Nan told us it was based upon the last member of an extinct tribe of American Indians. A little longer poem making that clearer would have been better. I like poems that tell stories instead of just being a collection of images and rhyming words.

Pat Stuart read a personal essay titled "Negroes Into the Schools." Like Pat, I wondered about the drinking fountains. The ones I saw were reserved for "Coloreds." I remember in 1959 in Mississippi keeping an eye on these fountains because I wanted to see someone so important they had their own water fountain - the Colored family never showed up regardless of how vigilant my watch was. [Nancy Parker - is that sentence okay?]. How does Pat "Forest Gump" Stuart manage to be at the apex of history so she can report from the historical front lines rather than rewrite news wire reports? The image of only going on a civil rights march in her mind is so strong it lingered in my mind long after I finished the essay. It is images like this that mark the professional essayist.

Leland Beaudrot read a section of his short story, Amused. I have several relatives who worked at the Governor's School as story characters so I like the setting for this story. One problem I have with the Mikey character is he reveals he is fixated on two girls at the same time. When I was a young pig I was fixated on several litters and I am not saying I wasn't always on the lookout. I just never ran off after one girl while another girl was posing me as a model. After all, a pig in the hand is better than two pigs in a bush laughing. I would like to see more interaction between Mikey and his two girl friends and less with security guards and other supporting cast members. For example, would Erin recruit Mikey to be a model in one of her art classes and tease him by claiming it was to be in the nude?

Ah got pain in my ankle and pain in my heart over you.... Randy Crew has been to a couple meetings of the Nashville Song Writers Group. The results? The plaintive song/story of a gutsy baseball player who fights the pain in his ankle to face his wife's lover who is pitching hot and fast. Randy's catchy chorus tells the tale: "You cheated, I know it. You lied just the same, I'm still in the line-up, I'm just playin with pain." Randy's got that old country heartache. Clear up a few ambiguities and he may get a hit.

It's not a pop-up fly, it's a pop-up book for Gene Fehler. Hot off his gate-fold experience, he's ready to try a new format for his poetic sports vignettes: when a page opens, a bat swings out; or when the page opens, a basketball hoop pops out. Each of Gene's poems is accompanied by his vision for the pop-out image. Even without pop-outs, the poems create delightful little scenes of kids at play: "Cold winter days are really nice, When our back yard fills up with ice. On silver blades we glide and spin, And watch Olympic dreams begin." Gene works hard to make it look easy.

Russ and Judy Burns harvested 203,000 pounds of hay in eight days. He had plenty of time to reflect upon the hay field's winners and losers. The critters that get mowed are the losers. The mockingbirds and crows, their dinners exposed upon the newly mowed swaths, are the winners. While Russ the farmer mows, Russ, the naturalist, gives us a bird's eye view (also a snake's eye view and a rabbit's eye view) of the pain and the providence of his grasslands habitat. It's a view most of us would miss without his keen sense of the rhythms and interrelatedness of all creation. Thanks for transporting us to your hay field, Russ.

Living close to nature has brought out the poet in Steve Heckman, who favored us with more readings. "The Only Sound" made us all want to return to nature, where "the only sounds" ring distinct and clear. Most of the discussion centered on the first line: "I must be far from the city"; suggestions included moving it lower down or losing it all together. Nice images throughout included "the rain caressing a million bowing leaves" and "a long, slow train shouldering past."

Next up was "Spring Storm," in which "a gray wall of water dims the wooded flanks" and, with the power out, the dusk "darkness deepens more quickly than usual." The line between nature and civilization blurs; so too does the line between the centuries: the poet--and the reader--are momentarily lost in time. The last line of the poem brings us back to undeniable reality: "the alarm clock will be wrong in the morning."

Next, Steve rose to the challenge of the limerick with verse about Osama. He offered us three variations for the second line, the overwhelming favorite of which was "and he was as thin as a comma." The subject of the second limerick, a road trip to Atlanta (suggestion: change "Route 85" to "I-85" for smoother cadence), brought grins and nods of agreement. Finally, Steve took a turn with a two-stanza haiku, again evoking the juxtaposition of nature and development, using good images and neat repetition of numbers.

Steve, the essayist and the novelist, normally reels off words by the hundreds; with his poetry, he's casting--and re-casting--every word. He's finding the discipline a good exercise that he hopes will translate into finely crafted prose writing. Bulldog salutes him for trying a new genre and is sure that his poetry writing will pay dividends. And when Steve claims he's "not a poet," she must disagree.

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions. - to John Tyler, 1804.

Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. - to John Jay, 1786.

To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement. - to William Green Munford, 1799.

From: Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter, SCWW, which meets on the first Thursday of each month at 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC.

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters: Pat Stewart, John Kingsbury, Sue Renault and Nancy Parker.

Copyright 2002 by Leland Beaudrot, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.