Nonfiction
Dirt Angels, by Donald Platt
Plato’s late dialogue Parmenides recounts the tale of the elder scholar questioning young Socrates about his early philosophical ideas. Can only the just, beautiful, and good be the stuff of ideas, Parmenides asks, or do abstractions apply also to the vile and paltry such as hair, mud, and dirt? Socrates responded that surely ideas do …
Sardis
Easter Sunday and it’s windy and cold for April in the Deep South. To make matters worse, squall lines have been blowing up from the Gulf all morning, hanging tattered clouds so low and thick they look like the soaked inside of a cotton bale. I’m on a three-day book tour—Memphis, Jackson, and Oxford, Mississippi—for …
From the Interim Senior Editor
This issue marks a moment of transition in the print life of Prairie Schooner. For more than twenty years, Hilda Raz served as Prairie Schooner‘s editor in chief, guiding this journal through times that were sometimes challenging but always exciting and rewarding for all who were associated with it during those years. Hilda’s impact here …
Open Between Us, by George Looney
If you google George Looney, you’ll be asked if you meant to google George Clooney. I would love to hear George the Actor read poems from George the Poet’s latest collection, Open Between Us. Pre Up in the Air, Clooney wouldn’t have possessed the maturity of tone to carry off this duty. Now he’s ready. …
Jack
The first time I picked up Jack* for his counseling session, he stomped out of his classroom with his arms swinging, his hands in two tight fists. As he walked down the hall ahead of me, his legs bowed out as if he’d just jumped down from his horse. But this was Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. And …
All of Your Messages Have Been Erased, by Vivian Shipley
In April of 2009, Vivian Shipley gave a poetry reading at the Ohio State University at Lima to an unlikely crowd of poetry aficionados. Most of the more than one hundred college and high school students in attendance had probably never read a poem except when coerced. Nevertheless, they were clearly enthralled. Shipley alternated reading …