1992 (Volume 4)

 

The pride in Mom's home-grown, fresh, made-with-loving-hands strawberry preserves and Grandma's chicken dumplings seems to be disappearing, but it isn't. Quality still exists. There are still people who take pride in their work, who give care and attention to things they make with their hands. This quality might not always be found in the food we eat, but it's around us in other forms. 

 

Craftmanship in the written work is very much alive, and it can be found in the little magazine. We want to be recognized as the place where quality is still important, where the little magazine is like the prize-winning jar of peaches Aunt Maude takes to the county fair.

 

In fact, G.J. Frahm gives us a peek at this world in his poem "Canning Peaches." Bill Huegerich's photo "Untitled Still Life," light shining on jars of caned peaches, is the perfect match for this poem. Bill Franzen's "One of the Guys" is about two little men, twins, who run a store for extra-big males. "But people don't know that what we really are is a big and tall man accidentally born as a pair of matching runts." On our cover is an image of a young dancer taken by Michael Crowley during the 1990 Omaha Pow-Wow. Norina Ryan and Jane Kauzlarich carry this same Native Amrican theme in their poetry. Ryan in "Creation Song" sings, "I dance the ancient dance … I dance/Your coming aiii." Kauzlarich spends an evening at Arapahoe "when the moon is high" where "I will couch my limbs on the canyon floor."