Some of the best of our literary reviews have had the most trouble putting up a website. Perhaps the nature of literature — a desire to create something out of nothing that can last — is opposed to the nature of the web.
The Internet never forgets — for better or worse. Human memory works differently; remembering is connected to emotion, which is connected to making sense. The prizing of the great is one path, heading upwards; the valuing of everything is a maze of freeways.
But the good news is that both The Threepenny Review, previously mentioned here, and The George Review, have now established workable sites that allow readers to link to good work, without in any way changing the experience of those brave souls who actually read the journals.
Here's an example from the summer issue of The Georgia Review. Coleman Barks, the man who more than any other single individual brought Rumi to our shores (encouraged by Robert Bly, by the way) has a funny, wise, and altogether delightful poem in this issue.
Here it is, called My Segment on The News Hour.
I misquoted the Bible on national television.
A preacher caught me, e-mailed, Not Luke 17:12, Luke 17:21.
The one and two got transposed in my apparatus.
I go back to have a look.
It is truly something, what Jesus says in
answering the Pharisees,
about when the kingdom of God is coming.
He says it is not like that.
It will not come with observation.
You will not say, Lo, here or Lo, there.
Because it is not something
that is arriving in time or space,
not anything to be observed.
For behold, the kingdom of God is within
you.
But that is just half the story.
The Gospel of Thomas has what I take to be the full text.
The kingdom of God is within you
and all around you.
Thomas, Saying #3
Split a piece of wood. I am there.
Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.
Saying #77
The holiest thing then, the kingdom, is inside—
the observing consciousness, the deep core of being—
and outside, in the brown thrasher, the little girl
skipping
over the squares of the sidewalk, the universe that,
so far as we know, is unlimited.
It would be best here to start singing, and
dancing.
Mary Oliver saw me give a reading once.
She asked afterward what was that
you were doing with your feet? I like that.
A little buckdancing I fall into.
Kit Stolz 