The Companion
The Companion by Karen S. Bell The white jagged mountain sparkled beneath a rare, cloudless cobalt-blue sky and seemed near enough to touch. It was the Great One, Denali, called so by the Athabaskan Indians but known as McKinley to the white man. It was a mountain that men came to conquer and a mountain that conquered men. But some men clung like metal to its magnetic beauty and just stayed close. Such a man was Jack Raines, a WWII Navy fighter pilot turned bush pilot who had soared over the Alaskan terrain until age began to fog his vision and slow down his reaction time. Now ...
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January 21, 2010Paradise Lost: Milton Hero
By Greg Bauder. Milton is the true hero in Paradise Lost. Milton said his aim to do "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme" was for one thing to "Justify the ways of God to man." But in saying this, as a man, he was trying to justify the ways of God to himself. That appears to be why Milton, as narrator, is the most powerful and heroic force to be reckoned with in the poem. And while Milton revolutionized poetry by writing his epic in blank verse he also created a type of Monism that was derived from so much erudition, probably from other religions, even Eastern ones, that he ...
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January 5, 2010Can a Monkey be Taught to Type Shakespeare?
Mathematical Linguistics by Jack Reichman, Ph.D. There are some who would believe that given enough time and energy, a monkey could be taught to type, get lucky, and write some memorable prose. These are probably the same people who believe that luck plays the major role in all art. Let’s see if that is really true by doing a thought experiment.
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December 13, 2009Travel The World With Poetry: Travel Writing
By Earl J. Wilcox. I wish I could write on a plane while traveling to a city in the Middle East. Though my stop is Dubai---peaceful oasis hundreds of miles from battle zones in Iraq--if fear and emotion trigger words, traveling to a world ravaged by wars ought to give birth at least to prefixes or shapes like words. Poems refuse to be born. When I fly west for a visit with a sick sister-- a trip without a happy ending---should not I at least find sounds to chart a poem about endings and beginnings, family ties, siblings and stepmothers, memories piling on top of each other, emotions brimming above and beneath surfaces to fill a chapbook. My inability to write while traveling seems a puny ...
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November 29, 2009Pirate Coast: Dead Or Alive? How About Both.
By Heidi Hirner With the kind of money the company pays, they can pick and choose their delivery men. And they picked me because I'm the best captain they know of - there isn't anyone able to match my skills in navigation, and you'd need skills of my order to safely navigate these routes less traveled. And the other reason is because I'm so fast. The fastest. That's why they've given me that strange nickname. They know I can get this ship and my crew to fly. PIRATE COAST ...
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November 11, 2009In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream. The Alpha-Roera Incident
By Terry Voyle “Peeeeeeep,” the intercom in my compartment shrilled. I shook the sleep from my mind and pressed the connect button. “Chief,” it was my control operator Jervis. “What?” I answered, testily. “May-day, from Alpha-Reora 2”, he shouts excitedly. “It’s the distress beacon. “Be right there”, I reply. I dress rather hurriedly. This is the first May-day we’ve had, no-one puts out a beacon unless things are desperate. There’s a code of levels of emergency, ...
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October 24, 2009The Agony of Self-Defeat
By Ash Krafton. What is the sound that one makes at the exact moment she learns she made a tremendously stupid mistake? And how is it spelled? I’m not talking serious, life-threatening, world-altering mistakes such as “I just blew my house up” or “I think I released a biochemical toxin that will decimate half the state” or “Whoops! That was my boss driving the car who cut me off and received my middle finger in reply and crap, my review is next week.” Those kinds of mistakes usually result in no uttered sounds at all—only the gravity-well of despair that opens up somewhere below your stomach, one that sucks up life and ...
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October 17, 2009