Even if Danny Shot, Editor of the Hoboken based Long Shots literary magazine, comes up with another issue before the end of 1999, he could not sum up the 1990s in urban America than he did with his new issue.
Although about 20 pages in this issue were dedicated to poet Jack Micheline, who died in 1998 of a heart attack, this issue – at first glance – does not seem to have a theme, unlike many of the previous issues which have covered everything from a celebration of the Beat Generation to what it means to be a Jew.
The underlying urban theme of this issue, however, is inescapable as you read on, snap shots of the world as it exists in a variety of artists minds, from the photographic portrayal of New York City by Pablo Delano to the undulating Jazz rhythms of Martin Gray’s poetry.
Images of the city even include those of pregnancy, such as in Jacque Rowden’s “Things they don’t tell you,” who described pregnancy “in a slum in New York City’s West Village,” along with “vegetarians, rock and roll musicians with regular day jobs and lots of vampirish friends.”
In this issue, you confront conflict of suburban vs. urban in such works like “White Trash” by B.J. Ward and the capitalism of heroin in “Cthulhu Rising,” by H. R. Giger, street scenes christened with the mood and experience of people who have been there, and come back alive to tell of their journey.
In a year when people are talking about what might happen to the world with the Y2K bug and the prophecies of doom by cultists of every ilk, these artists and poets and writers talk about what has already happened, from the bleakness of a bus station prostitute in Valery Oisteanu’s poem “Kathmandu Prostitute” to the inspiration of Janine Pommy Vega’s story “The Dance”, all reflecting the impact of life in a city on the edge of a new millennium.
The city scape and its emotional condition is not the only theme in this issue, nor with this array of impressive talent could it be. But many of the writers in this issue seem to be reaching for images and feelings just beyond each person’s grasp, defining humanity’s dilemma at the end of this century as to where people fit in.
Pedro Pietri set the landscapes as one of “High Rise Hoboes” in a “decade of discontinued beatniks” who refused to “wait around for the commercial Millennium to come to the rescue of seat belt city sinners.”
People, especially Americans, entered this century with high hopes, a remarkable revolution in technology that brought in the automobile, radio, television, and the lighting of the cities. People saw each as an enhancement to the human condition. By the end of the century, during one of the greatest economic booms in American history, people find themselves faced with a whole different world view, one filled with a reality that seems less concrete, where images can be manipulated to form an alternate reality and where information moves through vast electronic highways along which people cannot travel.
“A cyberspace doorbell rings, a roving Internet with potential companion in its sweet adhesive chords,” writes Eliot Katz in his “Liberation Recalled No. 37”
The Internet has become what Route 66 was, but few can predict where this new highway will bring us.
“No row built on mirror ships, no hard boiled sticks, no harmony hits into the head, the weapon or change direction of time,” writes Edwin Torres in his poem “Oars.”
Hugh Fox in “From Eternity” claims to feel “the Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty first Century closing around me.”
Adam McGovern reflects on the new reality in “Disney Soil,” in examining “the gap between what’s believable , and what’s possible,”saying “shut up and enjoy the flying elephants.”
In his editor’s notes, Danny Shot claims “Love is in the air,” and marvels at the numerous weddings he has attended over the past year.
Long Shots was established in the mid-1970s by Shot and then co-editor Eliot Katz, with the help of Allen Ginsberg, whose work “New Democracy Wish List” also appears in this issue. This issue also features work by writers and artist having roots and homes in Hudson County, including artist Barbara Weissberger and cartoonist Jimy Ryan, both from Hoboken, poet Kevin Powell from Jersey City, who is also the star of MTV’s “The Real World.”
A publication party for this issue will be held at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on Thursday, Jan. 14, at 9 p.m. and will feature musical performances by Candy Jones and Wild Carnation, and readings by Edwin Torres, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, B.J. Ward and David Vanadia.
Admission fee is $7, and copies of the new issue will be sold at the event.