From the Editor:
As a tangent to our participation in the Western Folklife Center’s Deep West Blog, I have taken the chance and opportunity to finally present this “lost” issue of Dry Crik Review. The risk inherent with changing formats from a magazine to Internet layout lies primarily with the presentation of the work, which was submitted for a lit-mag format over a decade ago. Assuming that we will overcome the technical obstacles and limitations while trying to incorporate the advantages of a web-based publication, this may be a “transitional” issue or the “last” issue. At this juncture, only time will tell.
Giving up the feeling of a book to hold in my hand, a weightier and more tangible sense of accomplishment, leaves not only an empty space on the bookshelf, but in my psyche as well. Typically, I open chapbooks and small press poetry publications in the middle pages, hoping that the style and content of a random selection intrigues me to move forward or back, and eventually to the Introduction and Acknowledgements, and lastly to the masthead. If my page bites are large and it goes back on the shelf, more often than not I’ll reopen it later to repeat the process again.
In perspective, each issue of DCR has been unique. There weren’t but a dozen books on the table in the Elko Convention Center in 1989, 25% of which were authored by Wallace McRae, most of the rest by folklorists. The utility of a printed format for contemporary cowboy poetry seemed obvious.
On the fourteen hour drive home from Wickenburg, Arizona, I remember struggling with the inclusion of two Viet-Nam poems that I had heard for the first time in Vess Quinlan’s motel room after the gathering. Soliciting poetry that worked on the page for the first saddle-stapled issue was tough enough in a genre just beginning to accept something other than traditional poems, but to include “Body Burning Detail” by Bill Jones and “For Bo” by Rod McQueary could sink the ship before it got afloat. I decided to take the chance somewhere around Barstow, a decision that involved my own views on the senselessness of the Viet Nam War that later evolved to Blood Trails, published by Dry Crik Press in 1993, a collaborative odyssey from both men that needed perspective, if not resolution, twenty years after each man’s honorable discharge from the Marines.
Though I may have wrestled longer with the impact of Rod and Bill’s poems on a yet to be established subscriber base in 1990, my reservations now center on my ability to accurately, or acceptably, reproduce each contributor’s work to the Internet page as submitted. I trust that most contributors will weigh my dilemma with getting their work out to a wider and perhaps more diverse audience, or so I hope, but I deal with this ambiguity as I write, not knowing how the final product will look or feel on a computer screen. We can, however, edit onsite or delete a poem completely should a contributor not be satisfied with the presentation of his work.
DCR’s subscribers have generally been rooted in cowboy poetry. The aim of this publication has always been to share, and thereby inspire, contemporary voices from this land-based culture on the page – whether cowboy or rancher, farmhand or farmer – voices appealing to, and perhaps even enhancing, senses once common to all.
Difficult to measure, but after reading Scott Preston’s 10 year-old reviews included in this issue, I can’t help but wonder if the cowboy genre has made much creative progress in the interim. During the same period, however, there seems to have been a proliferation of cowboy entertainers and venues, judging by news accounts, focusing more on awards and ceremony than content. My judgment in this regard is generally prejudiced against the quick-draw, slap-stick stuff as misrepresentative of a contemporary culture raising a healthier and better product while grazing and maintaining ranch landscapes with the longer view in mind.
As a more realistic counterbalance, however, C. J. Hadley’s Range Magazine has done an admirable job presenting this culture and the divisive issues before it. Her stories, her people and her color photographs are alive, and therein is the difference for which we owe her our gratitude. Too often, I suspect, pieces written for the stage appeal to the audiences’ misconceptions of this culture, or the Hollywood myth, which all but assumes that our culture is dead.
In the text of Stewart Udall’s talk at Elko included in this issue, he says, “The healthy part of the national tissue is small-town America. Small communities. The rural areas of this country.” And despite the TV news and pressures for more development, those of us "out-here" sense this is true. Whether James Magorian’s imagery or William Studebaker’s irony, we can make these fertile connections with everyday, rural life – and they enhance our view of the world and ourselves. Ken Brewer captures the small community; Linda Caldwell her Paint Lick, Kentucky home, making life richer as we go.
Though this issue lacks the heft of a book, it may be more cohesive than any that have preceded it. It is appropriately dedicated in memory of J.B. Allen, an ever-dependable friend and candid critic whose poetry has appeared in nearly every issue of this publication.
Whether we inspire debate or more powerful connections with our expression, we are all beneficiaries of each contribution herein. My special thanks to each contributor whose patience may have waned over time, but only because they actually forgot all about this Lost Issue of Dry Crik Review – I hope you’re pleased.
- JCD