This issue is dedicated IN MEMORIAM to HODDING CARTER, JR. 1907 - 1972 Journalist, Scholar, Humanitarian and Friend of the New Orleans Review COVER DESIGN/LEONARD LOUIS WHITE might properly be termed tragic lose their force. It is the one. So the audience knows where the correct choice lies very act of attempting to be infinite that dooms the con­ morally, and condemns the act overtly, but the audience sciousness; but the fact that it dares to be paradoxically recognizes also the impulse and the rationale, and covertly asserts its vastness, a vastness which challenges the in­ approves the consciousness which makes the choice even finite. Consciousness extinguishes itself in seeking immor­ while being repelled by the choice itself. The audience tality, but the seeking defines a kind of immortality. knows that choice is impossible, knows that any choice A similar problem involving the paradox of action, the leads as ultimately to extinction as not choosing. But again opposition of the capacity of the human consciousness to the enabling paradox-choosing may be extinction, but desire the infinite while being constrained by the finite may choosing is being. And of course Macbeth'" celebrated be traced as the root of the tragic mode in Macbeth. Mac­ conscience contributes to the sense of the dilemma of beth is faced with the saint's dilemma: he is told by the consciousness. People with the visual imagination of a witches that he is going to be king of Scotland; he reflects, Macbeth just shouldn't kill people in dark rooms. Unless and tells himself that if fate will have him king then fate they want a real taste of consciousness, that is. For Mac­ may make him king without his exerting himself on his own beth the resultant sense of consciousness is so intense that behalf. But like Eliot's Thomas a Becket-although morally it leads him to the ultimate rejection of consciousness, on the other side of the tracks-his dilemma is how will to madness, to finally drink relief from it by rejecting it, inaction become action. It is a proposition which simul­ saying "life's but a walking shadow." taneously both is and is not, the uItimate paradox of choice Once the choice has been made and the act performed, which makes choosing impossible. Experience says that the final thrust of action commences in the action of a this is absurd. Action or inaction are equally paradoxical; tragedy. The possibilities are measured, the personality it is the ultimate paradox. The whole pressure of the Great makes a decision which accommodates itself to its own Chain of Being, the Christian Ethic, and the primitive code highest estimate of itself. But the fruits of the action ab­ of hospitality combine in telling Macbeth he must not kill solutely reverse the motive for the action. Somehow ex­ Duncan. Yet choosing not to kill Duncan seems equally im­ perience of consciousness should be proportionate to the possible, because he knows he is going to be king. And effort of achieving it. Macbeth gets nothing but pain and besides that, he wants it. He is a human being, and he dares fear; so did Faustus. This failure of reward has nothing to to want. That is of course the basic error influencing his do with simple poetic justice, although in dramatic terms tragic choice. Thomas a Becket had to avoid wanting to the ironic fulfillment of the witches' promises contributes be a martyr and avoid knowing that he was avoiding want­ to the main effect. The failure simply confirms the hard, ing to be a martyr. He had to dare not to dare to want. and hard-to-recognize truth, that human aspirations are That's what it means to be a saint on the right side of the infinite while man's capacities are finite. Today we try to tracks. It is simple to say that Macbeth simply should not pass laws to make each other happy, but the tragic impli­ have killed the king; it is being a human consciousness cations of the yearnings of consciousness are no easier to having to make the choice that makes the decision a tough put down than they ever were. READING POETRY IN WISCONSIN for Stephen Dobyns Monday nights at the local Bijou must have been like this. The featured attraction plays to the all but empty house. Once or twice a match uncovers a patron, but that's it. Couples grope in the balcony's perfect privacy as the images continue below: a nun disappears around a final corner, the hero waits in lines for hours at banks, startled deer hide from hunters, standing deathly still. - Michael G. CuIrass 7 INHERITANCE having no center itself out and augments disquieted I am wanting starting-points and turn a burning glass on the moment after time's miscarriage to unfold again ii Half way across to nowhere I cannot be by necessity pretending to choices I vanish in the sun on the high mountains and there is no new beginning. I am a king's son exchanged for another. History has not protected me. - Sandra Meier 8 nOr.l MAUMAU I. Lurking near the speaker's rostrum Honing my butterknife to machete sharpness Against my pre-war Florsheim, My fingers knead the plastic Jay-Cee tablecloth And I find reassurance along its tattered edge. Invisible, I smile across the clearing into the banked fires of their eyes: The village sleeps through the minutes of the last meeting. Tense, Crouched against the rumbling pigmeat in my gut, I wait. The sentry drifts among the huts, counting noses. I wait. The crier follows mewling out the date and hour of next month's meeting. I wait. The village sleeps. I watch the native fingerman. He stands, He smiles, He tells them I am here, On the outskirts of the village. The village sleeps. Swiftly, Silently, On bare feet, in lionskin, I move into the circle of banked fires To begin the killing. II. softly in the holiest hours of the morning I prowl the murky caverns of their eyeless minds belled and feathered, lionskinned my spear seeks out the soft places my torch and shield cast cursed shadows 9 along the tunnels behind their mindless eyes sWiftly in the holiest hours of the morning I stalk them through their sleeping semiconsciousness caverns, tunnels, quicksand, fire bells and feathers, spear, torch, and shield the spectre shadow on the brainpan emerges from a corner of the darkened master bedroom darts behind the half closed door dances through the smoke of a restless cigarette my laughter curls toward the stippled ceiling words unsheathed a day ago hack away at the soft places carving out the heart whittling the liver and the lights disembowelling softly, sWiftly, in the holiest hours of the morning I have driven the gazelle into the cave to butcher it I feast upon the sacred parts torn living from it I bathe in its blood in the murky torchlit cavern I brutalize the carcass with my spear seeking out the soft places behind the mindless eyes brains, bones and blood burnt offering curls toward the ceiling in the holiest hours of the morning III. the searchlights scream and we are found pain creeps death leaps in the white light circle of the killing ground the villagers' laughter sears my dancing feet i see my head impaled upon a toothpick 10 nou t shaken in my face my friends-in-effigy dangle like participles at the end of vicious sentences the ritual liquor drips from sneering lips the ceremony starts: here we are tormented by our too-fat captors (how did they run us down?) they fumigate us, burn our clothes, cut away our credit cards (we let ourselves be tricked by fools) we are spitted, basted, baited, flayed by dull gay blades (these cripples are our conquerors?) then cut down left for the women and children to mock tomorrow the ceremony ends and everyone departs the best of friends. IlIa. here in the living room the sanitation squad moves slowly back and forth meticulously picking up my pieces dusted emptied straightened put in my proper place (invisible, i watch myself eradicated) until no trace remains above, in the upstairs of the world, in the master bedrooms, in the holiest hours of the morning the village sleeps -Bryan Lindsay 11 Sometime-Later-Not Now by Timothy Findley 1950 Maudie, Diana and I sat high up on a rock we called, for obvious reasons, "The Elephant's Back." Eugene, being We're over thirty now, Diana and I, but in 1950 we were older, was allowed to own a gun and he was elsewhere on twelve. It seems such a long time ago that I can't quite the island trying to kill something. He was fourteen, then, connect it up to the world we live in today. Certainly, there and Maudie was eight-almost nine. seem to be no straight lines back to that time, only the My memory of this conversation starts with Diana fling­ crooked, wavering lines of spliced memory. We were peace­ ing a stone into the water far below us and I look back on ful children, then. the whole scene as if I were that stone-looking upward­ No. plunging down. I see us, high on our rock, through the We were placated children. shimmer of a surface I shall never be able to break open. Our world had been secured for us by a World War that And our conversation is as stilted and formal as something closed in a parable of Silence.