Henry Oso Quintero is a very mean man. He likes guns. He lives alone a ranch outside of Tyrone, NM. He eats rabbit, and snake and horse meat regularly... Or so the Hollywood version of Henry's life would go. In reality Henry is a native New Mexican, from a generation of landed, college educated mestizos who annually reclaim their ancestral lands through rituals of poetry and song.

Bill Knott is the author of some of the America's finest, most original poetry. It is impossible to discuss post-modern American poetry without focusing on the singular vision of Bill Knott.  A true maverick, a master revered by the finest poets of our time, Knott has been virtually ignored by both the American poetry establishment and the "avante garde."  Among his many volumes of poetry are: The Quicken Tree,   Outremer (Iowa Poetry Prize), Poems 1963-1988, Selected and Collected Poems, Rome in Rome, Love Poems to Myself, Nights of Naomi, Autonecrophilia, Aurealism, and The Naomi Poems. The following poems are from his collection The Unsubscriber.

Naked news is what I'm after,
news as explosive and hard
as a metal pipebomb.
That's why I've come to drug rehab,
where Clarice rises from her chair
and speaks to me of lost loves,
lost chances

Maverick's Feature Poet for Issue #2 is National Endowment for the Arts Fellow Martha Modena Vertreace, who is Distinguished Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Kennedy-King College, Chicago IL. Her several books include: Second House from the Corner, Under a Cat's-Eye Moon, Oracle Bones, Cinnabar, Smokeless Flame, Kelly in the Mirror, Maafa: When Night Becomes a Lion, Dragon Lady: Tsukimi, Glacier Fire, and Light Caught Bending and Second Mourning, published by Diehard Publishers, Edinburgh, through Scottish Arts Council grants.

Named the Glendora Review Poet, Lagos, Nigeria, she was twice a Fellow at the Hawthornden International Writers' Retreat in Scotland. Eastern Washington University chose her as Poetry Fellow in residence at the Writers Center, Dublin, Ireland. She was a Fellow at St. Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, Wales, on a bursary.

She has poems in Illinois Voices: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 2001). Her most recent Pushcart nomination was for "When Pockets Held Dreams", published in After Hours: the Chicago Journal of Writing and Art. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Tim, and their cats, Bon-Bon, Fred, and Patrick Samuel.

In our first issue, Maverick Magazine features the poetry of Ramón E. Martínez, who grew up in New Mexico and Arizona. Poems from his full-length collection, The Receipt of Fern Seed have appeared in: A Poetry Mag, American Poetry Review, Balcones, Bilingual Review, Black Warrior Review, Cape Rock, Century, Contact II, Croton Review, Gila Review, Glens Falls Review, Graham House Review, The Greenfield Review, Inlet, Inscape, Panoply, Rio Grande Writer's Newsletter, Riversedge, Víaztlan, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is currently seeking a publisher for The Receipt of Fern Seed.