This is the second issue of Maverick. So I want to take this time to make some final points concerning the first issue:

Ché Guevara is working for us

We only really hate clowns and Republicans

We want your book reviews and editoral thoughts, as well as your poems

For those of you who want to respond in the guest book, we'll print the most salicious, intelligent, smarmy, memorable or ribald comments, reviews, or rants. Remember folks, your best writing counts. Now on to issue two:

I met our Feature Poet, Martha Modena Vertreace, last Fall at M/MLA in Minneapolis. Needless to say, we at Maverick were quickly drawn into her thoughtful, sometimes painful poems. There is much to experience there: lyrics that lament the lost coins and the sweaters of the dead, poems that envoke powerful female deities. I find the spiritual power in Vertreace's poems to be daunting and refreshing; her vision is at once comforting and chilling. We hope that you will like her new work, too. We also have new work from established poets like David Thomas Lisk, new translations from the Continent by Jean-Philipe Cazier, and new poems from emerging poets Janet Kenning, Juli Kroll, and Diane Payne.

Somewhere in the midst of making this issue, we of course ran headlong into some minor but interesting criticism regarding Henry Quintero's letter and my preface. I want to end the controversy he and I started by offering the words of poet William Heyen on the subject. His words ride in the beautiful, verdant middleground of North America's Great Awakening: of course Mr. Merwin has challenged the dreary emptiness of 20th century America, certainly he has brought us a gift of language to make sense of the dangers that await our mother, the earth.

In that sense, Maverick, between puffs and Radiohead songs, says okay, okay, good points Professor Heyen, but we're still concerned that deep, evil, corporate interests entwine and pervert the publishing industry in this country. The good old boys who run the literary world mostly accommodate non-anglo-american-european voices on the premise that they're exotic others, suffering the indignities of corn tortillas and mutton stew. So they want to see chile ristras and adobe houses out in New York, eh? You just have to read the travel section of last week's Times: a trip to Arizona, the old Diné women making wool blankets and tending sheep, the red rocks and the blue sky behind them.

There's a certain point when it seems perfectly clear that criticizing the hijos de bien is important because the predominant majority of prominent American writers seem stuck in a weird, white upper-middle class North American nightmare. Not that this is bad. Maverick likes the Beatles, too. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, there's alot of bad poetry connected with these folks, and too many, well, too many, oh hell, here's an example: at a seminar I attended last year I saw a certain unnamed American poet babble endlessly to her other 40-something colleagues about her meditation sessions in Montana, her new Range Rover, her new chapbook from Coyote Pancake Press, her lovely 1-1 teaching load. Well, you know, I could get sad here, for example, you could call me a chingon. But I think you know what I mean. I read her book. It seemed more like masturbation. Nice colors, no real form, like shit. It's with this point I ask you, dear reader, to advance us this point: I'll read poetry that goes beyond self reflection, BMW's and the new age; poetry that isn't written in the depths of leisure time; poetry that has no chance at Norton or Harper Collins. But you better know your craft.

 
This is El Jefe del Norte, Signing Off