Main Street Rag – Fall 2006

This attractive publication, an eclectic collection of fiction, essays, interviews, book reviews, and poetry, has—without the backing of a college or university—flourished for ten years under its original editor—quite an accomplishment.

This attractive publication, an eclectic collection of fiction, essays, interviews, book reviews, and poetry, has—without the backing of a college or university—flourished for ten years under its original editor—quite an accomplishment. Congratulations to M. Scott Douglas and his Main Street Rag! I especially enjoyed the poetry—scarcely an adverb or abstraction to be found. Three poems by Lyn Lifshin, Shawn Pavey’s memoir “Ten Years After,” as well as Suzanne Baldwin Leitner’s interview of poet Irene Blair Honeycutt are admirable. Norman Ball’s “What Can We Do to Make Your Stay in Power More Comfortable?” is, of course, a satire on the present state of affairs: “[. . .] the real business of America, jockeying for power [. . .].” Wayne Peabody’s “Country Porch Lights” illuminates a writers’ conference, and yes, it’s pretty much as you imagined. Then there’s Tim Keppel’s brief, vivid “Farewell to the Barons and Lords,” on life in Columbia, S. A., among the Extradictables: “They were church-going Catholics, they loved their moms and kids. But in the mornings, going out for the paper, you’d trip over a corpse. Or you’d catch something when you were fishing but it wouldn’t be a fish.” This from Pam Bernard’s World War I narrative “Blood Garden”: “If it’s true that a horse has no sense of itself / in the world, then it must be wholly present / in the moment of its dying—pain and terror / pacing the fenced paddock of its brain.”
[www.mainstreetrag.com]