AN IMPENETRABLE SCREEN OF PUREST SKY by Dan Beachy-Quick Coffee House Press 256 pages reviewed by Jacob M. Appel On the surface, Dan Beachy-Quick’s lyrical short novel, An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky, is a charming and deeply-moving fairy tale of love and loss. Beneath that romantic sheen, however, lies a subtle but trenchant challenge to […]
Dan Beachy-Quick
DAN BEACHY-QUICK, born in Chicago, grew up in Colorado and upstate New York. He attended Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Colorado State University. He is author of four books of poems, North True South Bright (Alice James 2003), Spell (Ahsahta 2004), Mulberry (Tupelo 2006) and This Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo 2009); two chapbooks, Mobius Crown (with Srikanth Reddy: P-Queue 2008) and Apology for the Book of Creatures (Ahsahta 2008); and a book of essays, A Whaler’s Dictionary (Milkweed 2008).
ZENO’S PARADOX a previously unpublished entry from A Whaler’s Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick
An arrow, and so a harpoon, is stopped while it is moving. Sprung from bow, or hurled from hand, the weapon speeding through the air is frozen “in the Now.” Aristotle solves the problem pragmatically. Time, like space, is infinite in two ways: infinite in extremity and infinite in division. Though nothing finite can approach […]
WOUND an entry from A Whaler’s Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick
Ahab is not driven by pride; he is a man guided by wound. This wound is worth meditating on, for it can explain more than anything else the nature of the relationship between an I and a You. When Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick’s scythelike jaw, he simultaneously struck out with a dagger […]
TZIMTZUM an entry from A Whaler’s Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick
Behind Creation another story lurks, explains, complicates. The first question of the world is Form. The question does not begin with “what,” but with “how.” What philosophical and theological theories may gloss when considering ex nihilo as a creative crux is that Nothing must first exist for creation to occur in it. Tzimtzum, in midrashic and kabbalistic thought, […]
TIME an entry from A Whaler’s Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick
Time grants us the simple goodness of life, but also takes it away. We change and we witness change in the world, and both types of flux occur within time. While we live the world exists for us, and though none can say if the world ceases to exist when we’ve ceased to exist, there […]
Contributor Bios for Issue 1 Spring 2009
Issue 1 Spring 2009 V. JOSHUA ADAMS is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago and editor of Chicago Review. JOE AMATO‘s recent books include Pain Plus Thyme (Factory School 2008) and Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile Culture (Iowa 2006). His memoir, Once an Engineer: A Song of the Salt City, is forthcoming later […]
MAYDAY Magazine: Issue 1 Spring 2009
FEATURED ARTIST David-Baptiste Chirot NECESSITY IS THE MOTHERFUCKER OF INVENTION thoughts on the delete button THE NEW EXTREME EXPERIMENTAL AMERICAN POETRY a gallery featuring the visual works of poet, artist, and human rights activist David-Baptiste Chirot Jared Schickling, David-Baptiste Chirot FINDING THE ROOOT an interview conducted by Jared Schickling with David-Baptiste Chirot that will […]
