new letters magazine: hot off the press

The latest issue of New Letters features some of the banana fiber dolls made in Uganda at the orphanage and adorned by Kansas City artists. New Letters has been a steadfast supporter of Change the Truth over the years, having featured some of my Ugandan photos in this past issue. Editor Bob Stewart has shown interest in our project since the very beginning, and I am so grateful to him for that. He selected my doll for this volume's cover. The dolls that grace the inside pages are by:

Peregrine Honig
Tom Corbin
Stephanie Leedy
Amy Meya
Caroline Shteamer
Philomene Bennett
Lou Marak
Fiona Gowin
Janet Kuemmerlein
Shea Gordon
Charmalee Gunaratne
Linda Lighton

Here is Bob's beautiful introduction:

"Out in the World
an editor’s note

Poetry teaches by example. The phrase occurs to me often when I read great poems, which tend to celebrate external details, directness, and even self-questioning by the speaker. This is how one should live, I sometimes think—outward looking, humble, engaged. Great writing provides us examples, not in what the writing says to do, but in what it does. Please do not actually try 'Cooking with Medicine,' as a poem here advises, but do try to imagine the spirit from which that notion came.

In their own crazy, intense, and provocative way, the writing and art in this issue create something close to purity of intent. Good will. The writing looks at events—political, global, and personal—and struggles toward empathy. I am, by default, contrasting that enormous force of generosity and freedom with the calculating and dangerous actions that led to the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf. We ask of literature that it look outward, rather than to the writer’s own interests. We ask of art that it have a stake in the world.

Consider the photographs here of banana-fiber dolls made by Ugandan orphans, further decorated by artists in the Kansas City area. New Letters has an ongoing interest in the St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood in Kajjansi, Uganda, where these dolls originated, and our fall 2006 issue featured photographs of many of the children there. The photographer, Gloria Baker Feinstein, created this doll project to raise money for the orphanage; so, besides being an important visual artist, she has taken on the well- being of those Ugandan children as one of her life’s jobs.

Is this perspective on literature and art realistic? I hold to it. Otherwise, why move this writing into the world, by magazine, radio, Web site, and public events, as does New Letters? Why try so hard? The writing in this issue suggests some reasons. Start with joy. Look around."

-Robert Stewart

new letters magazine

Volume 73, Number 1 of New Letters Magazine is hot off the press! As you may recall reading in an earlier post, Robert Stewart, the editor of this highly regarded literary magazine, expressed immediate interest in the Uganda photographs back in November just after my return home. He was committed to getting the images published in the upcoming issue, and he and his staff did indeed manage to put it together in short order. I got to see a finished copy yesterday. It is a beautiful issue, packed with outstanding poetry, essays, fiction and reviews, along with many of the pictures I have been sharing with you on this blog. The cover features one of the photographs I made at the boxing gym in Kampala. Bob suggested that it be reproduced in color, and I happily trusted his judgment. I must admit it looks pretty darn nice. I especially love what Bob has to say in the editor’s note:

"Two days after I arranged with Gloria Baker Feinstein to publish her extraordinary images of Uganda, and of orphaned children there, a church I visited featured a group called the Children’s Choir of Uganda. Those events occurred independently, a coincidence probably best not elevated to the level of 'synchronicity,' but I did notice common traits between the choir’s performance – just three girls and two boys, dressed in white – and these photographs. Both exist in a context of deprivation and terror, and both bring with them life and joy.

As the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez once explained, a work of art can be said to be complete when the perfect and the imperfect are in equilibrium. No one goes out looking for art. One merely puts himself or herself into a state of openness. What brings these Ugandan children and some adults to us, now? 'Of the 24.7-million people living in Uganda, East Africa, 13 million are under the age of 15,' Gloria Feinstein has written, 'and 2.2 million have lost one or both parents to the two-decade-long civil war or to AIDS.' She points out, also, that the whole of Africa has 12 million orphans today and, according to a UNAIDS report, will have 18 million by 2010.

The stories, poems, essays, and photographs in this issue do not back away from such facts and realities, which one poem here recalls as 'slaved land' and another as 'terrible dreams.' We know we have achieved the level of art when such visions of difficulties find balance with another truth, one just as tough. Take a look."

If you would like to get a copy of the magazine – and I’d encourage you to subscribe – go to their website at: www.newletters.org. Single issues are available now at the UMKC bookstore and will be at Borders in a week or so. You can also call: 816-235-1168 or e-mail them at newletters@umkc.edu.

New Letters has been tremendously supportive over the years, and I am always so honored when they choose to publish my photographs.