Encapsulated Janus Particles
Over the past four decades these introductions have often lauded small press editors and authors. This year we honor Barack Obama, writer.
In his three books, Dreams for my Father, The Audacity of Hope, and Of Thee I Sing, he is honest, elegant and generous. In the White House he insisted on the dignity of the office and didn’t waste time with flatulent opinions or ridiculous, often dangerous, fantasies. He didn’t “do stupid” and he didn’t speak or write stupid either.
We miss him.
…
And so we dedicate this Pushcart Prize to our writing friend Barack Obama. Not the politician, not the President – the writer, who respects what words mean and can do.Introduction by Bill Henderson, ed., Pushcart Prize XLII
As miserable as I am about the current state of political affairs, I get nervous when I see paeans to the past. I get nervous about a kind of retro-blindness in which we forget the mistakes that were made, the decisions we disagreed with (and, no matter where on the political spectrum we stood, we all disagreed at least sometimes), and a kind of gilding of an age that wasn’t that golden but just seems so now. It’s the same kind of retro-blindness older Americans seem to have about the 50s, when things were so much better – except for those caught in the nets of Jim Crow, McCarthyism, female subjugation, overt ethnic discrimination, and fatal poverty among the very old, the very rural, and the very ill.
I understand the impulse to look backwards (and yes, so much was so much better), and the beginning of the year is a fine time to do that. But with a new Pushcart before me, it’s time to turn forward – which itself is illusory, since the pieces here were all written in the past, and published prior to December 1, 2016. The past and the future meet in the present, and “….let us not forget what is shallow & what is deep eventually meet” (from Sasha Steensen’s “Poems for Lent”) and I think I’ve just OD’d on metaphor for our current malaise. Time to go forward.
In looking for an appropriate image for this post, I started with Janus, and discovered the Janus Particle:
Janus particles are special types of nanoparticles whose surfaces have two or more distinct physical properties. This unique surface of Janus nanoparticles allows two different types of chemistry to occur on the same particle.
My moocing has been at more mundane levels of science, so I’m not exactly sure what this means (though I’m somewhat familiar with amphiphilic phospholipids, if that’s a similar thing), but it still piques my interest. Like many of the stories and poems – especially poems – in Pushcart that I don’t quite understand, yet lead me to interesting places and stay with me, I think I’ll remember the Janus particle.
In the Table of Contents, I see three BASS 2017 stories, none of which, incidentally, I selected as my favorites from that volume (though they all came close; it was a very good year). I thought maybe it was that they’d appeared in the “slicks”, since Pushcart sticks to small presses, not TNY or The Atlantic. No, my favorites were all from small presses, so I have only my taste and judgment to consider. But what we love, we love.
I see a considerable sprinkling of familiar names (Saunders, Trethewey, Oates, Jones, Faizullah, Johnston – I’m always pleased when I realize I recognize more contemporary poets than I did the year before) and several intriguing titles (“Funny Bird Sex”, “How to Shoot Someone Who Outdrew You”, “When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving”). I know there are treasures waiting here among and beyond those cues. It’s time to read forward.
A Just Recompense 