Better Than Starbucks July 2018

By Better Than Starbucks

The Interview: an Imagined Conversation with William Blake & Four Poems. Featured Poems: For Sherri by Caroline Adams & WALLETS AND WALLOWINGS by Pamelyn Casto. Free Verse: J.C.Mari, Michelle Hartman, Heikki Huotari, Gayle Compton, Michael Minassian, George R. Kramer, Ana Hahs, Brittney Rangel. Haiku: Cherese Cobb, Devon Richey, James Babbs, Bob Whitmire, Colin W. Campbell, John DeCesare, Joseph Davidson, Angela Davidson. Formal Poetry: John Beaton, Jerome Betts, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Henry Crawford, David Landrum, Kate Bernadette Benedict, Siham Karami, Eira Needham, C.B. Anderson, Janice Canerdy, Jim King. Translations: Mikhail Lermontov by Don Mager. African Poetry: Akor Emmanuel Oche, Beven Nebafor Awusa, Patron Henekou, Ballot Mari. Indian Poetry: S. Sushant. Prose & Form Poetry: Pamelyn Casto, Matt Stefon, Ben Taylor. Sentimental Poetry: Gabrielle Romero, Amanda Leigh, Juanito Cox. Fiction: Sarah Lewis, Betty J. Sayles, Ran Walker, Paul Rondema. CNF: Kevin Drzakowski. From The Mind: Anthony Watkins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387909612

Book preview

Better Than Starbucks July 2018 Vol III No VI

Better Than Starbucks July 2018

Copyright © by Better Than Starbucks. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: ISBN 978-1-387-90961-2

Managing Editor Vera Ignatowitsch

Publisher & Editor-In-Chief Anthony Watkins

Florida, Tennessee, Canada, Pakistan, Zimbabwe

https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org

Cover Image: The Ancient of Days

by William Blake (1757–1827)

www.betterthanstarbucks.org

Featured Poem of the Month

For Sherri

by Caroline Adams

November 17, 2017 was the ten-year

anniversary of her death.

Cancer riddling my aunt’s breasts,

gone for a year,

it came back the next.

Her funeral was held in a small, dim-lit

brick Baptist church.

My father dragged me out

for turning my coloring book

pages too loudly.

The next day I was

sitting by myself in my grandparents’

living room sunken into the couch crying.

Ten years later all I have is a picture from an artist at a mall

that hangs in my grandparents’

family room. It stares at me

every time my grandfather says the blessing

for our Sunday lunch.

I stare right back at her

Wishing I remembered the Easter egg hunts

where she held my pink basket and I ran

around the yard being pushed

over by my favorite black lab, Dixie.

Her picture sits in a scrapbook

lifeless.

Just like her body does under rotting

flowers that I have to pass by.

Caroline Adams is a rising senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida where she studies creative writing. She is excited to have her first poem published.

Featured Poem (publisher’s choice)

For Sherri

by Caroline Adams

Caroline Adams is a rising senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida where she studies creative writing. She is excited to have her first poem published.

Featured Poem (editor’s choice)

Wallets and Wallowings

by Pamelyn Casto

Prose & Forms Poetry

Pamelyn Casto has articles on flash fiction in Writer's Digest, Fiction Southeast, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letter, Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading, and Critical Insights: Flash Fiction.

The Interview July 2018

William Blake

An Imagined Conversation by Kevin McLaughlin

Forward: Three months ago I had the opportunity to pass through a time-space wormhole in the Cosmos, and travel back to England, the year 1825, to conduct a brief interview with visionary poet, painter, and printer William Blake. In many parts of this text I took the liberty of updating Blake’s words as spoken into the style of 2018 English. I sat in their small parlor. Blake and his wife were in the nude a la Adam and Eve. They had been reading Milton’s Paradise Lost when I popped in unexpectedly. The Blakes were unfazed by my appearance, the poet having had extensive experience with heavenly visions. -Kevin McLaughlin

Any direct quotes and more than one paraphrase were derived from The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake edited by David V. Erdman, Doubleday Anchor Books.)

Blake: Welcome, Archangel. And what might be thy name?

McL: I am Kevin Mclaughlin. I’ve come from the 21st century to interview you for BTS magazine. Your work is enormously popular in our age.

Blake: A petty sneaking knave I knew, why Mr. McLaughlin, how do ye do? I am not fond of critics. As for my influence and fame in future centuries, I am not surprised. Great things are done when men & mountains meet.

McL: By way of introduction to our readers, I am going to quote some of your work, and ask for your comments.

Blake: Fair enough. Degrade first the arts if you’d degrade mankind. And in my era, the arts have been slandered. (Note: During his lifetime Blake was largely ignored by all but his most savage critics.) Let me introduce my work with selections from an early piece, Proverbs of Hell, an excerpt from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Typically, I wrote the poem on sheets of illustrations I drew and my wife and I colored. I borrowed stylistically from the Bible, and some of Dante’s devices.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of religion.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The nakedness of woman is the glory of God.

McL: (I acknowledge being a bit disconcerted by the Blakes' innocent nudity. I recall Blake, during his lifetime, was widely considered a madman. I also recall that the poet maintained a steadfast friendship with American revolutionary Thomas Paine.)

I am familiar with and admire The Marriage of Heaven Hell. Am I correct in stating it contains some hyperbole and opinions you would recant in other works? Was it not because of the stridency and extremity of your writings that some thought you a madman? Your age was one of intellectual temperance combined with political revolutions. An odd combination.

Mrs. Blake: Mr. Blake doesn’t exaggerate. He is the finest man alive. His hands don’t dirt, his soul doesn’t stain.

Blake: I mock thee not tho I by thee am mocked, thou callest me Madman, but