Letter to Carol Cullar, Editor, Maverick Press/Terrapin

Maverick Press/Terrapin

Carol Cullar, Editor,

Rt. 2, Box 4915

Eagle Pass, TX 78852

Nov. 8, 1995

Dear Carol,

I’m deeply honored to be included in another issue of Maverick/Terrapin. On the latest flyer, a stamped note, “need bio for upcoming issue”   had me scrambling through my notes as to what poem, “Feeding the Minotaur”; during the interim, I’ve made some small word changes which I’ve highlighted, but I suspect you’ve already gone to press, since it’s already November. No matter. !No te preocupes!

I’m slowly crawling out of the morass of two year’s worth of significant deaths—my parents & an uncle—all within a year’s span (not to mention a bad relationship), has left me virtually speechless/wordless. . . so this publication means more to me than you can imagine. It reminds me of my duty: I am still  writer despite all my stripped down illusions.

The Mother Earth Journal: Latin American issue came out in a slightly different format—I was too busy grieving to do layout, so Herman Berlandt finished it (to the best of his abilities). I’m very attached to good layout, etc., so I’m not happy with it visually. He used several of your woodcarvings. They look great. Did he send you a copy?

I loved the poems you sent me, I’d love to see more. . . are you a sister voice in the dark? I often feel my personal obsession as materia prima isn’t currently popular or acceptable in the publishing world, but it’s the angst/grist for my mill/who I am. If I’d a listened tae my teachers, my vision/voice wouldn’t exist. If only I could get a book published. . . I keep sending my MS out to contests, often placing as a runner up, to no avail. Still no book in sight. It makes me doubt my work. Your continued support of my writing (and a “Pushcart” nomination!) gives me reason/courage to submit/publish.

Sincerely,

Maureen Hurley

BIO: Maureen Hurley lives in Forestville, near the redwoods along the Russian River, in northern California. Her poems have appeared in Maverick Press’s Paisano, Culebra! and numerous journals and anthologies including Atomic Ghost, & Hermit Kingdom. Poetry awards include Negative Capability, Chester H. Jones, Kalliopea, National Writers’ Union, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and two regional NEA fellowships. “Feeding the Minotaur” grapples with the unconscious dendritic history buried within her personal mythopoetics.

FEEDING THE MINOTAUR

FEEDING THE MINOTAUR

       Un lungo errore in cieco laberinto.

             —Petrarch

                            To John Oliver Simon

This is just to say that enroute

to the emergency meeting I was crucially lost

in the philosophical distance over bilateral

distinctions between the left and the right

exits for MacArthur Blvd., on the Nimitz freeway

wondering why travel required the ghostly benediction

of five-star generals; the army vs the navy.

Mapless, having destroyed all evidence of you,

I toured the burnt stubble of the Oakland hills

(thinking I was south of the border),

searching for the lost gate to 680,

onramps to nuministic labyrinths spiraling me

through the umbilical treachery of tunnels and fault lines,

always away from the source—

and time unrolled like an angry fuse down Telegraph.

Yes, every cell in our bodies having changed,

I wondered what the lesson was this time,

until I walked in Tobey’s door to see you,

my azul minotaur; I found the arbitrary red lines

and blue highways on the funereal map of reprieve.

I’d dreamed of hunting with women

who made their home on these street corners

beneath the sign of the horned Artemis.

Blame it on the undercurrent ballistics of the Piscine moon.

I’ve held both ends of the thread long enough, ready

to flee the purgatorial darkness; your hooves

having scrawled treaties of abandonment in the dust—

enough to bury us—except for that

small, final harvest taken

before the fall.

Tender enemy, once we had no need of threads

or mapping codes. Once I fed you late apples,

we practiced flight beneath the carnelian moon

and the gates of the garden moved open.

Thousands of angelitos singing in the trees.

The Southern Cross offering us up

before the rising sun.

9/20-22/94 Fall Equinox
1995 Maverick, Terrapin issue

sometimes my notes are little poems all by themselves.