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Magazine


Issue 47, July / August 2003


“The poetic, as I am so elastically and ethereally defining and redefining it, needs an almost surreal sense of liberty, a comfort with its own illogic.” — William Bowers

Essays by William Bowers, Padgett Powell, and Sam Anderson. Mark Schone digs in to New York Times–bestseller J.H. “Jim” Hatfield’s fabricated life. Photography by Adam Shemper. Poetry by C.I.M. Jones and R.T. Smith.

Other contributors include Hal Crowther, David Ramsey, Katy Vine, Paul Reyes, Lauren Wilcox, and more.







COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS


Editor’s Box
by Marc Smirnoff

News from the Front 
South Carolina’s forbidden art; hijinks in the Texas Legislature; an artist’s glowing homage to Eudora Welty

Sense of Place:
Sardis, Mississippi
Photographs by Adam Shemper

Local Fare:
Bucking the Trend
by John T. Edge

Meditations:
Dixie Zen
by Sam Anderson

The Moviegoer:
Malady of the Quotidian
by William Bowers

Music Notes
Drive-By Truckers, Prefuse 73, Dwight Yoakam, and more.

Fine Print
Rick Bragg’s idea of a good book; a reissue of a 1909 novel and the Orange Prize winner reviewed; Newt Gingrich rewrites history.

Gone Off Up North:
Peanuts, Mama, and Robert E. Lee
by Roy Blount, Jr.

Dealer’s Choice:
The Three Graces
by Hal Crowther

Southern Scenes:
Sardis, Mississippi
Photograph by Adam Shemper

Features


Andalusia Is Open
Descending on Flannery O’Connor’s farm, where visitors are sometimes welcome.
by Padgett Powell

Unfortunate Con
How deed did Jim Hatfield’s self-deception run? The lonely criminal behind the presidential scandal-that-wasn’t.
by Mark Schone

The Golden Era of Heartbreak
When love fails, you might have to depend upon the cruelty of strangers.
A story by Michael Parker

POETRY 


The Latin for Cicada, by C.I.M. Jones

Directly, by R.T. Smith

 

Cover: Photograph by Debbie Fleming Caffrey.