From the Editor
NASA Photo (James Webb Telescope)
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (1935)
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the premier edition of Headwind!
Headwind is a new literary journal featuring interviews, poetry, art, reviews,
and essays. We present artists, activists, prisoners, writers, immigrants, scientists, cultural icons, scholars, and working people, each bringing a unique perspective to the pages of this journal, each challenging our readers to think beyond the dogma of the old world and recognize the monsters that hover between the old and new.
Our purpose is to inform, inspire, and promote change; to help you become aware of what’s already a fundamental part of you. We provide the imagery, the conversation, the stories, and hope you will join us in a spirit of community.
Science and art are often viewed as opposites. In this issue, art and science intersect in the investigation, discovery, and portrayal of our world. As artists translate concepts into images and scientists create data from images, Headwind showcases a science writer with “the soul of a poet,” a scientist who illustrates the artistry and beauty of the mundane under a microscope, and ten poets who illuminate our world in arrays of imagery.
Headwind presents some of the most poignant voices of our time. We speak with Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. In his remarkable new book, Mr. Jabr flips some of our most basic assumptions. He describes to Headwind forests sending water and bacteria upward to create rain; microbial life breaking down rock, forging Earth’s minerals and forming continents; plankton sweeping across the Sahara desert to form limestone building blocks of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Colosseum — life accommodating Earth, not merely Earth accommodating life.
Gary Greenberg, scientist, artist, and inventor of 3-D microscopes, examines ordinary grains of sand and delivers for Headwind extraordinary images of a world we see every day but don’t really see.
Don Hata was imprisoned at three years old by the United States during the World War II roundup of American citizens of Japanese descent. We display some of Dr. Hata’s extraordinary paintings of the place where he was incarcerated from 1942 to 1944 (a full interview with Don Hata will be published in our next issue).
Collin Davis was wrongfully imprisoned at age 18 when he was arrested as an alleged aider and abettor of a murder and given a life sentence. He describes to Headwind his life of incarceration, and his efforts to rebuild his life and contribute from the inside. Shortly before publication of his interview, Collin tragically took his own life. Collin fought for nearly 20 years to try to get justice until he ran out of hope. Headwind is deeply shaken by his sudden death, and we mourn the loss of his young life. We supplement his interview with an interview of his mother, Melissa Hipple.
Terrance Steele, serving a life sentence for a crime committed by others, shares his life behind bars with Headwind and discusses some of the childhood influences that led to friendships and associations in his youth, which contributed to some missteps that he examines with Headwind.
Robert Weide, a sociology professor and former gang member, discusses his book, Divide & Conquer, in which he argues that gang conflict and racial division undermine the potential for solidarity among the labor force and suppress resistance to low wages and corporate control.
Jeff Jones, co-founder of The Weather Underground and co-author of Prairie Fire, describes in depth his family’s generational commitment to pacifism and political activism. He takes us on his journey from Quaker upbringing, student body president in high school, conscientious objector, Antioch College, Students for a Democratic Society, The Weather Underground, associations with the Black Panther Party, living and building a family underground while being pursued by the FBI, and a fascinating anecdote of the Weather Underground’s assistance to Timothy Leary in his escape from prison to join up with Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria. Jones’ thoughtful analysis of the issues of the 1960s and 1970s provides context and an intellectual foundation for the struggles sixty years ago that ring all too familiar today.
There are few more iconic images of protest and revolt than the raised fists of John Carlos and Tommie Smith on the victory stand at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Dr. Harry Edwards organized this immortal act of defiance. He talks to Headwind about his early years growing up in segregated East St. Louis, his close relationships with Black athletes addressing racism in professional sports, as well as the countless athletes he has counseled, from a young, emerging heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, taking a knee in protest, and Kaepernick’s subsequent blackballing and ostracism from football.
Michael Blaha takes us along on his 25th annual trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he guides us through an intimate and colorful tour of the festival, the great city of Edinburgh, and the vibrant theater community in ancient Scotland.
Poet Suzanne Lummis delivers a fascinating essay, The Poem Noir: Too Dark to be Depressed, in which she finds connection between some black and white “B” movies of the 1940s and 1950s, labeled by critics as “noir,” and what she considers a distinct genre in modern poetry — the “poem noir.”
Headwind presents some of Los Angeles’s finest poets – ten poets who describe ordinary existence through extraordinary imagery, verse, and vision. Conney D. Williams, Ron Koertge, Suzanne Lummis, Tresha Haefner, Cynthia Briano, Elya Braden, Christopher Buckley, Charles Harper Webb, Lee Rossi, and David Ulin.
Prefacing Headwind’s “Painters on Painting” section, Deborah Green, a musician who performed with and instructed Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and other legends, as well as being an artist, provides one of her paintings to begin our series on painters.
Alexis Rhone Fancher has an upcoming book, A Picture is Worth a Poet’s Words, a photo-portrait book of over 100 Southern California poets, and contributes two beautiful photo-portraits of poets appearing in this issue. Yvonne McGrath presents one of her beautiful paintings from her flower series.
Headwind regularly features columns, “Writers on Writing” and “Painters on Painting” in the print edition only, in which famous writers and painters offer tips, advice, and insights into their crafts.
Nearly forty years ago I was associate editor of Blue Window, a short-lived
poetry magazine. We published Charles Bukowski, Wanda Coleman, Ron Koertge, Holly Prado, Cecilia Woloch, Jack Grapes, and many other major L.A. poets. Suzanne Lummis reviewed a book of poetry for our premier issue. I interviewed Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley for our first two issues. We harnessed the enthusiasm and energy of city-wide gatherings of poets into a community.
The magazine soon faded. But the spirit that gave birth to Blue Window never died. As Felix Pollak pointed out in his 1962 essay, “The World of Little Magazines,” small press magazines bear “a spirit of wide-openness and receptivity to new ideas, theories, movements, experiments; a stubborn refusal to conform to conventions and mores; an air of independence, a fervid antagonism against fetters and trammels and chains and strings of any kind.”
Accordingly, Headwind will not accept corporate advertising or funding, unlike commercial media and even small magazines under the non-profit mantle. We will neither ask for nor accept donations. We do not charge for unlimited viewing online, and our print magazine (an unparalleled work of beauty) is $12 plus mailing costs, the same price as most journals propped up by corporate contributions and advertising.
Why, after 40 years, am I starting another literary magazine? Jill Rosser, in her essay, “Reasons for Creating a New Literary Magazine,” provides a fitting answer:
“It thrills you to think that a friend while traveling in Peru might accidentally leave your magazine on a windy day on a bench very close to a splashing fountain in a plaza, where some bilingual Peruvian will pick up your magazine to protect it from the windborne droplets and recognize the brilliance of one of the writers you have discovered and begin the translation chain that will ultimately lead to that worthy author’s Nobel.”
It thrills me indeed. It will happen, one way or another.
You can help! Order your print copy of Headwind by visiting our website at headwindmag.com or sending a check for $19 ($12, plus $7 for mailing), to Headwind, 2530 Wilshire Blvd., 3rd Floor, Santa Monica, CA 90403. Hold it. Feel it. Gaze at its beautiful pages as the wind ruffles your collar under a jacaranda tree, and purple flowers fall as you turn the pages. Take it on your next trip to Peru, Hawaii, or the beach, a park, the post office. Loan it to your friend (the one who never returns things), leave it on a park bench, and then buy another one. Become part of our community. Let us hear from you by connecting with us at dan@headwindmag.com. Enjoy your beautiful magazine!
Daniel Ritkes
Editor and Publisher
