In this issue of FlashPøint, we present the first extended, online consideration of the poetry of John Taggart. After a brief introduction by Brad Haas, we kick it off with a new poem, "Rhythm and Blues Singer," from John Taggart. Robert Creeley then provides an original poem entitled "John’s Song." Brad Haas has also contributed a poem, "The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost," rippling with the shades of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, as prelude to a long interview he conducted with John Taggart for FlashPøint over two relaxed, music filled and intellectually rangy afternoons at the poet’s rural home. This is followed by three critical examinations of John Taggart’s work by Mark Scroggins, "Taggart: Sound and Vision," Burt Kimmelman, "Quantum Syntax: John Taggart’s Discrete Serialism," and David Clipnger, "Redrawing the Boundaries of Poetry: The Small Journal and the Example of Maps."

     We also have pages 1490 thru 1504 of Joe Brennan’s 1600-page tripartite, antiphonal masterpiece, A Work in Progress. All the new (and old) millennium hypocrites, liars, murderers, and fools now have their Hell. The excerpt in FlashPøint is identified by its first line, “...Moonlight white with envy... .”

     David Hickman’s essay, "The Measure of Measure: Ego, Positivism and The Smiling Pig of Language Poetry" traces the intellectual, aesthetic and ethical roots of the Language project’s utter collapse into disrepute and obscurity.

     Jazz legend and John Coltrane authority, Andrew White, has provided us with a wry story from 1963 excerpted from his iconoclastic autobiography, “Chicken Alto.” With good natured humor he lucidly communicates in this short piece several archetypal dimensions of the struggle of the modern jazz musician.

     We have translations from the Greek of three C.P. Cavafy poems from New York poet, Anastasios Kozaitis, as well as an original poem, "Variations: Toward the Fluid Addresses," which chronicles the co-evolutionary constriction of our material/scientific culture.

     Brad Haas has posted two variants of the Oppen poems, "Alpine" and "Stoneybrook," from his personal archive as prelude to his review of the New Collected Poems edited by Michael Davidson and issued by New Directions. Brad not only includes his own provocative essay on the metamorphosis of Oppen’s canon, "The Textual Dilemma of Oppen’s `Alpine'," he has also obtained for us a recent talk on Oppen by ... John Taggart!

     Brad Haas also reviews The Shrubberies by Ronald Johnson, edited by Peter O’Leary, and published by Flood Editions, and A Menora for Athena: Charles Reznikoff and the Jewish Dilemmas of Objectivist Poetry by Stephen Fredman, published by the University of Chicago Press.

     This issue of FlashPøint is graced with the powerful and profound images of ex-patriot, African American cartoonist Ollie Harrington. Mr. Harrington’s work has had a profound influence on illustrators Sue Coe and Michael Allen who have appeared in previous issues of FlashPøint. The three images in this issue come from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American Art. Together with Mr. Harrington's art in this issue's Galerie we are happy to showcase a very different approach to graphics in the work of Tom Wagner.

     In response to some critics' current contention that Ezra Pound’s Cantos are the “anthem of fascism,” Carlo Parcelli asked the fascists themselves what role the Cantos play in their ideology in his piece "Ezra Skinhead: The Cantos as the Anthem of Fascism." Then Parcelli turns his attention to the official press’s horror at James Joyce’s Ulysses' being named the “greatest novel of the twentieth century” by Modern Library. He then ties the press’s resistance to Joyce, Ulysses, and High Modernism to their longstanding fear and loathing of the ‘other’ as represented by third world nationalist movements in a piece he calls "The Washington Post vs. the Ineluctable Modality of the Visible."

      Finally, the unabridged text of Carlo Parcelli’s poem "Deconstructing the Demiurge: Tale of the Tribe", that has so much annoyed readers, especially members of the scientific and political communities, is presented here in its full glory in hopes of providing further annoyance.

      FlashPøint fiction is always a startling mix of styles and subjects. In issue #5 the latter range from war ("night patrol" and John Potts' "The Throatcutters") to other human business. Cris Mazza, an excerpt of whose novel, Girl Beside Him, appears in FlashPøint #1, now contributes two enticing contrapuntal short-shorts grouped as "She Does, He Doesn't". (An edgy discussion of Mazza's novel, Your Name Here: _______, orchestrated by Cam Tatham, accompanies an introduction to Girl Beside Him.) Anthony Wright's two tales, "Ghosts of Krakatoa" and "Popocatepetl", take FlashPoint more than literally into new territory -- travel-writing -- which we have not featured before. We have published speculative fantasy, on the other hand, but never anything like David Alexander's Machinebreakers, which projects a dystopian alternative history of the U.S. always shattering into and out of chaos. A window into a very different 21st century dystopia can be found in a review of Lance Olsen's Freaknest. And for a wry window upon the events of September-October 2001, check out Matt Samet's "Attack on Bloggs".

     Welcome to the new FlashPøint ... and be sure to tell us what you think!