39:3/4 Winter 1993

LESLIE SCALAPINO

from The Present

An excerpt from Leslie Scalapino's “The Present” represented North America's Southwest Coast in Winter 1993’s “A North Pacific Rim Reader." At the time of its publication, this ambitious double-issue was the longest in CR’s history; it remains the journal's most geographically diverse issue. In his introduction guest-editor John Wright articulated his ambitions for this "reader," which successfully deploys an unusual geographic constraint:

This issue presents both new and established writers working from within—and blending—a variety of cultural traditions in ways that might challenge the impending monoculturalism of this [emergent] mercantile Pacific Rim order. The focus here is on writers from the North Pacific Rim (roughly north of the Tropic of Cancer) living and working along the West Coast of North America, within the North Pacific Basin—Hawai'i in particular—and along the Asian coastlines that include Siberia, Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.

"The Present," reprinted in Scalapino's full-length exploration of the novel's form, Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1994), is a strong example of Scalapino’s influential fusion of narrative, dramatic dialogue, and prose poetry. In his introduction, Wright wrote that Scalapino’s work represented “a remarkable convergence of traditions” and was indicative of a multiculturalism found “as often within any given region as it is among nation-states or between continents.” A longtime champion of the work of Philip Whalen, Scalapino is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, prose, and essays. She teaches at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

[KM, 2006]

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