"LOSS & RESTORATION"
[Image: "Donkeyskin" © Terri Windling, and used with permission]

Towards the end of his life someone asked Robert Frost,
"Do you have hope for the future?"
"Yes," he replied, "and even for the past, that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was, something we can accept, mistakes made by the selves we had to be, not able to be, perhaps, what we wished, or what looking back half the time it seems we could so easily have been, or ought. ... The future, yes, and even for the past, that it will become something we can bear."

• Martha Graham:
  A Dance of
  Death and Life
  
  "At seventy-two years old, on May 25, 1968, Graham gave her last dance performance, a performance revealing an exhausted, heavy drinking old woman, well past her prime. She was dancing for her life; each dance a dance of destruction to counter her enormous fear. 'I'd rather die,' she said. 'I would die if I stopped. I cannot go on without dance.'"
  
  — Maggy Anthony [read on...]
  
  

• Of Loss and Love:
  The Luminous Novels of
  Kate DiCamillo
  
  "Filled with expectancy. Awash in hope. Courage. Forgiveness. Love. These are the ways, simple as they may seem, to overcome the shattering effects of loss and find a reason to believe and a way home. From their beginnings, Kate DiCamillo's characters are destined to lose, but then, aren't we all?"
  
  Delores Schweitzer — [read on...]
  
  

• "Myth and Ritual:
  An Excerpt from
  Myth: A Very
  Short Introduction
  
  In 1995 Oxford University Press began publishing their Very Short Introduction series. There are now 179 titles on an extensive list of subjects. Professor Robert Segal offers concise and insightful explanation of theories of myth. This excerpt focuses on the work of William Robertson Smith, E.B. Tylor, J.G. Frazer, Jane Harrison, S.H. Hooke, Bronislaw Malinowski, Mircea Eliade, René Girard, Walter Burkert and others.
  
  — Robert A. Segal [read on...]
  
  

STORIES & POETRY

• The May Queen
  Chapter 5
  
  "I've always loved fairy tales about supernaturals coming in and landing — seals becoming human, swans marrying mortal men, maidens from the stars bestowing their gifts. Time and time again, that's where I find myself. But when it's all said and done, the spirits take their pelts, feathers, wings, and fly away. There are no happy endings for supernaturals, only leavings."
  — Michelle Tocher [read on...]
  
  

• The Not So Lovely
  Comes Out Beautifully
  
  "Joonie didn't see it as bad luck. She faced her losses and watched life work on her like a beetle on a dung ball. In the stitches of time that made up the circumstance of her life, Joonie saw a fact, a matter of time, foresight and hindsight all rolled into one big ass wad of Catch-22."
  — Sally Drumm [read on...]
  
  

• "Summer Fields"
  — R.L. Boyer [read on...]
  
  

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The theme for the February issue is

"THE SOUND OF FIRE:
MYTH IN MUSIC"

Sacred sounds; the pipes of Pan; Kobi drummers; rhythm;
the walls of Jericho; Sirens; lyrics; the muses: Nete, Mesi, and Hypate; Kokopeli;
Apollo's harp; pillars of fire; anthropomorphic fire, The Magic Flute...

The Mythic Imagination Institute creates experiences that explore
— through art, hands-on activity
and inter-disciplinary conversation —
the mystery and metaphor inherent in myth and story.