We bring not verse, but poetry, in its intimacy, intensity, more than rhythm and rhymes, more than the Times. Five years ago, or a hundred, or a thousand (time is relative), I wandered south of South Dakota and stumbled like a drunk, confused Clint Eastwood past the city walls of Albuquerque. On my first night in town I was dragged through a dust cloud, under city haze, and two or three mighty sta
rs, and brought to the doorstep of Amanda, a cosmopolitan gypsy poet leaning against the doorway, giant wine glass in hand, a black dress swaying in the dry desert wind. I was as smitten as a gay man could be. That night, on the neighbor's roof which doubled as her back porch, the Hazard Beat was born. Whether we knew it or not, the idea for this magazine was forged in a long night of yelling our dreams at each other, like Warren Beatty in "Reds." Years later I dreamed one night she was reading the news in poetry to me. As I put it, "the Beat is a resurrection of two lifeless co**ses: journalism and poetry." As she put it, "The world is cold and dark, and the human soul is beautiful and deep, even when it doesn't know of its own power." We are here to be honest, bring you the news of Earth, and breathe life into the co**se that is your sad, mechanized heart. You are alive, you are human! Take the death from your tongue and swallow the truth. Not all poems are scribbled in words. There are poets everywhere, scribbling their souls and stories in the dirt, on the pavement, in the sky. This is a hazardous beat we endeavor to cover, along with many talented artists and poets, and the world has never been more inimical to poetry. But the first rule of our publication is this:
Hazardous feats call for hazardous beats.
