McSweeney's Issue 22
Issue 22 is a three-part exercise in inspired restriction — of author, of content, and of form. In section one, poets (yes—poets!) including Mary Karr, Denis Johnson, Michael Ondaatje, and DC Berman initiate poet-chains, picking a poem of their own and one by another poet, who will then, thus inducted, do the same, and then again, and again, and so on until an appropriate moment. In section two, Fitzgerald (yes—F. Scott Fitzgerald!) provides a list of unused story premises f...