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The winners of the Entelechy Biofiction Prize, judged by Rebecca Goldstein, are: Robert Perchan, "The Neoplastic Surgeon," 1st place; 
and Tania Hershman "My Name is Henry," 2nd place. These stories will appear in the next issue of Entelechy, due out soon.

 

  


 

Nancy E. Aiken
Alice Andrews
Bill Bakaitis
William Benzon
Celia Bland
Howard Bloom
Natalie Bronstein
James Brody
Joseph Carroll
Chris Cassidy
Jennifer Cazenave
Monica d. Church
Kathryn Coe
Frank Craig
Greg Darms
Wyatt Ehrenfels
Dylan Evans
Adrian Flange
Miriam Fried
Bjorn Grinde
Nancy W. Hall
Bradley Earle Hoge
Paul Hostovsky
Elizabeth Insogna
John A. Johnson
C.L. Jones
Robert Kelly
Laura Kipnis
James V. Kohl
Sharmagne Leland-St. John
P.P. Levine
Megan J.Z.
 

(click on title or scroll down issue)  


fall 2005/winter 2006

 

poetry
Late Blooming |  robert perchan
The Affiliate |  yvette a. schnoeker-shorb
Camille: Child of Divorce
|  lynn strongin
 Wincing at the Beautiful |  paul hostovsky 
Storm Clitoris |  howard bloom
 

stories
The Emperor's New Clothes: A Revision |  dylan evans
The Closer
  |  jay santini
The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man |
  ellen salle
 Leo in the Attic
| ronald pies
 

discourse
The Role of Traditional Children's Stories
in Human Evolution
| coe, palmer, aiken, cassidy
Perfuming the Mind |  james v. kohl
Intersecting Worlds |  deborah denicola
 

reviews
Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism |  
william benzon
Boggling the Mind | todd i. stark


 
art
Let's Go! |  monica d. church
 
Untitled (Tomatillo Opening) | megan pinch

Chris Metze
Jeff Miller
Rich Murphy
John A. Musacchio
Jenny Nelson
Craig Palmer
Jill Parisi
Irene Pérez
Ronald Pies
Megan Pinch
Gretchen Primack
Marnia Robinson
Jennifer Ryan
Natalie Safir
Ellen Salle
Jay Santini
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

Rupert Sheldrake
Joseph Shohan
David Livingstone Smith
Iva Spitzer
Todd I. Stark
H.D. Steklis
Jason Stern
Lynn Strongin
Paula Superti
David Tucker
George Wallace
George Williamson
Jannie Wolff
John Wymore
Pauline Uchmanowicz
Lindsey Vona

psychological       philosophical        spiritual         scientific         political          semiotic         memetic         evolutionary        revolutionary

   

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contents/no. 6

 
 

poetry

 

 

Late Blooming


journal-pbio-0020449-g001
reconstruction of neanderthal woman


robert perchan

 

Some six weeks into my 51st full tilt around the Sun I find my solitary self plucking tiny hairs from a tuft sprouting on the blunt tip of my nose. 200,000 years of Homo sapiens evolution and I end up here tonight staring at my mug and a poised pair of tweezers in the bathroom mirror. 200,000 years of DNA exchanges, natural selections and unselections,

read more

 

 

 


 

 

 

The Affiliate

 AN ECOLOGY OF BIOPHILIC VALUES
 

yvette  a. schnoeker-shorb

  

 

For Stephen R. Kellert

 

i.

We are but planetary dreams, puzzles
of cells completed, yet unsolved,
complexes of tendencies
defined by organic associations
in Nature. Culture me not
to be engineered to desire
lifeless essentials

read more
 

 

 

 


 

 

Camille
CHILD OF DIVORCE


         
elizabeth insogna, 2005

 

lynn strongin

 

 

had made it the 1000 miles thru the Rockies with her daddy who is divorced, a weekend
daddy, the split seed the divided god
to deliver the car
in Albuquerque. I fried porkchops the first night, despite the heat despite being a Jew
in a scold that would melt glass
plastic
the saints

 

read more

 

 


 

 

 

Wincing at the Beautiful

paul hostovsky

So my friend Phil is telling me how
he can't get a date
how he loves women and how
they're always giving him looks
so I ask him what kind of looks
so he winces at the beautiful
braless young woman passing by
at that particular propitious moment
giving her a look of such
longing and longevity
that she returns his look with a look
that kills his entire family tree
from the roots to the unimagined

read more

 


 

 

 

 


 

 

Storm Clitoris


         howard bloom, 2004
 

howard bloom
 

 
 

hormones heave
and skin receptors

gather like the black

storm clouds

 

and that pink

of rising sun

beneath the labial shelf of cloud

turns red

in your

 

read more

 


 

 

stories

 

 

The Emperor's New Clothes
A REVISED VERSION

dylan evans

We shouldn't blame ourselves. But it's like the psychologist said. Some children just never get it. They never mature enough to understand the value of lying. It's a biological condition, a genetic disease.”

 

 Suddenly, from within the crowd, came the high-pitched voice of a child.  “Look!  He's got no clothes on! The emperor is naked!”
All eyes turned towards the child, and then to the parents, whose faces had gone red with shame. The father grabbed the child by the ear and pulled very hard, while the mother

 

read more

 

 


 

 

The Closer

jay santini


                                                

By now, I am resigned to it. Leaving open is simply Amy’s “way,” as natural to her as digestion or sleep. It is not that Amy prefers objects to be left open, merely that she does in fact tend to leave them open because for her the openness is not a problem.

 

What concerns me is the CD player. As I enter the family room sipping my morning coffee, I notice that Amy has once again left the player on overnight with its tray extended, the machine’s countenance that of a child sticking its tongue out at me or Amy sticking her tongue out at me. Turning my back on the player to gaze out our

read more

 

 


 

 

The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man


                          aman resort, bali

 

ellen salle

 

A story, like a potential lover, wants — needs — to be noticed. Whereas a man might don a beautiful, deep-red linen shirt (especially when all the men are wearing blue, cotton plaid) in service of his genes, a story might don a cute, geeky, novel title in service of its memes.

 

I go back and forth with this title. It’s not really mine and not really my style, exactly — it’s Adrian’s — from his prescient story, White Fur.” My editor likes it, says I should keep it, says “it’s endearing and novel.” I thought about calling it  “Red Yucca” for a bit, but you might've passed by “Red Yucca”  not “The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man,” though! How could you resist “The Alien Planet of Sex with a New

read more


 

 

 

 
Leo in  the Attic



                         vien, 1765
 

ronald pies

I didn’t exactly volunteer to be Uncle Leo’s caretaker-in-chief. Nor had I planned, at age 27, to be living at home with my widowed mother, or working as a “sales associate” at the Borders in Newton. But after I left the literature program at Northeastern, the economy soured, I was broke, and it was either move in with Mom or hook up with my ex-girlfriend. My mother actually won out on the personality factor, and is decidedly a better cook than the ex.

             “The Universe is transformation. Life is opinion.”— Marcus Aurelius

My crazy Uncle Leo lives in our attic. Today, when I offered him his cocktail of Resperdal, Seroquel, and lithium, he asked me — almost apologetically — if I had noticed that the imperfections in the glass of his dormer window formed a pattern. “If you connect the little bubbles, starting from the left upper quadrant and moving clockwise, they form a silhouette of the prophet Isaiah.” I told my uncle that I couldn’t see the pattern, but that I hoped he found some happiness in it. “Oh, yes, Joel, yes, I

 

read more

 

 

 


 

discourse 

 

 

 

The Role of Traditional Children's Stories in Human Evolution


                                                                     megan jz,  2005

 

kathryn coe, craig palmer, nancy e. aiken, chris cassidy

 

 

A general evolutionary prediction is that traditional stories should encourage behaviors that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce in the past....We expect the majority of traditional stories will concern the most important, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous aspect of the human ancestral environment: other humans.


Most Darwinists would agree that modern Darwinian theory can shed light on cultural behavior, including the behaviors of composing and telling stories. Where Darwinists interested in literary narrative might differ, however, is in the definition of what should be included in the category of literary narrative:, i.e., does literary narrative refer only to the fine arts or are stories told in tribal societies also examples of literary narrative?. Another place where such Darwinists differ is in their view of  the function of literary narrative. Those who focus on literature as fine art argue that literary narrative has a cognitive

                          read more

 

 


 

Perfuming the Mind
THE BIOLOGICAL LOGIC OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTION

james v. kohl

 

All mammalian sexual behavior, including human sexual behavior is driven by pheromones. Since only humans make conscious associations (e.g., think), men and women are likely to think that their sexual behavior is driven by visually perceived physical attraction. This erroneous thinking defies biological logic, and consistently fails to offer an explanation for many aspects of human sexual behavior (e.g., paraphilias, and homosexuality).

 

People tend to think of "seeing" or "observing" directly with their senses, as if what we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell directly determines our overall impression of the world around us. Few people think about unconscious affect, which by its nature does not require any thought.

read more

 

 

 

 

   


 

 

Intersecting Worlds
ON GRIEF, CLAIR-SENTIENCE, AND PLACE



                                  megan jz,, 2005

 

deborah denicola


                                                                 

 

        

Was this my projection of the moving energy field around me, one based upon quantum physics, that hypothesized connection between science and faith, the machinations that made me aware of invisible dimensions? Could my unconscious mind have given me an image of "The Butterfly Theory" with its understructure showing the interdependencies of intersecting worlds?  Was I influencing my own reality by projecting British physicist Rupert Sheldrake's idea of "morphic resonance," where the present overlays the past? Einstein helped us understand that time is only a construct, past, present and future are all happening at once in the Now.

 

 

 

The sun was just coming up at five a.m., the sky, a finger-painting of mauve and tangerine, when my guide deposited me at a lone cabin atop a hill. My expansive vista included overgrown and wind-torn grasses as well as the churning

read more

 

 

   


 

reviews
 

 

 

Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism

william benzon



 

 

Whereas the Darwinists have explicitly talked about the value and importance of science and of the need for a scientific approach to literature, Moretti never talks about science at all. Let my imaginary funding decisions stand as a comment on the intellectual value of professing science as opposed to gathering data in the pursuit of a naturalist study of literature.

A Naturalist Imperative

The two books under review present alternatives to current methods of literary study. In Graphs, Maps, Trees, Franco Moretti opts for “distant reading” where “distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models.”  Among his structures are growth curves from quantitative history, though they could be from population biology, and phylogenetic or genealogical trees. The Literary Animal, edited by Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, is biological through and through, justifying the ways of biology to students of culture and arguing that story tellers have known it all along.

                           read more

 

 

 

Boggling the Mind

todd i. stark

 

 

 

 

If I’m wrong and our reality truly is filled with materializations, anomalous information transfer, and direct physical effects from human intention, then Tiller’s model may well be the greatest conceptual breakthrough that we have ever imagined. 

 

Some Science Adventures with Real Magic conveys a simple and familiar idea in an unusually complex way. The goal is to define and explain broad domains of anomalous phenomena in a way consistent with modern science, and to show what it all means for the future and potential of humanity. These efforts have typically been pigeon-holed by hard-line physicists and others as "New Age" mysticism, while

read more

 


 

art

 

 

Let's Go!

monica d. church
 

 

                         42” X 30“ mixed media on rives bfk, 2004
 

 

 

I am keenly aware of areas where domestic life intersects with intellectual curiosity. I began researching fertility and birth rituals while I was pregnant. Seeing Pre-Islamic Kyrgyz and Uzbek suzanis (marriage bed quilts) feature circular motifs in vibrant reds, pinks, oranges, that represent the sun, moon, the heavens, flowers, or pomegranates—all symbols of fertility—resonated deeply with me. Many cultures use circular imagery to represent the cycle of life. Today, in modern day Bukhara, a "moon-sky" motif is still appearing on circular loaves of unleavened bread, as it has for hundreds of years. Thus, motherhood makes for strange inspirational bedfellows. In addition to the centuries-old fertility and childbirth objects, simple domestic objects serve as creative sparks for my paintings: Hula-hoops, bubble wands and potty chairs.


                                           
        see more

 

 
                                   photo: robin poritzky

 

 


 

 

Untitled (tomatillo, opening)


                                                                        silver gelatin print, 15" x 15", 2001

megan pinch

 



 

                   photo: melissa frazier

This piece is from cadence, a body of work which combines different elements to create a visual narrative. Cadence is a visual poem about balance - light and darkness; form and texture; sharpness and softness.

see more


 

 

editors

 

 

alice andrews   |   editor/publisher

 

ENTELECHY BIOFICTION PRIZE


                                       
 

Alice Andrews (with degrees from Columbia University) teaches psychology with an evolutionary lens at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she is helping to implement an Evolutionary Studies program modeled on David Sloan Wilson's EvoS program at SUNY Binghamton. She is an editor and writer (books and magazines), and was the associate editor of Chronogram from 2000-2002. She is also the author of Trine Erotic (Vivisphere, 2002), a novel (biofiction) that's used in various college courses nationwide because of its exploration of evolutionary psychology. Alice is currently working on a book (based on her essay with the same title, published at Metanexus) called An Evolutionary Mind (to be published as part of Imprint Academic's series: "Societas: Essays in Political and Cultural Criticism"), and plans to begin writing another novel in the summer of 2006.

 

Essays and other musings:

Biofiction -new
An Evolutionary Mind
Playing with Myself: On Trine Erotic
Beyond Paradox: A Review of The Paradoxical Primate
Meta Review: Reactions to a Review of The Blank Slate
The Semiotics of Shoe Shapes
Being Brave: In Defense of Naturalism and Essentialism
Meta Study: Reactions to a Study on Female Sexuality
Unstandardized Minds
Attention: On Love
Narrowcasting Entelechy

Love Leaves - new
 


                       

  
photo: rick lange

 
 
 

 


Entelechy is very pleased to welcome

poetry editors Tim Horvath and Jason Ronstadt


 

  tim horvath   |  poetry editor

 

            

Tim Horvath, with an MA in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a soon-to-be-conferred MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire, taught high school English for nine years, and currently teaches composition at UNH. Tim is a three-time finalist in Glimmer Train's New Writers Competitions and recently received a prize from UNH for his story "Lax."  His interest in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology has led him to speak at various conferences, including recent and upcoming ones with co-editor Jason Ronstadt on the dreaming-brain and literature. He is currently working on a novel, tentatively entitled Spectra.

 
 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

  jason ronstadt   |  poetry editor

Jason Ronstadt teaches Freshman Writing and Screenwriting at New Mexico State University, and is a staff editor for New Mexico State’s literary magazine, Puerto Del Sol. He studied poetry with Charles Simic at The University of New Hampshire, and is the recipient of numerous creative writing awards including the John Scott Douglas Award, and the Thomas Williams Memorial Scholarship. He received an MA in Creative Writing from The University of New Hampshire and is currently studying with Robert Boswell, Kevin McIlvoy and Antonya Nelson at New Mexico State University. He continues work on his first novel and recently gave a presentation at the Poetics-Cognitive Science Colloquy, which was hosted by the Dactyl Foundation in New York City. This April, Jason and Tim Horvath gave a presentation at the First Annual Literature and Cognitive Science Conference at The University of Connecticut.

 

 



 

 


Copyright   ©   2006   Entelechy: Mind & Culture.  New Paltz,  NY. All rights reserved.