Latest and greatest issue of FM, the world's fastest growing literary quarterly, featuring this month a special tribute to a an artist with great integrity and rare powers of observation, retention and distillation, in the form of down to earth lyrical poetry: Lou Reed. With contributions from many poets and musicians who came naturally under his influence: SOY BLANCO, CHRIS BODOR(who put together this tribute), JOHN DORSEY, TIM HALL, CHUCK HOWE, MICHAEL HENRY LEE, STEVEN MICHAEL PAPE, PUMA PERL, AMA REYNOLDS, KIMMY VAN KOOTEN(also responsible for the cover artwork of FM8), and M.L. WILLIAMS. This issue of FM is jam packed with poems and stories by poets and storytellers from around the world, including RATTY ADALAN, ELISA ADAMS, ROXANA BIANCHI ALZAMORA, FRAN AYERS, JAMES KENNETH BLAYLOCK, ROSEANNE TERRANOVA CIRIGLIANO, ANGELA DAVIS, D.B.DEAN, DANIEL D'UWA, MELANIE MONTERREY EYTH, DAVID M. HENDERSON, JANE LYNAHAN KARKLIN, RANA KELLY, DEBORAH LEAH KREMPA, ALICJA KUBERSKA, BRENDA KING LANDRY, BRADLEY LEBLANC, KAUSHAL LOVESMITH, CORRINE-VALERIE MARIN, KERSTIN MARX, BOZENA MAZUR-NOWAK, STEVE MINCK, BECKY NORTHRUP, JAN POTEMKIN, CARL READER, CAMINO RELUCTANT, CARLA SHEPARD SIMS, DOUGLAS P. SMITH, STANISLAW STANIK, BEATA SZYL-TYLECKI, STELLA SZYMANIAK, ROBERT WALDNER, and BILL WISE. Also containing heartfelt musings and insights on the subjects of WINTER, and the passing of a King, NELSON MANDELA. Happy holidays to all

WHEN SIX WAS NINE is the second part of the trilogy known worldwide as ADVENTURES IN THE VOID. It covers the crucial years when the world was turned upside down and on its end by cataclysmic changes in politics, the arts, and society in general. Eager to embrace the new freedoms awaiting his generation, Lucien Goldman rushes headfirst into the tumbling tides as described by The Chambers Brothers in their mini epic "Time Has Come Today." Duly his soul becomes "psychedelicized" Now if only he can get back home to his bedroom where the walls are covered by the icons of his generation: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc. and explain everything to his anxious parents.

THE PAST IS INEVITABLE is a collection of new poetry by bestselling poet and novelist LEWIS FREDERICK CRYSTAL. These poems have all been composed in the past year and the book contains five sections: Avenue U, Canarsie Suite, California, Elegies, and The Present Tense, each representing a particular stage of the author's life.

A HISTORY OF SEX is not as the title may imply, a historical overview of the sexual history of mankind from prehistoric times to the present. Rather, it is a personal history of one man, straining to understand his own sexual nature and to apply it delicately to the convoluted ways of the modern world Included in this volume are other poems in a similar vein, but much, much shorter, and to the point.

THE THIEVES OF YOUTH is the first book of a trilogy of coming of age novels, variously referred to as ADVENTURES IN THE VOID or sometimes as THE BOOKS OF LUCIEN. THE THIEVES OF YOUTH is set in t.he 1950's as things are just getting started for the young Lucien Goldman. Metaphorically speaking he is just learning the ropes. Literally he is being roped into the lifestyle of his striving middle class parents Harry and Evelyn who are his mentors, although his brother Paul, a maintenance man named Slim Sandleman and the former world heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, are vying for the honors.

HERITAGE New Poems is the seventh book of poetry from bestselling author LEWIS FREDERICK CRYSTAL. All of the poems in this volume were written in the previous twelve months and many including the title poem, reflect upon the author's ancestors who fleeing Russia prior to World War I and the Bolshevick Revolution settled in Harlem, New York and then migrated to Brooklyn, where the author was born. Although his own influences grew out of the cultural revolution of the 1960's, it was literally impossible to escape the inestimable impact of his family and their valiant struggle to assimilate into the American landscape. Other poems here reference many of the author's personal tastes("Jimi" "A Revisionist History Lesson" and "Six Degrees of Delmore Schwartz"). Other poems center on personal struggles with issues of aging and the precise nature of the past and its relationship to the present and to the future ("Solitary Journey, " Summers Roll On")as well as Mr. Crystal's take on recent current events("And Darkness Covered The Face of The Deep," "Beautiful Little Kids").

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF CHILDHOOD is a book of poetry and some related prose pieces in which the author faithfully examines the inexplicable circumstances of his childhood. The title poem, a lengthy compilation of hearsay and observations, takes the poet and his main subjects-his parents- through their courtship, the birth of their children and their deaths, many years apart. Among the other fine poems are elegies written for the poets' parents and others which find him confronting his own mortality, at first from afar and then years later, when it is no longer a vague outline.

1976: A BICENTENNIAL NOVEL is the concluding part of the trilogy which includes THE THIEVES OF YOUTH and WHEN SIX WAS NINE. Lucian Goldman has finally come of age and is finally a man. He wants to take his new girlfriend to California so they can live there together, he as a writer, she as a painter, and the two of them in eternal love. The only problem is the father who has been his biggest supporter is dying at home in Brooklyn

A novel about the subterranean world of Bookselling as practiced on the busy island of Manhattan in the latter part of the twentieth century.