Welcome to the seventh issue of Home Planet News Online. It’s been a hectic, interesting year. Home Planet News Online is two months late getting out and the vampires have been put in charge of the blood bank. The USA is more devided than ever, billionairs are sucking up the ecconmy through plastic straws, and war is ongoing and about to happen any day now. "Interesting times" has never been so dangerous in the United States.
Home Planet was founded by the late Donald Lev and Enid Dame. After Donald felt he was no longer able to put out the printed issue, he asked me (Frank Murphy Editor in Chief) to create an Online version of the magazine while he stayed on advising us as a consulting editor. Our last issue was devoted to Donald’s passing. In the near future there will be a Donald Lev Memorial site devoted to Donald. In the meantime, here is a link to last issue's memorial pages. Donald Lev MemorialPage I will keep adding to these pages as poets write in their poems, their memories, reviews of his books. These pages can become part of his memorial.
Donald was a wonderful man, a wonderful poet, and a wonderful friend. If you haven’t read his poetry yet, I urge you not to delay a moment longer.
In this issue our featured writer is Matthew Paris, and our feature poet is Susan Sherman.
Matthew Paris is known to our readers for his wonderful blog, The Blog Bog, and for his plays two of which have been published in the last two issues of Home Planet News. Trump. He completes his Trump Trilogy in this issue with The Summit – A Play In Two Scenes. As our Featured Writer, he has given us ten remarkable portraits of ten remarkable poets and writers.
Susan Sherman is a poet, a playwright, an essayist, the author of a collection of short fiction and the founder of IKON magazine. Strength and elegance are carefully, skillfully balanced throughout her superbly crafted poetry.
A couple of books came out too late for us to get a review written for this issue. They include Linder Lerner’s new book: WHEN DEATH IS A RED BALLOON,
The Promised End a collection of short stories by Ron Singer, and Love's Compass by Cheryl Rice
This issue also contains poetry in Spanish and Dutch. Hopefully, as word gets out, we will be able to do more pages like this. There was a wonderful poetry magazine out in the sixties called el corno emplumado. It published poems in Spanish and English. In our next issue I would like to have a section devoted to poets writing in Spanish, with or without translations. And, in coming issues we will include poems by poets writing in other languages, though we will need a translation for these
If you are joining us for the first time you will see a verity of poems, stories, essays, memoirs, a play, and some extremely wonderful artwork. While you are wondering through our website in the poetry section, click on the magnifying glass
to see the poem as an individual page enlarged slightly for easier reading.