So this is the magazine biz. John Updike, in another context entirely (in a poem called “Elderly Sex”), refers, sweepingly, to “unlikely acrobatics.” Now there’s a motto (or an epitaph, to be expansive), for a “little” magazine out of Oxford (pop. 10,000), Mississippi if ever I heard one. What is unlikely, however, is not impossible. “While there is life, there is hope, sir,” said Jeeves, in not the best circumstances—as Bertie flailed at the ukulele. You are peeping at the unpunctual, but spry, second volume of The Oxford American. Although we billed ourselves in the first as a quarterly, the crime is not that we descend with the 2nd, what?, six months—not four months—after our debut. No—thankfully our readers seem understanding of the delay—where I really transgressed is in not spelling out in the first editorial what I could easily have predicted then: that because of my inexperience (periodical virginity) and a few other factors a long gap would occur (one longer, we pledge, than will ever occur again) between our first and second publication. Am I trying to apologize? Let’s hope not. Because then I’d have to apologize just as earnestly for typos in the first, for credit not given, for not publishing that fourth potty poem—a nearly interminable list. Allow me just to say that the third volume of The Oxford American will sing in March of 1993.

It is reported that many new businesses fail in the first year from a lack of sufficient start-up capital. Nobody’s mistaken about that. Despite appearances (I mean, we are trying hard to make this magazine read as well and look as good as possible), we have no siphon to anyone’s moneybags nor do we have the bank loaner’s ear (and there are times when I think I would surrender a certain amount of freedom for the bank loaner’s ear).

O believers in the arts! If you see depth or importance in “the premise and the promise” of The Oxford American, and wish to have us around, please find the lucidity and kindness to see, further, that you can help protect our still crawling enterprise from the slings and arrows of commerce. King Midas has not yet massaged us. What we need, from believers, are donations, advertising, gift subscriptions (to libraries, friends or, if our poetry dept. upsets you, enemies). It is possible, we think, to judge our aim at this early date. The Oxford American puffs along the right track, you will see, and is in the game for keeps, but that does not mean that we don't need your help for these first lean years.

Vladimir Nabokov noticed “the difference between the comic side of things and their cosmic side depends upon one sibilant.” All is possible! While vipers entwine the figurative flagpole—atop, fine writing, fine art, emblazon the wind-rushed banner!