Issue No. 1, March 1998 Note from the Editor     "Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be morphosis, shaping, not poiesis, creation. The rules of the imagination are themselves the very powers of growth and production." So wrote Coleridge, the author of The Friend (in his Biographia Literaria), and it is in this spirit that we pursue the work of the critical imagination. Updated on the first of every month, The Transcendental Friend will present several regular sections, including A Critical Dictionary, The Bestiary, Dialectic, and a Project. (To navigate among these sections, use the menu bar at left, or click on a link below.) In forthcoming issues Mote, Report from Afield and Review will be introduced. Something like the Princeton Encyclopedia were it edited by Bataille, Coleridge & Kierkegaard, perhaps, the Critical Dictionary will present articles on topics of a quasi-technical nature (it's with Bataille's Dictionary from Documents in mind that we are interested in a kind of strenuous act of the mind rather than the pleasantries of wit). Our first entry is on "Sincerity," by Duncan Dobbelmann. The Bestiary is a joint project of Laird Hunt & Eleni Sikelianos. The way it works is: 1) each chapter of the Bestiary will contain some contemporary writer's or writers' piece(s) about (or including) some animal(s); and 2) often, as in the case of this chapter, a relatively short quotation or comment will set itself up as a kind of anteroom in which we can stand (or choose not) to peer in (or out) at the proffered beast(s). This month's Bestiary features work by Lisa Jarnot, and is edited by Laird Hunt. The whole of theory in a single frame, Dialectic, will offer two texts in the moment of dialectical fissure. Our first issue, however, offers a longer piece in the spirit of the thing, an investigation of the question about the nature of "poetics" in the form of a brief survey of the literature. (Constructed by the Editor.) We are pleased to present in our first issue a Project by artist Dennis Thomas, combining exquisite graphite on paper drawings with texts by the entomologist, Henri Fabre. (Thomas lives and works in New York.) Our archives, including past issues & other material we've collected, will be available at the Files page. (We are presently curating work from some of the back issues of our favorite journals.) Finally, take a moment to turn to the Contact page to subscribe to the Friend (it's free). Also find here general and contact information.     Garrett Kalleberg, Editor

Issue No. 1. Copyright © 1998 by The Transcendental Friend. All rights revert to the authors upon publication.