The New York Quarterly is an amazing, intelligent, crazy

Host: The night was deep over Brooklyn, the kind that felt heavy with old rain and the scent of ink. Inside a small, dimly lit café, the walls were covered in yellowed magazine covers, each one a relic of some forgotten decade. A neon sign outside flickered, painting the tables in slow pulses of blue and red.

Jack sat by the window, a half-empty glass of whiskey beside him, an old copy of The New York Quarterly spread open on the table. Jeeny walked in, shaking the rain from her hair, her eyes immediately catching the magazine’s bold, black font.

Host: Outside, the city murmured like a restless animal, but inside, there was a kind of stillness — the kind that only existed when words had just been read, and their echoes still lingered in the air.

Jeeny: “You’re still reading that?”

Jack: (without looking up) “Still trying to understand it.”

Host: His voice was low, with that same old edge — half irony, half fatigue.

Jeeny: “James Dickey once called it ‘amazing, intelligent, crazy, creative, strange, and indispensable.’ I’d say that’s about right.”

Jack: “Or he just ran out of adjectives.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “No. He was a poet. He knew exactly what he was saying.”

Host: The neon buzzed softly, casting her shadow across the magazine’s pages. The word indispensable seemed to glow faintly beneath her hand.

Jack: “I’ve never trusted words like that — indispensable, essential, genius. They’re just badges people give things they don’t want to question.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe they’re the only words we have left when something truly matters.”

Host: The rain outside returned, drumming on the glass. The café owner turned the radio down, and the world narrowed to their voices — two souls arguing over the meaning of art.

Jeeny: “Don’t you see? The Quarterly was never about perfection. It was about rawness, about giving writers a place to be brilliant and mad at the same time. It’s a kind of sacred chaos.”

Jack: “Sacred chaos is just another way of saying ‘no standards.’”

Jeeny: “You think art needs rules?”

Jack: “I think it needs boundaries. Otherwise, it’s just noise — self-indulgence disguised as expression. Everyone thinks they’re a poet now.”

Jeeny: “Because everyone is one, Jack. They just forget how to speak their truth. The New York Quarterly reminded them.”

Host: Her words cut through the smoke of the room. She leaned forward, her eyes alive with that fierce light that always appeared when she believed too much.

Jack: “It also printed a lot of garbage. For every genius, there were ten lunatics scribbling nonsense about subway rats and existential despair.”

Jeeny: “And yet even that — even the nonsense — was honest. That’s what made it alive. You remember Bukowski? He got his start there. He didn’t care about polish — he cared about truth.”

Jack: “Truth doesn’t have to be ugly.”

Jeeny: “But sometimes it is. And pretending it’s not is worse than facing it.”

Host: The tension in her voice filled the air like static. Jack shifted, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass, eyes fixed on the page in front of him — a short poem about a taxi driver dreaming of oceans.

Jack: “You think chaos is the only way to find beauty.”

Jeeny: “No. I think chaos is where beauty hides before it’s discovered.”

Host: The rain intensified, spattering the window so hard it blurred the city lights. A passing subway rumble made the floor vibrate, as if the city itself had leaned in to listen.

Jack: “You talk about art like it’s a religion.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it is. A secular one. But it still demands faith.”

Jack: “Faith in what?”

Jeeny: “In the irrational — in the idea that words, when combined just right, can still make someone feel less alone.”

Jack: “And what happens when they don’t?”

Jeeny: “Then we keep trying. That’s what makes it indispensable.”

Host: Her voice softened, but her hands tightened around the coffee cup. Jack noticed it — the tremor, the earnestness, the need to believe that all this strangeness meant something.

Jack: “You sound like the editors — like you’d bleed for a metaphor.”

Jeeny: “Maybe I would. Because once upon a time, words changed the world. Remember when Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time? People called it obscene, chaotic — and yet it became a mirror. People saw themselves in that madness. That’s what The New York Quarterly tried to preserve.”

Jack: “And now? Who reads it? Who even remembers it?”

Jeeny: “You do.”

Host: That hit him. He looked down again, eyes tracing the black type. The silence was long, stretching like a held breath between them.

Host: Outside, a sirens’ wail passed, fading into the distance. The radio began to play something old — Coltrane, maybe. The horns rose, slow and aching, wrapping the room in a kind of melancholy warmth.

Jeeny: “Jack, you call yourself a realist, but deep down, you still crave the spark. You still want words that bleed. That’s why you’re sitting here, reading that magazine.”

Jack: “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just nostalgic for a time when words still scared people.”

Jeeny: “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Host: His lips curved into a faint smile, the kind that wasn’t victory — more like surrender.

Jack: “Maybe I just miss when art had the courage to be strange.”

Jeeny: “Then you understand Dickey. That’s exactly what he meant — that the strange, the mad, the unfiltered — those are the veins where art still breathes.”

Host: The rain stopped suddenly, as if the sky itself had run out of tears. The lights outside shimmered against the wet pavement, a thousand tiny reflections scattered like broken thoughts.

Jack: “You ever think we’ve become too afraid of being strange?”

Jeeny: “Every day. But strangeness is just honesty that refuses to conform.”

Jack: “Then maybe the Quarterly was more than a magazine.”

Jeeny: “It was a mirror.”

Host: A silence settled again — not the kind born of conflict, but the kind that follows understanding. The music faded, leaving only the faint hum of the neon and the drip of rain from the awning outside.

Jeeny: “You know what’s funny? The word Quarterly sounds temporary — something that comes and goes. But what it gave us… that stays.”

Jack: “You’re right. Maybe the best things don’t have to last forever — they just have to exist long enough to change us.”

Host: She smiled, and for a brief moment, the room seemed brighter. Jack closed the magazine, his hand resting on the cover like one might touch the past — gently, with reverence.

Host: The rain began again, softer this time, as though the sky itself had grown tired. Outside, the neon sign flickered once, then stayed lit.

Host: And as the two of them sat there — surrounded by coffee, silence, and the ghosts of great voices — it was hard not to feel that somewhere, somehow, the mad, beautiful, indispensable spirit of The New York Quarterly was still breathing through them.