Cafe Independent, a "rattle-bag collection of poetry, art, pearls of prose . . . ," is produced by Oliver Kinghorn and Shannon Smith in Kyoto.
Cafe quotes Henry Miller's "Keep on writing! Keep on painting! F*** 'em all!" as a liberating slogan. More quotations (from Constantin Brancusi, Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Nietzsche) liberally spice the journal, which features work from readers (Eamonn Jenkins on "The Genesis of the 'Tropic of Cancer' " by Michael Fraenkel, and Oliver Kinghorn on "Letters by Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller"), ditties (haiku by Shannon Smith), philosophical musings (Toru Fukae's prose on Giacometti, Vienna and the Lakeside Cafe in Japanese), artwork (Irving Stettner) and photos (Yumi Omazaki) for a virtual soul espresso.
With its substantial poetic offerings Cafe makes a fine addition to Kyoto's alternative bookshelf, joining Kyoto Journal and the international poetry exchange magazine Land and Sea Winds.