No person now living disputes the fact that the best prose poem crops come from the South. A cool majority of the contributors for this present issue, for example, are either natives of the South or degree holders from one or more of the South's prestigious universities. Of course there are individual growers in other regions who produce prose poems which are fine, indeed widely admired or influential, but in general one cannot fail to be impressed by the high standards of prose poems in the modern-day southern United States. Such a thing could not have been said two hundred, nay, even seventy-five years ago, when the prose poem production of the South was sadly limited, but the situation has changed, and we have contemporary reality to thank for that. Yes, contemporary reality has, at least in part, infused the new South — to such a degree that some commentators assert that, conversely, the new South has reciprocally infused contemporary reality. We can all smile with indulgence at a fair idea pushed just a little too far beyond its point of reasonableness. Of course contemporary reality remains largely — and, generally speaking, happily — ignorant of the South, and in particular, the state of Alabama. But I argue that Alabama does have a claim, albeit a limited and modest one, for influencing contemporary reality. I direct the readers' kind attention to, exhibit A, prose poems; and exhibit B, "bama bangs." This hair style popular among lacrosse players, sons of presidential candidates, and other examples of preppie late adolescence, was believed by some to have disappeared like the ivory-billed woodpecker, around the year 1987, until its recent mysterious reemergence. In fact, as all now know well, its range had merely retreated, and for those years it was found only on the campus of the University of Alabama and within a twenty-mile radius of the Mountain Brook Shopping Center in Birmingham.