July 20, 2006

Katrina Denza's Lit Mag Roundup 3.0

The Lit Mag Roundup is a quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season. Below is the summer roundup, where Katrina reviews the latest from The Pinch, Washington Square Review, Tin House, Night Train, and Ninth Letter.

One thing became clear to me as I set aside a batch of journals with the intention of reading and reviewing, if not all, at least most of the pile: there are so many quality journals publishing extraordinary work, I couldn't possibly comment on as many as I'd hoped. And although those I did include in this summer's column are not the only ones I'd recommend from the tall pile that sat on my desk, they certainly made enough of an impression for me to devour their contents and write about.

The first issue of The Pinch, formerly known as River City, is a strong one, with a sophisticated southern flavor. It's named after the Pinch District, the residential area originally for Irish immigrants and Jewish merchants, which has enjoyed a resurgence of interest and has become a historical landmark. The issue is lovely with a glossy cover designed by Gary Golightly, and glossy, easy-to-read pages within. In the fiction category, Anna Baker illustrates the power of few words with her brief, but evocative piece, "Silent Couple Drinking Coffee." In Carol J. Palay's "Blue Plastic Bags," a man impregnates another woman and his fiancée dreams of his baby's death. A man and woman sort through belongings on the eve of their separation in Jim Tomlinson's "Stainless." Tomlinson's ability to elicit emotion with subtle strokes makes his piece particularly powerful. I enjoyed Shellie Zacharia's hilarious and poignant short-short, "What To Do On A Saturday Night One Week After Your Lover Announced, 'Sayonara, Sweetheart,' Even Though He's Not Japanese And He Never Called You Sweetheart." Laurel Jenkins-Crowe offers a different look at married life with her clever story, "Do It Yourself." The unexpected is the theme in Carol Ghiglieri's story, "Homecoming," with both a surprise pregnancy and a surprising gesture of love. Kelly Magee writes of grief in her short-short, "New Orleans Isn't There." And in David B. Essinger's "A Jar Full of Bees," a man imagines an explosive end to a difficult life.

There are three creative non-fiction pieces: Beth Ann Fennelly writes of growing up with alcoholism and books in her moving piece "A Childhood Reader;" Vivian Wagner shares her childhood desire to survive apocalyptic annihilation in "Under The Gun;" and in her piece "Present Shame," Gwendolyn Ashbaugh presents a glimpse of John Wilkes Booth's family through the voice of his sister Rose.

Of the many fine pieces of poetry, "Half Perfume, Half Something Rotten," by Stephanie Michelle Rogers caught my fancy:

...Now here/ in the home I've grown inside your chin,/ I sleep. Where else was I to live, corn-/ toothed, a pistil for a tongue? I rather like/ having taken root in a face-the congregation/ of cells slough off. I cling. Most of all,/ I want you to feel what it's like to be pricked/ as my new thorn skates your skin, hoeing/ the follicles...

And Lee Sharkey's "We Both Drink The Water; Neither Can Describe Its Taste," is a gorgeous lament on the presence and absence of water. Three visual artists offer their work to the issue: whimsical drawings and accompanying text by Alex Stein; collage by Alice Andrews; and a traveling project by Sheryl Oring titled, "I Wish To Say." In this project Oring poses the question "If I were the President of the United States, what would you want to say to me?"

There's an interview with one of my favorite short story writers, Jill McCorkle, in which she shares aspects of her craft. Lastly, there's a bonus section near the back featuring the 2005 River City Writing Awards in fiction and poetry. A jilted wife and her stepson seek comfort in Jill Rosenberg's prizewinning story, "Simon Says Or When Lily Forgot To Fill Her Time." Hal Ackerman's "Maidens," a story of unrequited love and friendship was awarded second place. Ciaran Cooper's "Falling Down," a story about a boy and his brother who witness their father's transgressions during a weekend ski trip was awarded third place. Richard Fox won first place in poetry with his poem "Mr. Wilson," and Karen Pittleman's poem "Jonah At Wounded Knee, South Dakota," was awarded second place.

The Summer Issue of Washington Square is their Inaugural International Edition which begins with letters from Editor-in-Chief Brandon Wyant and International Editor Maaza Mengiste outlining their intentions upon searching for international work. Wyant says in his letter: "The work in this edition brings together writings from authors both known and unknown to a larger American audience, whether they live in Nebraska or India." Larger questions are posed when a wealthy man trades places with his chauffeur in Murzban F. Shroff's "Mind Over Matter." Mallory Tarses was the Fiction Winner of the 2006 Washington Square ReviewPrize with her humorous and delightful story, "Shipditchers," about a boy and his family during the month of his mother's absence. Words on the page become art in John Cleary's epistolatory piece, "Dear Jack." Zoya Marincheva has translated three gorgeous excerpts from Bulgarian writer Nikolay Rainov's "Tales of the Sun." A woman and her mother bond at a retreat in "Lunch In The Labyrinth," by Courtney Zoffness. Yoko Tawada offers a surreal tale of a woman in her lyrical piece, "Pomona," translated by Susan Bernofsky.

The poetry is consistently strong, still, I had my favorites. "The Whale" by Zachary Schomburg is a gorgeous piece of grief and love:

...I can swallow a whole bird/ One time I swallowed beach glass.// I would've put a lion's head/ in my mouth. I would've swallowed/ the whole ocean/ to get to the bottom of it.

And Stephanie Lenox writes of loss in her jazzy "Bring Back The Spoons:You have taken the jangle/ from my drawer./ The fork's subtle mate,/ absconded, the cup's companion,/ gone. Look what you've done./ Even the knives are on edge...This was the first time I'd read this slender, elegant journal. I'm glad I did.

And to continue in an international vein, the latest issue of Tin House is titled "The International Issue." Rob Spillman, in his Editor's Note says, "Many international writers seem to be taking on more complex stylistic and emotional terrain than their American counterparts." Before each piece, there's a map illustrating where in the world the writer or poet lives. At first I wondered why not just write the name of the country, but I must admit it was interesting and unusual to see the information, and except for the occasional frustration with the small, pointillist map, it worked.

Portuguese writer JoséSaramago offers a voting poll mystery with an excerpt from his novel, "Seeing." With Romanian writer Dumitru Tsepeneag's piece, excerpted from "The Vain Art of the Fugue," readers can understand the kind of stylistic and emotional complexities to which Rob Spillman was referring. This moody piece is a puzzle, and more is understood with each reading. What I particularly liked were the narrator's flights of imagination woven so seamlessly into the narrative. In "Whakatane Calling," by German author Bernd Lichtenberg, a man reaches back into his childhood to recall his father's last week. A woman is visited by an old tenant looking for things he left behind in Danish writer Helle Helle's "Pheasants." An architect is asked to transform a cathedral into a mosque in Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare's "Hagia Sophia, A Wall Painting." In Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina's "All Other Things Remaining Equal," a young girl takes note of the changes in both her country and her family. A woman gives up her marriage to save her husband in "Another Love Story," by Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie. Bolivian writer Edmundo Paz-Soldán offers a moving story about an anthropologist at the mass grave of Cerska. In Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño's "Maurucio ('The Eye') Silva," the narrator tells the reader about his friend and a good deed.

There is an urgency to the poetry in this issue. A call for readers to heed their warnings and lamentations. Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's "New York: Office and Denunciation" speaks eloquently of the loss of nature; Kenyan poet Mukoma wa Ngugi's "Recipe: How To Become An Immigrant And An Exile," haunts with its sense of loss:

...Commit sins of transportation. Bite the past. Spit broken teeth/ and colored blood that will chart global awareness. Learn/ to say fuck without flinching. Seduce anarchy of the mind and try/ to order schizophrenia in realms just outside the touch of your black/ hand...

Perhaps my favorite of all is "It Seems I Inherit The Dead,' by Egyptian poet Iman Mersal which ends:

...It seems I inherit the dead./ One day/ after the death of all those I love,/ I will sit alone at a café/ without any sense of loss,/ because my body is a huge basket/ where all those who leave/ drop things/ that bear their traces.

Also in this issue are interviews with translator and author Lydia Davis; Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina; and Indian author Anita Desai. In the "Lost and Found" section, Ann Gelder, Francine Prose, and Austin Merrill write of their love of works by Yuri Olesha, Andrei Platonov, and Ahmadou Kourouma, respectively. Dominique Parent-Altier writes about France's literary prizes and Francine Prose has another piece, this time on Prague's Becherovka. The issue ends with a witty "International Personals" section.

The latest issue of Night Train, sponsored by Normal, Illinois, isn't officially an international issue, though it has the feel of one. Comprised of mostly fiction-all excellent picks-the issue also has an interview with award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and an essay on Normal, Illinois by Mike Lockett.

In Richard Madelin's story, "Adding Up and Taking Away," a woman transcribes deaths in a ledger for her volatile husband. "Homefront" is a set of three short pieces by Bruce Holland Rogers connected by a war theme. A dissatisfied wife of a musician plays a game of imagination in Cris Mazza's "What If." A man on disability hopes to buy love in Jon Papernick's "My Darling Sweetheart Baby." In Kirsten Culbertson's "The Last Word," a young woman, on her wedding day, learns of her sister's death. An American of Romanian descent, working as a translator interrogates a defector from the same part of Romania his ancestors lived in William Reese Hamilton's "Mihai." A robbery goes wrong for Laura Payne Butler's colorful characters in "Ruby Red." Daphne Buter's haunting "Now That I Am Sober" is a story of a man and his one-night stand. Buter's piece is stunning with its rich language and multi-faceted narrative. With "How To Break An Iraqi," Gemini Wahhaj offers an exquisitely written story about a young girl and her tormentor--the end transports the reader beyond the boundaries of the story with its beautifully rendered plea for forgiveness. A young, unwed woman tells her friends she's pregnant in Kathy Fish's short-short, "What Kind of Person Gives Secrets To The Sky?" The strength of the piece is Fish's ability to include humor, longing, pain, acceptance, and love in such few, fined-tuned sentences. In Mintzer Krotzer's "The Black El Camino," a young woman's Thanksgiving is filled with mishaps and romantic intrigue. An alcoholic connects with his troubled son in Jim Nichols' clever story, "The Plinktonians." A mother helps her grieving son in M. Allen Cunningham's moving piece, "Windmills." In Ron MacLean's "Last Seen, Hank's Grille," a scientist, on the verge of an important breakthrough, disappears on a road trip with his friend and benefactor. In Steve Almond's "Boo-Man," a man's ego makes him complicit as he faces his killer. An ambivalent mother encounters a powerful woman and another plane of pleasure in Terri Brown-Davidson's atmospheric story, "The Dance Teacher." A young girl finds a way out of a non-authentic life in Rachel May's "Owl." A woman meets interesting characters while riding a bus in Nadine Darling's gorgeously written, "He Lives In My Mouth." In Grant Bailie's hilarious "You Are One Click Away From Pictures Of Naked Girls," a man tries to discover the source of his clumsiness in the bedroom. Ray Vukcevich's "Duck" imagines what might happen if an alien met a duck. And lastly, "Cut Lip" is Larry Fondation's fabulous short-short inspired by word-drawings by Ed Ruscha.

I'm excited by my recent discovery of the journal, Ninth Letter. I pulled the following portion of an editor's description from their website:

...Ninth Letter, the magazine, seeks to merge literature with various fields of creative and intellectual life, such as visual arts, journalistic arts, science, history, and cultural studies. We seek these intersections not only in the creative content we accept, but also in the overall design and form of the magazine itself. In this sense, we view the magazine as an organic work of art: the overall interaction among the components is as important as the discrete objects within the content.

The journal is beautiful visually, as well as significantly larger than most. It's published semi-annually by the University of Illinois. It has a body of editors, designers, art directors and assistants. My only complaint, and it's a small one, is the difficulty I had reading white text on a dark background. Fortunately, I ran into that problem with only two of the stories.

What happens when a cowardly man goes Bungee-jumping and loses his soul? Steve Stern offers an answer in his wildly imaginative, darkly humorous, "Legend of the Lost," the first story in the issue. Todd Dodson explores the veracity of non-fiction and the power of story with his hilarious "This Is Not Fiction." A man who believes himself to be the guardian of saintly bones is betrayed by his son in Robin Hemley's "The Warehouse of Saints." At a New Kids on the Block concert, a photographer and a mother both do things they wouldn't normally in "Hundreds Of Thousands Of Flashes Of Light," a story by Elizabeth Ames. For career day a writer speaks to a group of high-schoolers in a hilarious story by Tom House, "The L and the C." A fiery spirit haunts the people of Point-à-Pitre in Gisèle Pineau's "The Woman in Flames." A woman tallies her annoyances in excerpts from "Living Together," by Lydie Salvayre. "God's Inbox" by Ronald F. Currie Jr. is brilliant on both the sentence level and for its broader philosophical premise.

The poetry is strong with surprising rich imagery and large themes. I enjoyed every one but perhaps my favorites were those by L.S. Asekoff. From his "Farragio: An Aria":

...I agree, 'In the maternity ward of the stars/ the Unknown is born out of Nothing.' / No is the mother of Yes,/ & yet nothing can explain runaway sexual selection,/ the sun's slight preference for red,/ the tyranny of outcomes that leads us to/ radiator as wings, clockwork cicadas, locusts in their primes,/ the inventor of tone-rows's fear of 13.

And from his "The Winter Master":

As when winter blizzards/ wind about the shape of things/ sheets of whiteness/ making still statuary of a world--/shrouded absence-blind shadows/ of no thing, I watched night/ spread over everything/ its formless mystery-the white caul.

Eula Biss weaves historical facts with the personal in her moving essay "All Apologies." Sheryl St. Germain remembers her late brother and New Orleans in her heart-breaking non-fiction piece "After the Flood." David McGlynn writes frankly of his mother's on and off blindness and of familial troubles and legacies in his memoir "Detachment." Vanessa Carlisle shares her experiences as a Dame for the Toledo Show in her fascinating piece "Forever a Dame." "A Cheat Sheet Memoir," by Seth Sawyers, is a quick glimpse into the curious and sensitive mind of a boy and his journey into adulthood. Genine Lentine shares her reflections on beauty that arise during a drawing session in her essay "Roses."

Mention video games to me and my first impulse is to roll my eyes, but "Only a Game," an essay by Joseph Squier and Nan Goggin, illustrates how writers and artists can change the face of traditional gaming and take it to a more literary, artful level. Even I was intrigued by the possibilities. Finally, near the end of the issue is a section called "Where We're @." In this section, Leslie Singleton writes of the virtues of Joseph-Beth Booksellers a successful independent; Christine Bryant Cohen writes about Laclede's Landing a wax museum in Saint Louis, Missouri; Laura Koritz explains why the tap water of Champaign Illinois is so good; and Jodee Stanley writes about the town in which Walt Disney grew up: Marceline, Missouri.

I asked the editor what special quality a submission to Ninth Letter would need to have and this was Jodee's answer: "The one quality that we look for in every submission to Ninth Letter, be it a story, poem, or essay, is emotional investment. We aren't interested in experiment for experiment's sake, or craft for craft's sake. The writing needs to live, and all the technical skill in the world won't breathe life into a work--the writer needs to believe in it, and then we will, too." Ninth letter is an innovative journal and one I'll be subscribing to for a long time.

April 12, 2006

Katrina Denza's Lit Mag Roundup 2.1

The Lit Mag Roundup is a quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season. Below is the second installment of the spring roundup, where Katrina reviews the latest from Subtropics, Bellevue Literary Review, and Passages North.

I’ve enjoyed reading these next three journals; they include eclectic, and sometimes breathtaking, pieces. The debut issue of Subtropics, for instance, is handsome, inside and out, with its intriguing cover art and glossy inner pages. Edited by David Leavitt, it will be published three times a year by the University of Florida in Gainesville. If I were to choose a word to describe the contents, it would be 'elegant.'

A retirement community is stirred up in John Barth's story "Peeping Tom." Eileen Pollack's "The Bris," is the story of a man who requests a bris on his deathbed so he can finally become the official convert he'd been pretending to be all along. A mathematician is confronted with the possibility that his most famous theorem is incorrect in Manil Suri's "The Tolman Trick." In Ariel Dorfman's "Gringos," a South American couple traveling in Barcelona accepts the help of a stranger with less than positive consequences. In Joanna Scott's uniquely organized story "The Lucite Cane," readers are introduced to people briefly connected by a man's cane.

Kent Annan takes readers to Haiti with his essay "Sketches of Scarcity." Harold Bloom discusses the work of Hans Christian Andersen in his essay, "Trust the Tale, Not the Teller." In her memoir piece "Guilt," Abigail Thomas writes openly of her feelings surrounding her husband's life-altering accident. Chris Bachelder's "Near the End of the Symphony Strike," a musical prose poem, decorates the back cover, and Anne Carson's "Grasscolored: A Threat Documentary" really struck me. Here's an excerpt:

"…You may receive your own obituary in the mail. A person in black stops before you in the street then hurries away. And suddenly, at six in the morning, as if swept by winter rivers, everything will change. Your telephone, your kitchen, your driveway, all these things that had a notion of you now change their gaze and watch you from a different place, no, from two places. Everything now happens from two places. You brush your teeth in the second and third person, watching the driveway, waiting for your child who is late from school. You sweat from those places."

Bellevue Literary Review's spring 2006 issue features the BLR Prize winners among other stories, essays and poems relating to health and healing and the human experience. Fiction editor Ronna Wineburg begins the issue with a note commenting on some of the pieces within. She also reveals that BLR receives over 2500 manuscripts a year, a fact that highlights how hard these editors work and how difficult it is for writers to place stories. Publisher Martin J. Blaser, M.D. discusses the success of their first annual contest—the deadline for the next contest is August 1, 2006.

Joan Malerba-Foran's "The Little Things," a story of an alcoholic teacher's day, won first prize for fiction entries. "Breathe," a story by Caroline Leavitt, about a boy with asthma and his mother, won Honorable Mention in the fiction category. A professor is asked by a colleague to be an executor of a collection of paintings in Ken Champion's "Art House." In Christine Terp Madsen's "Leitmotif," the narrator explains why razorblades are her leitmotif. Translated by John Woodsworth, Mikhail Sadovsky offers a melancholy tale of an orphanage and an unusual boy, in "Mitenka." A physically challenged girl has her first love affair with a childhood friend in Adam Tamashasky's brilliant story, "The Crush." A grieving maintenance man finds solace in a tenant's apartment in Amy Mehringer's "Apartment 1-A." In David Kilmer's "Doorways," a woman with Parkinson's must endure the humiliation of her friend's well-intentioned intervention. In "Beware of Falling Coconuts," a story by Marshall J. Getz, a brain-damaged janitor gets his revenge. A skeptical and stressed-out doctor tries something new in David Milofsky's "Biofeedback." A young woman begins a new job and is reminded of nearly drowning as a child, in Kodi Scheer's "Intensive Care." In Victor Gischler's moving short-short "Irish Setter," a man hopes for redemption when he chooses a puppy for his son. The last story is Daniel Gutstein's short-short "The Disease, Then, But a Constellation," in which a man contemplates the constellations of cancer, a mysterious experience with static, and the death of his brother.

Judy Rowley considers a cochlear implant in her prizewinning essay, "The Color of Sound." Sandy Woodson highlights the advantages and drawbacks of antidepressants in her creative non-fiction piece, "A Pure and Lovely Flame." Diane Lawson Martinez writes of the pain and resilience of victims of the Serbian-Croatian war in her piece, "The Road to Kotor Varos." In "Butterflies in Blood," Joanne Wilke shares her sense of helplessness in the face of her father's disease.

Of all the excellent poetry, Carolyn Moore's "How to Housebreak a Shadow," David Shine's "Revelations," and Gibson Fay-LeBlanc's "Worry Bone" stood out for me. Here's an excerpt from "Worry Bone:"

"…I'd picked it clean though,/ chewed the joint, cracked one end/ sucked all the marrow. Tell me,/ Mind, why you ravaged this limb-part--/tell me what its owner told you in the dark.

The winter/spring 2006 issue of Passages North is enormous and pleasing to the eye, thanks to the cover art by Baltimore artist Greg Otto. The content of this annual out of Michigan is divided neatly into three sections: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

An academically gifted teen discovers some things cannot be overcome by love in Emma Wunsch's story "Marshall, Drowning." A family is scarred by a father's illness in Diane Allenberg's "Thanksgiving." Perry Glasser's "The Veldt," is a humorous account of a man's unfailing survival skills upon the loss of his job. In Alexandra Leake's "How to be a Moron," a young girl whose parents are divorced, gives her father a green hat and scarf for Christmas before traveling to Florida with her mother. A man is visited by apparitions and fantasies in Sean Padraic McCarthy's "The Precipice of Sleep." Lolette Kuby's "Body Image: A Fable," tells of a woman's journey to self-acceptance. Autumn Arnold writes a knockout story of love and friendship in "The Sideline." Arlene Eisenberg describes the loneliness of a one-sided relationship in "Walking on Ice." Miriam Moeller's narrator finds the joy in living in the gorgeously written "Speaking with My Mouth Shut." A lonely widowed doctor receives an acupuncture treatment and fantasizes about helping a young female patient in John Poch's "Dr. Warner Mourns His Wife." Francine Witte's imaginative short-short "Spy Story," tells of a woman who hires someone to spy on her cheating husband. In Tami Anderson's "Rigatoni Superman," a young boy attempts to understand his older sister, his mother, and his own developing sexuality.

Anne Panning writes candidly about growing up poor in Minnesota in her prizewinning creative nonfiction piece, "Trailer Court: Rolling." Ryan Wilson shares his experience of his participation in the Model United Nations when he was in junior high school in "Nation Building." Jacob M. Appel's "She Loves Me Not," is a humorous essay on unrequited love. Jeff P. Jones's "Children of Cain," is a riveting, disturbing look at man's potential for violence.

From a selection of over ninety poems, there is sure to be something for everyone, but Frannie Lindsay's gentle, yet powerful, poems of pleasing father, good old dogs, a mother's aging body, riding a bus, and a pair of coveted corduroy pants were this reader's choice. The issue ends with an interview of writer and interviewer Robert Phillips by Gregory Fraser.

Have a wonderful spring and happy reading!

March 29, 2006

Katrina Denza's Lit Mag Roundup 2.0

The Lit Mag Roundup is a quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season. In this installment, she reviews the latest from The Baltimore Review, Small Spiral Notebook, A Public Space, and Gulf Coast.

It's the end of March and evidence of spring's arrival can be found outside my house in various forms: forsythia and hyacinths were the first to bloom; narcissuses, daffodils, irises, violets have now risen up vibrant and lovely from beneath the ground and the first of the azaleas have blossomed. Just as the first flowers have appeared in the yard, so have the latest issues of some of my favorite journals begun to fill my mailbox--and some brand new to me as well.

The Baltimore Review's Winter/Spring issue begins with a note from managing editor Susan Muaddi Darraj, acknowledging the hard work of the editorial staff (fourteen volunteers in addition to the founding and managing editors). Of the six pieces of fiction, the first is Jacob M. Appel's "Waterloo," the hilarious story of a man who attends a birthday party for his girlfriend's dead niece. In Clifford Garstang's "Heading for Home," tension builds as a sheriff is confronted with prejudice and doesn't release until the last sentence. Shawn Behlen's "As Children Do," tells of a man struggling with the truth of his parents' relationship. Told in alternating POVs, "The Middle Stretch," by Holly Sanders, is an expertly controlled story of an exchange between a woman and the trooper who pulls her over. In Louis Gallo's "Dark Matters," a man and his wife ponder dark matters and dreams on the way to the podiatrist. Three siblings use their imagination to cope with violence in their home in the last story of the issue, Alaura Wilfert's "Indians." There are three pieces of creative nonfiction: Melanie Hoffert's prizewinning "Going Home," about the author's connection with the land she grew up on and her attempt to speak openly of her sexuality on her return home; Marcia R. Aquíñiga shares her childhood experience of acting as translator for her Mexican grandmother in "Doing All the Talking;" and Jerry D. Mathes II has a riveting essay on fighting fires in north-central Idaho called, "Falling into Fire." Of the ten poems, my favorites were Colleen Webster's "Voices Along the Yangtzee;" Daniele Pantano's "Patrimonial Recipe;" and Margaret J. Hoehn's prizewinning "Five Prayers of Apples," part of which reads:

Near the place where I stopped to rest,
what hung to the ground, like a bird's injured wing,
was a branch that had splintered
beneath the ripening fruit, a way of saying
that even abundance has burdens,
that beauty sits side-by-side with loss.

The issue ends with six book reviews and a fascinating interview with author Tristan Davies by Nathan Leslie.

Small Spiral Notebook's latest issue is appealing in its elegance, but don't let the slenderness of the volume fool you: it's loaded with rich, sophisticated material. The fiction is impressive. In Aimee Pokwatka's "Perennials," a couple mourns their inability to grow a lush garden. Paul Yoon tells of a friendship between a sea woman and a wounded boy in "So That They Do Not Hear Us."

"You Don't Have to Live Here," by Natasha Radojcic is a moving story of the romantic history of a young woman's parents. Shari Goldhagen's heartbreaking story, "It's Really Called Nothing," centers around a man whose life is pregnant with changes about to occur. In Pedro Ponce's "Fingerprints," a professor discusses his experience teaching Fundamentals of Romantic Detection. In Ladette Randolph's "The Girls," a college student takes a job dog-sitting for her professor and is transformed. Todd Zuniga's "Cheating," is a funny, fresh story of a cheating man, his girlfriend and a banana. A grieving man allows his lawn to grow despite his neighbors' dismay in Joshua Mandelbaum's "Yard Work." In Scott McCabe's "Eucalyptus," a man travels across the country to visit an ex-lover and takes something with him on his return home. Six poets offer sixteen stunning poems between them in this issue. My favorite is Angela Lea Nemecek's "Still Life With Lumberjack," which begins:

I could have told you cruelty has a calendar.
By October, the year
Is sick of itself,
Sick of its trees and their bright green confessions.

And lastly, living out the pattern set by the women in her family before her, Alison Weaver's "Running," is a bravely honest memoir about the time in her life in which she sought the "Band-Aid" of drugs.

With its intriguing cover art, its red and black print, and its comfortable size, the debut issue of A Public Space is a hit with this reader. At two hundred seven page, including contributors' notes and founding subscriber acknowledgments, it's no lightweight. This issue begins with a letter from editor Brigid Hughes discussing fiction in our time and the inspiration for the magazine's title. The opening section, "If You See Something, Say Something," is what Ms. Hughes refers to as a "literary magazine's version of an op-ed page. In this section, Ian Chillag writes of the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood in Logan West Virginia; Rick Moody discusses our culture's responsibility in the James Frey and J. T. Leroy incidents; Antoine Wilson writes about two overheard, related conversations and Anna Deavere Smith writes of her visit to Rwanda after the genocide and explains the Rwandan phrase "Watches are Swiss, cars are Canadian, and women are Tutsi." The fiction is quite beyond ordinary. In Charles D'Ambrosio's "The Dead Fish Museum," a man arrives on a job to build a porn set with a gun in his tool bag for comfort. In Kelly Link's wildly imaginative "Origin Story," a young superhero and her superhero lover get drunk and reminisce in an abandoned tourist attraction. Peter Orner stretches the moment in which a theatre actor forgets his lines in "No Light." In "Galileo," John Haskell tells of a playwright and his star actor. The tension is high in Tim O'Sullivan's "Family Friend," which eerily begins: "You haven't been invited inside that house for three years because Sarah—and she mentions this often to Edgar—doesn't like the way you look at their girls." Of the poems--all beautifu--Eamon Grennan's "Knowledge" and "Rest Stop," two prose poems of nature and love, were my favorites. A Public Space also offers Focus Installments, a feature which, Ms. Hughes explains in her editor's note, serves as a way to "look at literature that readers in other places admire and enjoy--the first installment takes us to Japan--and in that way, to try to understand something new about another culture, and, perhaps, to expand our tastes." Lucy Raven offers "An Illustrated Guide to Copper Extraction," that is as fascinating as it is excellent. The issue ends with a brilliant essay by Marilynne Robinson in which she explores man's recent tendency toward over-simplification when attempting to understand the mind, and the move away from the larger questions of ancient times. Ms. Robinson presents fiction as an arena in which we can overcome that simplification and continue to learn about ourselves.

With over 350 pages, Gulf Coast's Winter/Spring issue is enormous and an excellent value. It begins with an editorial note by Gulf Coast's managing editor, Sasha West, in which she comments on the cover art and compares literary journals to ephemeral museums. The fiction is admirably accomplished. In Bryn Chancellor's "Meet Me Here," a woman vacations in Austria with her widowed mother and discovers grief can have different faces. Murzban F. Shroff writes of a young rejected writer taking a walk in the rain in "Muses over Manholes." In Sandra Novack's "Memphis," a man's mentally-ill brother takes off on a road trip with the narrator's leaf blower and dog. John Weir's stunning "Neorealism at the Infiniplex," is the story of a young man's grief over the death of his lover. In Christian A. Winn's prizewinning story two boys, both dealing with absent mothers—one figuratively, one literally—form a friendship. A boy on the verge of becoming comfortable with his sexuality is the basis for Jonathan Strong's "excerpts from The Dabney Gallery." In Peter Bognanni's "The Body Eternal," a boy deals with the emotional pain of his older brother's drug abuse. A young man thinks of his girlfriend and Van Gogh's last painting in the moment before impact in Kevin Clouther's brilliant story, "On the Highway near Fairfield, Connecticut." The first of six non-fiction pieces is the prizewinning piece on language and AIDS, "One Sentence," by John Medeiros. Diane Comer pays tribute to her mother in her short essay, "Viniagrette." In Joshua Harmon's essay, "The Annotated Mix-Tape #2," he writes of his regret in choosing Spanish I over French I. In Tama Baldwin's evocative piece, "Coastal Lexicon," she reveals her adolescent preoccupation with martyrdom and her encounter with a group of older boys who threaten to crucify her. Miki Howard writes of her love of Pittsburgh and of love lost in "Three Hundred Fifty Ways." Joshua Mohr's heart-wrenching "Dressing the Dead," is an installment of a series of short essays concerning the last days of his father's life. There are six excellent book reviews, and two essays on the art featured this issue: two Houston houses transformed by artists Dan Havel, Kate Petley, and Dean Ruck. In the first of three interviews, Remica L. Bingham interviews poet A. Van Jordan; Gulf Coast fiction editor Guiseppe Taurino interviews author John Weir; and Gulf Coast nonfiction editor James Hall interviews poet Richard Siken. Of the almost forty poems, I simply found too many I loved to list, though Denise Duhamel prose poem, "Moonprint," stands out for me as does David Siegel's "The Love Doctor," and Stefi Weisburd's "Drafting on Robert Hass Writing His Mother's Nipples." I'll end with an excerpt from Alison Townsend's "Forty-Five This Spring:

All this year I have secretly been growing old,
the ovaries spilling their last burgundy stain,

dark as wild blackberries I plunged my hands into
twenty summers ago, heedless of scratches.

Bio: Originally from Vermont, Katrina Denza now lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Lynx Eye; New Delta Review; SmokeLong Quarterly; Emrys Journal; RE:AL; Cranky; The Jabberwock Review; and The MacGuffin among others.

February 15, 2006

Katrina Denza's Lit Mag Roundup 1.1

Three weeks ago, we presented Part 1 of The Lit Mag Roundup, a new, quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season. Below is Part II of her fall 2005 review.

For every commercial movie I go to see, I watch about ten independents. I want to be moved; I want an experience unencumbered by packaging for the masses; I want to learn something: about another culture, another time, about humanity. Literary journals offer all of these things as well.

In the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of The Paris Review, readers can expect to be taken to faraway places. The issue begins with Karl Taro Greenfeld's dispatch, "Wild Flavor," a riveting account of how one young man, hoping for a better life, moves to Shenzhen and contracts SARS. Andy Friedman and Nicholas Dawidoff take us to the hidden world of Brooklyn's fish market, soon to be forever changed, in "At the Fish Market." There are two insightful interviews: one with poet Jack Gilbert and one with novelist Orhan Pamuk. Both offer wisdom on the writing process. There are poems by Jack Gilbert, John Burnside, and Mary Jo Bang. My favorites of each ("Ode to History," "Winter in the Night Fields," "Nothing") all have a reverence and a visceral magic to them. Suyeon Yun's "Two Koreas, Ten Portraits," shows us hidden North Korean escapees in Seoul. Dmitri Nabokov has translated one of his father's poems, "Revolution." In Ma Jian's essay, "Tibetan Excursion," he writes of his disappointment in the reality of Tibet and of his persecution by the Chinese government for his collection, "Stick Out Your Tongue." His story, "Woman and the Blue Sky," offered in this issue, is part of that collection. And in Benjamin Percy's "Refresh, Refresh," a young man's life is greatly affected when the men of his Oregon town, including his father, are deployed to Iraq.

Alaska Quarterly Review's Fall/Winter 2005 issue is neatly divided into six sections: special feature, nonfiction, novella, stories, drama, and poetry. The special feature is Heidi Bradner's moving "Chechnya: A Decade of War." I can't imagine anyone would be left with dry eyes after experiencing Bradner's photos and text. Deborah Lott's "Fifteen," is a stunning memoir piece about her grandmother's death and the subsequent nervous breakdown of her father, who had to be committed. In John Fulton's novella, "The Animal Girl," an angry, anguished teen becomes stuck in a pattern of acting out and punishing herself. Even her job as an assistant in a biomedical lab becomes another way for her to test how much pain she can endure. With strong, unique imagery, Robert Vivian tells the story of a man's grief over the death of his mother in "Errands of the Broken-hearted." Here's an excerpt:

No son ever loved his mother more, though Ma Boy was seven feet tall and weighed over three hundred pounds, with tattoos of naked, writhing women all across his back that sashayed like serpents doing their moon dance that almost slithered off his shoulders to come and jump your bones.

In Linda McCullough Moore's "A Night to Remember," a woman longs to push through the boundaries of her stagnant marriage. A father and son try to swim across a lake in Howard Luxenberg's "Lake Moriah," but halfway over the son becomes fatigued. In Carol Ghiglieri's "Stella by Starlight," a young alcoholic woman mourns the breakup of a six-year relationship while hanging out with a palm reader in a bar. "Where Things Are," a one-act play by Steven Schutzman features a wacky, antagonistic mother-and-son relationship. The poetry is all varied and skilled. My favorite, "Wanderer," by Liz Rosenberg, speaks of a girl's despair after she's left to fend for herself.

And Virginia Quarterly Review's Fall 2005 issue has much to offer. In Tony Kushner's humorous one-act play, "A Prayer for New York," a son and his mother find a way to pray together. There's a passage from Art Spiegelman's moving graphic novel with an introduction by VQR editor Ted Genoways. "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the World Sixty Years Later," an essay by Lindsley Cameron with Masao Miyoshi, offers a brief history of Hiroshima, interviews survivors of both bombs, and sheds light on the growing nationalist movement in Japan. Tom Bissell and Morgan Meis write of their adventures and misadventures in Vietnam. Their dispatch "After the Fall" also features photos of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, taken by Joe Pacheco. Erik Campbell describes his feeling of "otherness" in his piece, "Shirtless Days, On Living and Writing in the Jungles of Papua." VQR's art consultant, Lawrence Weschler, shares his impressions of Vincent Desiderio's work-in-progress and his discussions with the artist. Weschler also highlights the provocative work of Oscar Munoz, an artist who pays tribute to the Disappeared of Latin America by painting their faces on concrete with water and filming their evaporation. Transplant surgeon, Pauline W. Chen, considers the definition of brain death in her illuminating essay, "Dead Enough, the Paradox of Brain Death." Stanley Plumy writes of John Keats' last days and the artist who took care of Keats during that time, Joseph Severn. The fiction in this issue, grouped together under the heading "Three Tales of Suspense," deliver what they promise. Alan Heathcock's "Peacekeeper," is a tension-filled story of a sheriff's love for her town and the lengths to which she'll go to avenge the death of a child. In Joyce Carol Oates' amazing "Smother," a woman is visited by two detectives after her estranged daughter has accused her of taking part in a heinous crime. And R. T. Smith writes of the path a sheriff takes to capture a turn-of-the-century rapist and murderer in the exquisitely written "Ina Grove." The poetry is strong and vibrant; some pieces pay tribute to Keats, Goya, Michelangelo, others have a more private reference. Aaron Baker's "Commission," is an evocative glimpse into a boy's experience as he enters another culture with his missionary family, and Karin Gottshall's "The Exile's Tale," is stunning in its rendering of a "land so far to the north/ that our radios pick up nothing but strange, ancient operas/ broadcast from the Pleiades, and our language/ has no term for cold." There's a section at the back full of book reviews, a humorous essay on the music of Howard Tate by Steve Almond, and finally, Ross MacDonald's comic, "The Eternal War on Terror."

This batch was enlightening as well as entertaining--both things I appreciate in equal measure. Spring issues are beginning to arrive and I’m excited to find out what’s inside. Happy reading!

Originally from Vermont, Katrina Denza now lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Lynx Eye; New Delta Review; SmokeLong Quarterly; Emrys Journal; RE:AL; Cranky; The Jabberwock Review; and The MacGuffin among others.

January 25, 2006

Katrina Denza's Lit Mag Roundup 1.0

The Lit Mag Roundup is a new, quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season.

I bought my first literary journal subscription in 1999. A longtime reader of novels, that was the year I'd begun to explore writing. I don't remember where I first saw an issue of Story, but after I read a copy, I fell in love with the short story form and subscribed. I still have on my desk an old issue of the now-defunct magazine, edited by Lois Rosenthal and Will Allison, and featuring stories from Tim Gautreaux, Matt Cohen, Ingrid Hill, and the late Carol Shields, to remind me of when my excitement for short stories first ignited.

Now, my bookshelves are filled with literary journals. I subscribe to at least twenty a year, and piled in stacks all over my house are samples from over sixty journals. They are as important to me as the short story collections and novels with which they share shelf space. This is all well and good for me, but if I were to ask some stranger on the street if he's heard of a particular literary journal, most likely his answer would be no. I wonder how it is that such amazing work is left to collect dust in the few bookstores that carry them, or kept insulated in the academic world. If books are the showy muscles of the literary world, then journals are the blood: hidden, self-renewing, and essential.

The vast array of print journals is staggering. Some are associated with universities, others are independent. Some journals such as Zoetrope: All Story; Orchid; Land-Grant College Review; and One Story print all fiction. Many journals, like Missouri Review; AGNI; The Kenyon Review; Virginia Quarterly Review; and others of similar quality offer an excellent mix of fiction, essays, poetry, art, author interviews, and book reviews. Some focus on poetry (Borderlands, Poetry, and Beloit Poetry Journal). Still others specialize in offering short-shorts (Vestal Review, Brevity, Quick Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly) or a mix of poetry and prose poetry (Cranky, The Bitter Oleander, Parting Gifts). There are journals that showcase women (Iris, Calyx, Emrys Journal) and others that feature stories about, and for, mothers (Brain, Child and Literary Mama). Most are glossy covered, some are stapled together, some have unique packaging (McSweeney's), and one even has an artful hand-bound format (Spork). The choices seem unlimited, something for everyone.

Because I'm a visual person, I've picked up a journal solely on the vibrancy of the cover. Some journals I buy out of curiosity and a few get my subscription money simply because one of their fiction editors went out of their way to be encouraging or supportive of my work. A journal's reputation may induce me to pick up a copy or subscribe for a year, but it's not what keeps me going back for more. Here's what does it for me: excellent, attainable fiction and poetry, beautiful art, and an encouraging, courteous staff. There are many I love--it would be hard to name favorites. And like my books, I buy more than I could possibly read with the thought I'll get to them eventually. In this new year I plan on getting to know them better and sharing my discoveries. I'll begin with two recent examples of literary excellence:

The Kenyon Review is a great mix of fiction, essays and poetry. I read the Fall 2005 issue and found much to like. Editor David H. Lynn opens with his notes on the summer's workshops held in Italy. In Champa Bilwakesh's story, "The Boston Globe Personal Line," a widowed man teeters between succumbing to his loneliness and beginning a new relationship. "Digesting the Father," by Kellie Wells, is a knockout story with arresting language and images:

'Love,' she said, 'it's a balled-up fist you hit yourself with, but you like it that way cause the beauty of contusions is that they disappear.'

In Geeta Kothari's multi-layered, "Missing Men," a woman used to running from her past has to decide whether to continue to do so. Lily Tuck's "Lucky" draws a full circle of human connections, and Gregory Blake Smith's "The Madonna of the Relics," is set in Venice and tells of the difficulty an art restorer has with matters of the flesh. The poetry is vibrant and doesn't shy away from the political: David Wojahn's "Dithyramb and Lamentation," speaks potently of the ravages of war, the horrors of torture, and of the current administration's manipulations.

AGNI Magazine #62 is full of stunning and varied fiction. Gania Barlow's "Clytemnestra," is an atmospheric, haunting story of a woman's grief upon the death of her daughter. In Xujun Eberlein’s moving “Pivot Point,” an intellectually gifted but lonely woman, in love with a married man, becomes intrigued by the idea of suicide and the ending is left brilliantly ambiguous. Mary O'Donoghue's "Motorcross," highlights the difficulties a girl faces in growing up with a mentally and physically challenged brother and shows her eventual selfless triumph. Tova Reich's "Dedicated to the Dead," tells the story of a man who's convinced that "his karma is to be Jewish." Tom Whalen's "Conversation with Godard," is not to be missed, and Nicholas Montemarano slayed me with his brave story of a father's grief and guilt. The poetry is vivid and emotive, but Stephen Dunn's "The Soul's Agents," really spoke to the writer in me. Sven Birkerts begins the issue with his thoughts on Saul Bellow while vacationing in Italy; there's an insightful interview with essayist Edward Hoagland; and the art featured is gorgeous paper collage by Maureen Mullarkey.

Originally from Vermont, Katrina Denza now lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Lynx Eye; New Delta Review; SmokeLong Quarterly; Emrys Journal; RE:AL; Cranky; The Jabberwock Review; and The MacGuffin among others.

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