Tagged short fiction
A Mid-Summer Night’s Reading List
At the end of the school year, a great English teacher once said, “What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t give you a summer reading list?”
So too I echo, what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t kick up a few summertime jewels?
Poetry: “Or Both. We Could Do Both.” by Martin Rock
The poem “Or Both. We Could Do Both.” appears in the Black Warrior Review 38.2 This is the first of Rock’s work that I’ve read, so I’m unsure if this piece is an example of his usual experiments. His poetry takes its time, meandering over a few pages. Segments of the poem are struck through with a line, only to be supplanted by one or more replacement lines:
The result is a pleasureful, slidey sort of reading experience, where the mind is free to oscillate between potential imagery and reflexive intentions. It’s fluid, dreamy, and surprisingly satisfying. I say surprisingly because sometimes it can be difficult to take to a poem on first read when the form is so willfully misdirecting. Rather than losing me, Rock’s poem redirects constantly, leads me on like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, and invites me to try again for a different result.
I wonder how Rock prefers to read “Or Both.” aloud? With partners? Shifting voices and positions? Multiple readings? Maybe I’ll get bold, write to him and ask. I plan to experiment. (For all I know, this is an established poetic form and I’m in the dark. Feel free to kindly illuminate me and your three fellow readers at Brainripples.) I think I need to go play with this form, maybe chop up some old discards for a new life.
Short Fiction: “Us” by Raymond Philip Asaph
I’m new to Lascaux Review, but that’s because Lascaux is new! Edited by Stephen Parrish and Wendy Russ, Lascaux “provides a showcase for emerging and established writers and artists.” Asaph’s “Us” keeps you moving with clean language and dry wit, and in doing so clears the stage for much bigger topics like American society, mental health, and our heartfelt desire to make a true connection with other people.
Stick around, because Lascaux Review is hosting its first ever short fiction contest which opens this September 8, 2012 at noon Eastern Time. Here’s the 2012 photo prompt:
Photo by Catherine Vibert
I’ll be submitting, and I’ll be making time to read (and time permitting, respond to) the other submissions. Whether you’re a writer or a reader, short fiction contests are a fun opportunity to glimpse a sparkly fresh batch of stories among comrades. I like these contests because they usually result in real-time readership and feedback. (I think it’s something about the group creative effort that takes me back to my OM days.)
Long-ass Fiction: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Every year I try to make time to read a couple of classics. Thanks to audio ebook downloads available from the Kitsap Regional Library, I am now free to ponder on-demand the chewiest of language whilst I scrub skillets, prep meals, and fold laundry. I’m glad to report that Great Expectations was not what I expected. First off, kudos to Mr. Simon Prebble, because his excellent reading with well-honed and lively character voices makes Great Expectations extra enjoyable. (I’ll also add that if you’re of the insomniac ilk, you might try this reading of Dickens as a bedtime snack. I found it does the trick.)
I was grateful to Dickens for sparing us a total crash and burn ending for the main character. Even with all the character miseries and drive-by morality whompings, I nonetheless savored Dickens’ skilled craft so much that I downloaded and listened to the book a few times more. My favorite takeaways from this story are first in Dickens’ excellent use of food and meals as metaphors for subjects like society, class, health, and relationships. His special skill is a humorous use of irony. As I explained to my mother, I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed Dickens quite so much in my teens as I do today. I had no idea that Dickens would make me laugh so much, and I’m pretty sure most of the jokes that get me now are imparted through his tactful expositions on the ironies of youth. Oh yes that, and the masterful run-on sentence.
Book of Poems: Water Witching by Kathleene West
The fun thing about unread books on the shelf, is that they’re always ready when you need them. I picked up Water Witching at an independent bookstore in Cedar City, Utah back in 2010. West’s book has been waiting quietly for me to be quiet enough to read it. The familiar language disarms you; no great expectations, so she can really surprise you. Reading West’s poetry is a little like swimming slowly out on a lake, lulled by comfortable confidence, not realizing how far you’ve strayed from the shore.
I haven’t finished her book yet. Not only am I a slow reader, but I find the most satisfaction in poetry when I read poems one at a time, with long pauses in between for thinking space. Among West’s poems, mundane objects found in the home and garden are tools for revealing the invisible and mystical. Try these lines from her introductory poem, “Pining Away as an Erotic Activity:”
Nothing on hand, but a jar of relish, to whet and unsatisfy my hungering tongue. Weak and empty, I watch visions like late movies, turning to the restricted channels. How perfectly I can tune you.A good poet can tantalize and teach in the same breath. Her piece “Celebrating Disaster, The Sinking of Hood Canal Bridge, February 13, 1979” reads a bit like someone’s private journal pages, with personal asides and hearsay woven through the memory. One of my favorite kinds of literature to collect when I travel are the self-published journals from the elders of yore, newly rediscovered by modern descendents. Here’s a great one from my neck of the woods: Tales of Hood Canal, by Ethel M. Dalby, edited by Valerie Johnson.
And speaking of poets who teach, I feel like this poem cannot be shared enough, so here it is again: Sonia Sanchez, “Peace.” Listen, then speak.
I’ll have some new work to share in September/October. Until then, please feel drop me a note in the comments, share what you’re reading or writing.
Literary Journal Review: A cappella Zoo Issue 5
A cappella Zoo – a journal of magic realism and slipstream: Issue 5, Fall 2010
Editors: Colin Meldrum, Michael James Wilson, Amanda DiSanto, Micah Unice
The hardcopy of A cappella Zoo Issue 5 for today’s review was provided by the editors at A cappella Zoo.
Read selections from A cappella Zoo 5 here.
Follow @acappellazoo on Twitter
(And for more fun, read an interview with Editor Colin Meldrum by Jim Harrington at the Six Questions For… blog.)
If I had to describe a theme or a common thread for A cappella Zoo (AZ) issue 5, it would be this: voids, and that which fills them. AZ5 reads like a volume of the Never-Never Encyclopedia of the Esoteric: pages of places both peopled and unpeopled, people without places, people displaced. The contributors for this issue ponder voids of unknown, and speculate on the voices heard within. The result is a collection of literature which ultimately places the sketchbook and pencils in my hand this week – these works are adequately vivid and tangible to fuel your own creative engine through those long, dark nights.
The curtain opens with Showtime by Nancy Gold, winner of the Apospecimen Award for Fiction. Gold’s piece sets the tone for subsequent selections by deftly weaving emotion and imagination with a spindle of belief – the belief that we can be more than the sum of our parts; that our hearts are vessels meant to be filled. This is the first of many pieces which playfully create images that are both impossible and perfectly conceivable. (Read Showtime and just try not to look at your ankles and ponder a few tiny wings about their knobbly bones.)
I never read journals front to back, which is why I next bounce forward to Movie Man by Melissa Ross, telling of “a boy born in the projection booth of a tower in the sky away from the Earth as we know it;” first we are cast into the sky, and next drawn into the intimacy of Earth’s shadows.
In Borges’ Bookstore by David Misialowski smacks of one of my favorite Burgess Meredith Twilight Zones: “Time Enough at Last” (see also Jorge Luis Borges). This maze, void of reason and physical law, wraps upon itself into a complete, neat package. Speaking of neat packages, poetry lovers might like to begin with : sign language : by Joseph A. W. Quintela (whose work I seem to find everywhere these days). The unique composition of this poem is a perfect complement to austere images of solitude, plains, and big, wide sky, cleft open by shared experience.
This completeness is a quality I appreciate throughout AZ5: stories which, while wildly catalyzed, still anchor themselves in some clearly-formed thought. No matter how outrageous our surroundings, each author still affords us a compass with which to navigate the realm. Pestilence by Jason Jordan is such an excellent example: a form of tethered madness.
Many of the AZ5 contributors counterbalance the darker shades of humanity with artful prose and poetry, or a bit of wicked humor. Perhaps the most disturbing yet effective piece is The Crushing by Phillip Neel, which I may have otherwise stopped reading because of the nastiness of the descriptions, had it not been for the clever and poignant entrance to this particular void: that dirty of dirties, the DMV. I’m glad I kept reading – the payoff of this piece is what ranks it among my favorites for this issue.
Similarly The Snake Charmer’s Teeth by Mike Meginnis still haunts me weeks after reading, wherein a cruel story is sculpted with both elegance and requisite gentleness. What the Calf Daughter Knows by Rob Cook is both brutal and beautiful. This persistent poem stands out bone white against the void: completely unignorable.
It’s tough to pick a favorite, especially when I find a journal like A cappella Zoo which is good enough to reread many times. However, the sentimentalist (or perhaps the Japanese lit lover) in me found the deepest connection in A Tale of a Snowy Night by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei. In this story, space is not a function of distance or time, but of empathy. Naoko grounds us in crisp imagery which is as familiar as it is fantastical. Aren’t we all, in some small way, a crate of hopeful apples?
Einstein Plays Guitar by Tania Hershman is also a rewarding read: a well-developed snapshot of those graceful and fleeting whispers of true knowledge. Birds Every Child Should Know by Kate Riedel is another of my favorites from AZ5. I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first; but the more I read Birds, the more I feel the weight of each angelic, warmly feathered lump. In this piece we glimpse the unknown aflutter with spirit, the glittering moments we share with others that spark us on an entirely new path.
Thank you, Theodore Carter, for the tears I cried upon reading the final lines of The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob. With much of speculative fiction favoring the apocalyptic, it’s always helpful to recall with specificity that which we might lose in the aftermath.
If you wish to truly be suspended in the void, begin your journey through AZ5 with Sleepmaps by Barry Napier tucked firmly in your back pocket. Personally, I love dream-inspired art; this poem spares no effort in reaching for the most tangible sensations of the dreaming world, such that I too “never want to wake.”
I want to thank the editors of A cappella Zoo for preparing such an effective cross-section of mind-opening literature for issue 5. Each piece is clearly selected for its creation of both precipice and foothold. What I like most about reading specfic – especially GOOD specfic – is that constant feeling of discovery in each page. I love experiments in literature which keep me guessing and thinking and unraveling, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in A cappella Zoo: a bit of the unknown, made knowable.
For Laure-Alda, from Francis
For this July’s Clarity of Night “Uncovered” Short Fiction Contest I created a piece of poetry (with narrative movement to meet the requirements of this contest), inspired by Jason Evans’ image of gemstones here. You can read my entry Forties Club Finalist #22 here.
Laure-Alda and Francis aren’t strangers: they are characters from one of my story ideas. This poem started as a 200-word flash fiction piece written from Francis’ POV. After a few hours I realized that the fiction could be extracted to make a poem or rather, a love letter. I’m using love letters to explore Laure-Alda and Francis, their lives, their friendship, and their current circumstances (such as it relates to the story).
Listen to the audio (MP3 link below), and be sure to spend some time at The Clarity of Night this week – there’s a lot of good reading to be had.
Audio:
For Laure-Alda, from Francis by Jade Leone Blackwater
* * *
For Laure-Alda, from Francis
by Jade Leone Blackwater
If we awoke
clasped in sunlight
and found that the lump in my throat
had burst and broken
birthed a trinity of gemstones
to my dune grass pillow
would you cradle the tokens
to your nose as dew drops in the palm
watch colors radiate along our wrinkles,
remember our love for what dazzles,
burns us with brilliance?
Would you join me at the gorge
gulp turpentine and cinnamon wind
knock the sharp, sacred clap
which calls the rainbow-scaled fish-sage who,
in his high lip-pop dialect,
whispers “Only when the moon is dark,”
until the incantations crack
open our skull caps
into which we’d drop jewels
as cherries to dish, wait
for the western orb to reach the zenith
blaze its beam down and scoop us both moonward?
* * *