Black Warrior Review is one of my favorite literary journals. I’ve subscribed to it for several years now, and I’m always impressed by the quality of the writing, the artwork, and the ingenuity of the editors. This issue is no exception. In addition to their chapbook series, which features work by a nationally known poet, this edition included a new feature. I’ll call it “Favorites.” What it amounts to is this: Each Black Warrior Review editor picked “a writer who strikes them in some way and gave them some space in which to employ their own tastes…” Their favorites picking their favorites. What an honor, and a lot of fun, too!

In this feature, Editor Molly Dowd chose Arielle Greenberg, the author of My Kafka Century, Given, and the chapbook Fa(r)ther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials, and Arielle Greenberg gave us the poet Ian Harris. Managing Editor, Alissa Nutting, picked Stacey Richter, the author of the short story collection, My Date with Satan. Stacey Richter introduced readers to Adam Desnoyers. Poetry Editor Jennifer Gandel Ridgeway brought in Beth Ann Fennelly, who has written two books of poetry and one book of essays, and whose work I know from the Oxford American. Beth Ann Fennelly gave us the poet Karl Elder. Andy Farkas, the Fiction Editor, selected Chris Bachelder, who, in addition to his three novels, also contributes to the Oxford American. Chris Bachelder introduced Kevin McIlvoy.

Of the four feature selections, my favorite was Adam Desnoyers short story, “The Mystics.” Alissa Nutting said this about it: “The characters in it have been broken and glued back together but are obviously about to break again. In fact, The Mystics is so dark, so steeped in sadness, that I feel a little guilty admitting what I like about it most: it’s also very, very funny.”

I don’t know about funny (okay, it has its moments, and, I guess, an underlying irony that some may find hilarious) but Nutting is right about it being steeped in sadness. I won’t give away the ending, because I hope you will go out and purchase the journal, but let me tell you, it was gut wrenching. For a while, I wondered where the story was going, as much of the plot seemed topical (a “stolen” truck, bars, a girl who was “the one”), but Desnoyers wraps it all up in an intense moment, that, yes, I guess I will agree with Nutting, is funny, but also disturbing.

Kevin McIlovy’s work, “Perfumery” and “A word to Teacher Reptile’s readers and their parents,” was a bit too obscure for me, but I admire BWR for taking a risk and publishing work that is outside the mainstream.

Also excellent in fiction is Murray Farish’s “The Alternative History Club,” and Lisa DeCook’s In Cities, Well After the Fact.”

“The Alternative History Club” is about a girl who sees David Ferrie, “a pivotal figure in John F. Kennedy assassination lore, the go-between for the mob and the CIA and the far-right wing and the anti-Castro Cubans,” everywhere she goes after she loses her mother to leukemia. Whether or not she knows her mother is gone is debatable. In a way, it’s a kind of “sixth sense” story. The structure is fantastic, and the writing is smart, engaging, and full of tension and adventure.

“In Cities, Well After the Fact” started out difficult for me. I quickly became confused about who “you” was, but I knew this was one piece I needed to start over with and finish. The voice, and the structure of the narrative, were amazing. I love the narrator’s intelligence, and her ability to see past her ex-boyfriend’s deceit. Here’s an excerpt:

You sit on the edge of the couch and tell me the story with your head in your hands and I notice how your hands look like my father’s, how the knuckles segment the thin fingers and the veins pop out just enough to be noticeable. You push your hair away from your forehead, showing how much it’s receding and I make a note to myself to remember that, to remember you aren’t as young as you think you are. I’ll remind myself someday that I wasn’t wrong, that I wasn’t ridiculous to expect something from you. And you with your hairline and your aging hands, you are the one that will regret.

I didn’t find any poetry in this issue that spoke to me. I’m a complete poetry dunce… But there were two non-fiction pieces that I enjoyed.

First up: “Murder on Gasoline Lake” by Steven Davenport. Davenport’s gripping prose and tough voice hooked me, but it’s his profound sense of place, its role in family ties, and the question of what you owe to each, that make this piece exceptional. Check out the following passage:

You were still young enough that your sense of place was more geographical than emotional, more horizontal than vertical. It would be years before you began to feel the roots nostalgia you recognized in older people, their familiarity with parcels of land, sometimes a whole town or county, their sense of responsibility and investment, of connectedness, of belonging, of leaving and returning to something as ineffable as it is material, dirt-bound, sensory-driven. It would take a friend’s remark about the horrible stink of your parcel of land to generate it.

Finally, there is Hillary Wentworth’s “The Extra.” Like Lisa DeCook’s piece, I had a difficult time getting into this, but it appeared interesting, especially with all the time references, so I stuck with it. And it is an essay about time and all of its idiosyncrasies, in relation to medicine and the body. And it is very, very good.

All of this talk of seconds added; I would like to hand them out. Like money, like charity, extra time should be reserved for the truly needy. To the boy in the pediatric cardiology unit with blue lips and dark curly ringlets: one second of perfect happiness free of pain. [Can I give him my extra heartbeats too?] To the progeria kids: seconds strung together like beads on a necklace. To my grandparents: youthful seconds to remember yes, how it once was. Everyone gather round, I will dole them out like pennies.

If you’re interested in subscribing to Black Warrior Review, visit them HERE, where you can order online. Their spring issue is due out this month!


Filed Under: Magazine/Journal Reviews |