Jessica’s Rambling Thoughts about Spring 2016 and the New Issue of The Southern Review

My trip to Home Depot to buy yet another weed trimmer tells me a year has passed and it is a new spring. My luck with trimmers is comparable to my luck with computers: I need to replace one pretty much every year because somehow I’ve managed to render mine inoperable. An overgrown yard (granted, it’s only about 100 square feet; it’s a city yard) isn’t the only unkempt area in or around my house, though. Having recently returned from AWP, my desk, tables, and bookshelves are filled with books and manuscripts I’m eager to get to at some point, as well as poems and prose to edit for the summer issue.

AWP was wonderful for me this year. In addition to spending time with writers I like as writers and as people and chatting with many other people for the first time, I attended some stellar panels. The three that knocked off my emotional socks—and that I think everyone should definitely watch if AWP offers videos of them on their site—were the tribute to Phil Levine and the two panels on Larry Levis which featured the documentary film from Michele Poulos, A Late Style of Fire, and the release of The Darkening Trapeze: last poems, edited by David St. John and published by Graywolf Press. The Darkening Trapeze has five poems that we were fortunate to run in our Levis feature last spring, a feature which also included poems by Phil Levine, David St. John, Peter Everwine, and several other writers touched by the web of Levis. Many of the conversations I had this year in L.A. were about the Levis panels and his writing in general. His work positively impacted so many poets and continues to do so. Everyone I talked to who loves his work inevitably said something to me like: “Have you read ______? I, mean, wow, isn’t it great?!” And I either agreed on the spot or read it when got home and thought, Yes, this is great, maybe a new favorite.

Which leads me to the spring issue for this year, filled with many terrific works, maybe even some new favorites. The issue opens with three poems from Jim Whiteside, who makes his second appearance in our pages. “Disguise Game” is a brief poem that uses ambiguity and imagery to reveal the layers of memory and self that can never be defined absolutely. The speaker says, “ . . . I wake / in the forest dreaming of the forest, studying the lake // reflecting the trees.” Who or what is dreaming and reflecting? Everyone and everything, all of it connected and yet tenuous. In such shifting uncertainty of self and perspective, the poem puts forth: “I’ve played this game before, / the one that goes, I’ll be the wolf, and you be // the sheepskin I hide in.” Is that not every one of us? So brilliantly and succinctly presented. Jim’s other two poems, “Judith Mountains” and “Immutable” are tributes to the painter Devin Leonardi, and each is moving without possessing sentimentality.

The issue closes with two thoughtful, metaphysical poems from Sharon Olds: “First Breath” and “Pine Tree Ode.” The notions that we are dying as soon as we are born and that we were and again become “star stuff,” as Carl Sagan asserted, unfold beautifully and send us out of the issue with plenty to contemplate. However, between these sets of poems are many other gems, including Jay Rogoff’s “Seventeen at Last,” which uses the villanelle form, in part, to develop its story of Giuseppina Bozzacchi, the ballet dancer who died on the morning of her seventeenth birthday on November 23, 1870. Ange Mlinko returns with two vivid poems, “Cooked in Their Own Ink,” after Derek Mahon’s “The Banished Gods,” and “Nights Are Short but Evenings Come Twice,” in which, during a powerful storm, the speaker must “turn the handle that resembles a key / and watch the filaments of a hurricane lamp / glow like an arachnid spliced with an isotope.” I recall well from my own childhood of hurricanes and hurricane lamps the distinct motion and sound of turning the key and lighting the lamp, yet I never thought of the spot-on image of a spider until I read the poem.

The issue is filled with much more terrific poetry and prose as well as visual art by Sarah Williams, whose nightscapes make me think of Edward Hopper without the people. Kirstin Allio is back in our pages, with the essay “Buddhism for Western Children,” which ties to her story from our autumn 2012 issue, “Buddhist Tales for Western Children.” There are poems that comment on race in America, historically and presently, by Anna Journey, Laura Kasischke, and David Hernandez, who reads one of his featured poems, “Murmuration,” in our audio gallery. Other works featured in the audio gallery this season include two poems from slam poet champion Sam Sax, a poem about basketball from Robert Cording, a pantoum from Denise Duhamel, a poem inspired by a conversation with her young daughter by Maggie Smith, and four short poems from Jill Osier. There’s also short fiction by Osama Alomar, translated by C. J. Collins, stories by Rachel Yoder and David James Poissant, and an essay by Beth Ann Fennelly.

Well, it looks too wet outside to cut the grass this evening, after all. Which is just as well. It’s Friday. Time for some fun. This weekend, we’re in between music festivals in New Orleans, but there’s a puppetry fringe festival and a poetry festival from which to choose. My parents are taking my daughter to the Irish, Italian, Islenos parade in Saint Bernard Parish, where I grew up. I’m not sure why these groups have now combined their parades into one, maybe it’s more convenient to block the streets one time rather than three. Regardless, it’s going to be a party and food will be thrown (yes, they throw food!) and grandfathers and granddaughters will dance in the street. These are the things that poems and stories are made of.

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