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By Roman Gladstone, on March 7th, 2012 Author: Karen Lillis
2012, Spuyten Duyvil Novella Seriess
Filed Under: Literary, Short-Run
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
Karen Lillis’ gem of a novella is written in the form of a diary by an unnamed female over the course of three weeks in December, 2003. It is not a diary in the sense of daily entries that recount the events of the day. In fact, we know almost nothing about her activity during this time except that on December 24 the narrator, who lives in New York City (Brooklyn), boards a train for Washington, DC, presumably to spend the holidays with her family, though nothing’s ever mentioned, and on December 30, the final entry, she is about to board the return train.
Watch the Doors as They Close is a soul-searching exploration of an all-consuming love affair that has recently ended. In fact, three days into the journal, December 14, the narrator writes, “Anselm and I broke up a week ago – a week ago today, in fact. On the phone, after he’d already left New York again to return to his mother’s house in Pennsylvania.”
Indeed, the journal begins, “This is the story of Anselm. The story of Anselm as told to me.” It’s this introspective inquiry that makes the choice of the diary form so compelling. A diary is written for oneself, an attempt to make sense of one’s life. To get a bead on her own life, the narrator must come to terms with her lover, the man with whom she shared a room for the past three months in an often tempestuous affair. …
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By Roman Gladstone, on December 9th, 2011 [This collection of gritty flash fiction is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: Meg Pokrass
Press 53, 2011
Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Damn Sure Right is a collection of 88 (by my count) flash fiction pieces in about twice that number of pages. In general, flash fiction is to fiction kind of like what haiku are to poetry: hard to isolate one from all the others and appreciate it on its own. You need to take the collection as a whole since some flash fictions are more successful than others. This is not to say that Meg Pokrass’ collection is “uneven,” but some of the stories are better than the others, and when they’re good, her stories are really good, terrifically comical at the same time that they are poignantly tragic, all in the space of a page or two.
The whole book is compelling; Pokrass keeps you wanting to read more, even when some stories are less satisfying than others, not as cohesive. This is the challenge any collection faces, of course, poetry, short stories, essays, but with flash fictions, each is like a bump in the road, you haven’t invested too much time or commitment to any single one; you can put the book aside at any point and pick it back up again when you want.
Flash fiction partakes of all the classic story elements – a protagonist/narrator, conflict, and usually a sense of resolution, an image of completion, or explanation. Because the form is so compact, lots is left up to the reader to infer, and this can be the truly powerful thing about flash fiction, the way it engages the reader’s imagination, to fill in the blanks, connect the dots. …
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By Roman Gladstone, on November 10th, 2011 Author: Sarah Gorham
2011, Four Way Books
Filed Under: Poetry.
Get the book.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
You can already tell by the title of her new collection that Sarah Gorham has a sly, subversive sense of humor. From modified “prayers” saturated with irony to a five-part reflection on bureaucratic and other absurdities associated with a frankly horrific accident, Gorham regards the world with a disengaged, puzzled fascination, and at its best it is as if you see things through her eyes for the first time. Her poem, “Detach,” captures this attitude, evident throughout her poetry:
Detach
Thank the stars for distances between
stars, for broad mountain meadows
that shrink your troubles to ants
carrying leaves five times their size.
The sun is 91 million miles away;
not too far, not too close. Be like that.
Perch in a look-out tower, overseer of campfires
and dangerous breezes. You’ll spot the heat,
pick up the phone. Let others
put their faces in the fire.
The world is a wondrous place if you twist your head and look at it from a different angle. “Odd place for a sculpture,” she begins the poem, “Bust of a Young Girl in the Snow.” Indeed, Gorham’s logical leaps from line to line are breathtaking. “I long for babies,/but never more than mountains./My view of the Jungfrau: peaks like starched/petticoats I could bury my face in./She is a cold confection, a meringue/I feel in my teeth. When I am/in the presence of mountains,/there will always be enough sex./But never enough mountains,” she concludes the poem, “Three Sides to the Mountain That Are Really One.”
…
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By Roman Gladstone, on August 23rd, 2011 Author: Shelley Puhak
 2010, Black Lawrence Press
Filed Under: Poetry.
Get the book.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
Steeped in the bleak history of mid-twentieth century Europe, Shelley Puhak’s award-winning Stalin in Aruba nevertheless brims with a dark humor. The poetry, lyrical, full of fresh, vivid imagery, is saturated with grim irony. Even the title suggests this, juxtaposing one of history’s most monstrous dictators with an idyllic vacation island. In the eponymous poem, indeed, Stalin’s infamous liquidation of his enemies and undesirables blends into the techniques of photographic manipulation, cropping, chopping, clarifying pictures, as if genocide were merely an option in a Photoshop program. “Purging the Aunties,” a poem based on Stalin’s arrest and execution of many of his female relatives, is likewise set during two birthday celebrations for touchy Uncle Soso, again juxtaposing the horrific with the mundane, bringing to mind the macabre image of skeletons dancing during the Black Plague. …
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