Rose Hunter, “The Statues of Illustrious Men”

These three
face the cathedral
and are the ones I can see from
where I’m sitting:
Marcelino García Barragán
(militar y gobernante),
a leg, a bite of torso,
a dangling arm;
Dr. Leonardo Oliva
(dr cientifico), bisected; and
Manuel M. Diéguez (general,
precursor, revolucionario);
sword obscured by the shrubs

beyond the fence and the inclining
lawn; leaves and red flowers
over his chest: an abandoned
pompom.

(—at the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres, Guadalajara)

To the River is a collection of poems from Rose Hunter. It also includes “Out of Detroit on the Greyhound” (originally published in Quay), “Walking into the Wynn, Las Vegas, and You Are Stitched Into” (Referential), “He Is No Pinkerton” (Juked), and “Even” (Leaf Press).

Hunter is also the founder of YB Poetry, an online journal that will be publishing its fourth issue this summer.

13 April 2011 | poetry |

Alan Heathcock, Carried Off “Upon the Sweeping Flood”

The stories in Alan Heathcock‘s debut collection, Volt, are compellingly stark: Unable to deal with the emotions churned up by the accidental death of his son, a man simply wanders off, until he winds up in a new community where he earns money withstanding other people’s physical assaults; a sheriff goes to extraordinary lengths to preserve the tranquility of her community, and then a flood forces her to revisit her actions. The violence in Heathcock’s stories takes on a surreal quality, and yet for all its unworldliness it doesn’t lose its visceral immediacy. In this guest essay, he explains how he’s been inspired by a master of such tales.

I must steel myself. Must be brave. I must not look away. It’s hard and self-conscious and everything in me tells me I’ve gone too far. What will they think of me? What will they think if they know my mind? This is my dilemma, being a writer. I’m a naturally private man, yet the written word eventually becomes very public, judged, interpreted, and for that I try to be brave, to not falter.

I need help. When I am at my weakest I read the work of authors who’ve gone far beyond me, ahead of me, who are revered. In this regard, Joyce Carol Oates is the bravest of writers, one of the fiercest champions of unflinching truth I know.

I own an old ragged paperback of the story collection Upon the Sweeping Flood. The pages are yellow and brittle. On the first page, before any of the stories, is a quote from Oates: “I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.” Just like that. So easy, so focused. My problem is clear. I am distracted, focusing on many things, while her concern is distilled into a single sentence. And oh how she pays out that focus.

The first time I read the title story, I was sitting in a condo on the fifth floor of a building in Chicago, Illinois. I remember it was fall, probably October, and I put the book down, trembling a bit, and stared for a long time into the golden tops of the locust trees outside my window. I was a budding writer then, and remember reflecting on my own work and thinking something like, “You’re not even close. Not even in the ballpark yet.”

(more…)

13 April 2011 | selling shorts |