S.L.A.M - Fall 2004
So go read this fall's Student Literary Arts Magazine and see what the creative writing program at my prestigious university has spewed forth this past semester. Actually, to tell the truth, I was pretty impressed with this issue. Compared to the spring '04 issue (which seemed to focus entirely on depression, angst, and abuse) this is a big step up. We've still got an anguished little poem ("Daughter") on the front page, but it's small enough to be easily ignored.
Even if you don't enjoy most of the stuff, there's the poem by my good friend Nick Kennedy to lift your spirits. It seems bad at first, but read it twice. Closely. The line: "An ugly Unitarian seems the best logician librarian against a universal conflict, serious commitment" had me banging my head on my desk, until I noticed that he followed it up with: "do I even know what that means?" Thank god! There's also the redundant "...wait for the temporal time," and the mysteriously symbolic "in this blue learned light." He's got control over what he's writing, and he's purposefully playing games with you. There's no way I could ever write like this, because this isn't some sort of assumed style. It's the way the man thinks. I actually wish that he had submitted some of his fiction (which is far superior to this and the rest of his poems) so that other people beside myself could experience his madcap based-on-a-true-story-only-distorted-to-make-it-interesting real-life adventures. Maybe I'll ask him to give me something to post sometime.
Good fiction and/or creative nonfiction are one thing that this magazine desperately needs. We've got two pieces this issue, which is good, but I was disappointed with both. Nesberg's "Give A Bum A Quarter" is far too disjointed and thin to carry any weight, and seems to act as nothing more than a vehicle for the author's point of view on social issues. Narrated by an "educated bum," the piece actually sounds more like a glamorized version of what an undergraduate would write if he suddenly found himself homeless and with an audience. Wilson's "Stones" is an autobiographical essay that seems to be trying to justify the author's rejection of conventional religion and acceptance of her own non-institutional views. "When and if Satan ever comes to try to take over the world as we know it, a lot of people will believe in his words because they believe anything they are told. It is up to others, including me, to question and doubt." Which would be perfectly alright if she didn't set herself up with a logic bomb by just assuming this philosophy from her father.
What frustrates me the most is that a major part of the introductory creative writing class focuses on flash fiction, but I have yet to see a piece of flash fiction in SLAM that takes full advantage of the form. OH WAIT maybe it's because students aren't given any really good examples. After all, the first piece of flash fiction in the book that they're using contains the line, "There a jaguar jumped the juggler, and afterwards, mortally mauled the animal trainer; and the shocked showpeople disbanded in dismay and horror." Holy fucking alliteration. To be fair, there are a lot of good flash pieces in the book. I was reading through it again recently and found several that I liked. Still, all too many of them are just epiphanic character studies written short. This must have had some sort of an influence on the class I was in, because ninety-five percent of other student's flash pieces that I read limited themselves to this type of story. Which I guess is okay, if you're looking to break into the mainstream literary scene.
Even if you don't enjoy most of the stuff, there's the poem by my good friend Nick Kennedy to lift your spirits. It seems bad at first, but read it twice. Closely. The line: "An ugly Unitarian seems the best logician librarian against a universal conflict, serious commitment" had me banging my head on my desk, until I noticed that he followed it up with: "do I even know what that means?" Thank god! There's also the redundant "...wait for the temporal time," and the mysteriously symbolic "in this blue learned light." He's got control over what he's writing, and he's purposefully playing games with you. There's no way I could ever write like this, because this isn't some sort of assumed style. It's the way the man thinks. I actually wish that he had submitted some of his fiction (which is far superior to this and the rest of his poems) so that other people beside myself could experience his madcap based-on-a-true-story-only-distorted-to-make-it-interesting real-life adventures. Maybe I'll ask him to give me something to post sometime.
Good fiction and/or creative nonfiction are one thing that this magazine desperately needs. We've got two pieces this issue, which is good, but I was disappointed with both. Nesberg's "Give A Bum A Quarter" is far too disjointed and thin to carry any weight, and seems to act as nothing more than a vehicle for the author's point of view on social issues. Narrated by an "educated bum," the piece actually sounds more like a glamorized version of what an undergraduate would write if he suddenly found himself homeless and with an audience. Wilson's "Stones" is an autobiographical essay that seems to be trying to justify the author's rejection of conventional religion and acceptance of her own non-institutional views. "When and if Satan ever comes to try to take over the world as we know it, a lot of people will believe in his words because they believe anything they are told. It is up to others, including me, to question and doubt." Which would be perfectly alright if she didn't set herself up with a logic bomb by just assuming this philosophy from her father.
What frustrates me the most is that a major part of the introductory creative writing class focuses on flash fiction, but I have yet to see a piece of flash fiction in SLAM that takes full advantage of the form. OH WAIT maybe it's because students aren't given any really good examples. After all, the first piece of flash fiction in the book that they're using contains the line, "There a jaguar jumped the juggler, and afterwards, mortally mauled the animal trainer; and the shocked showpeople disbanded in dismay and horror." Holy fucking alliteration. To be fair, there are a lot of good flash pieces in the book. I was reading through it again recently and found several that I liked. Still, all too many of them are just epiphanic character studies written short. This must have had some sort of an influence on the class I was in, because ninety-five percent of other student's flash pieces that I read limited themselves to this type of story. Which I guess is okay, if you're looking to break into the mainstream literary scene.