An anthology of Flash with the shortlist of Microfiction at the end. The theme was Time.
Favourites include "1969" and especially "You Die First". Interesting that "Wood Wide Web" and "Take Root" use the same science idea.
An anthology of Flash with the shortlist of Microfiction at the end. The theme was Time.
Favourites include "1969" and especially "You Die First". Interesting that "Wood Wide Web" and "Take Root" use the same science idea.
It was originally published in 2015 by Stinging Fly. Stories from The White Review, Stinging Fly, Harper's Magazine and New Yorker. The numbers in brackets are the page counts.
Men (or at least memories of them) arriving then going (having delivered something or provoked an insight) often feature. At one point the narrator writes "Look here, it's perfectly obvious by now to anyone that my heads is turned by imagined elsewheres and hardly at all by present circumstances". Her focus on objects and detail may be a reaction to this. Just when she seems to be about to address a personal issue often she veers off. The standard symbol of House as Self works quite well - the roles of chimneys, doors and windows.
An audio book of about 30 short stories - some just 2 sentences. Many are plot-driven, the plot too easy to guess. Sometimes I guessed an ending, decided that it would be too obvious, then found I'd guessed the ending correctly. "Meet me at the crematorium" kept me interested for a while, but the best was the Roy Grace story. It had a decent plot (though not as cunning as I'd predicted - I thought the man lied about having his stamps stolen to get the thieves in trouble with their boss) and I liked the final line.
I gave up listening to the book about half way through.
On the back cover is "How do we recognise 'a poem' (including apparent contraventions, such as the 'prose poem')? Once a poem has been recognized, what are the interpretative conventions brought into play for reading it? And especially, how has the spatial arrangement on the page become 'meaningful' in its own right ... What is the origin of the line as the primary generic sign of poetry?" which is promising. I also like the way the author explains a term (e.g. semiotics) the first time she uses it.
What is a poem? Basically, if you don't use line-breaks you have to exaggerate some other indicator of poetry (which change through the years). Or get the text published in a reputable poetry magazine.
She sees the layouts as borrowing ideas from Art/Music, the Body (breath, pleasing the eye) and other Language uses
She agrees with the idea that there were 3 main changes in reading from 1500s to 1700 - oral to visual, intensive to extensive (i.e. reading many books rather than one book carefully), communal to private reading. Readers lag behind writers, "so it is not until the late nineteenth century that 'Romantic' assumptions are the norm of reading" (p.143). The popularity of prose fiction pushed poetry back until the old (pre mass media) reading practises became useful again - "separated by a thousand years of 'Romantic imperialism' in which English poetry was usually written in syllabic metres, contemporary poetry (for the most part) and Old English poetry both based their versification on the rhythm of conversational English, a rhythm based on the regularity of stress not syllable" (p.1)
Bath Flash Fiction Volume Four - 137 stories chosen from 3,123 entered for their 2019 competitions. Sharon Teller's "Her safe word is 'circus'" is perhaps the least mainstream. I liked "Show falling upwards" and many others - generally a good standard.
Poems from "Barren Magazine", "Ink, Sweat and Tears", "Magma", etc.
The poems suit my tastes - discontinuous, with gaps neither too big or small; subject matter that isn't the be all and end all. Several poems involve the process of close study, as if looking at something behind glass - in a museum or gallery; pinned down, excavated, or a memory. There are 2 pages of notes.
I like "We don't need infinity". I think "Milk bottle" is neat - "... pressing the silver coin down ... Above me, the fat-rimmed lip of the bottle ... I have been taught not to answer back, not to question the world of empty men, tight-necked, stout-shouldered ...I silence them with a rolled-up scroll, filled with my very best handwriting"
p.49 is a Golden Shovel. p.50 is a sonnet - loose rhythm and rhyme that become looser. "Aftersun" (another sonnet) is about helping someone who has sunburn, but the language is very flowery ("Space-travelling light has tangled too deep, entered your body, turned cool-water skin into a forge ... there's nothing I can do to unblemish this") so I presume it's about something else too - "I promise you next time we'll be more careful". I like "Picking Raspberries" - "Sometimes I'd find a perfect pink chandelier ... as soon as I eased it away, I'd be left with a tiny orgasm of jam that couldn't wait any longer ... absurdity of soft hair". And "I remember that I too, have seen a bat crawl by morning light" works for me - "mouse-body hidden by the funeral-circus tents she was hauling"
There are scattered images I like too - e.g. "my heart stupid as a lamppost, waiting for you underneath it every night" ("Wardrobe"). Less convincing are p.36, p.40, p.59.
Short stories. Neuro-diverse before the term was common.
I like several of the formalist/conceptual structures of the pieces, and the details are fun. It's hard to care about the characters. Many don't care about themselves.