Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.
Showing posts with label 'Flash V7.2 (Oct 2014)'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Flash V7.2 (Oct 2014)'. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 February 2015

"Flash V7.2 (Oct 2014)" by Peter Blair and Ashley Chantler (eds)

A magazine devoted to Flash, containing 46 stories (max 360 words), some in translation. There are also 4 stories by Virginia Woolf, an essay, and 5 reviews (each with a sample story). No bios. This issue appeared in Feb 2015. It's a twice-yearly publication - see their website for details.

The pieces are prose - they wouldn't be mistaken for prose-poems. One story's about 110 words long, but the others are much closer to the maximum. There's no telegramese - indeed, on p.9 there's the rather wordy "She'd ... eliminated her Spiritual Room. She claimed she wasn't telling fortunes anymore. 'My psychic days are over. You want a prediction, ask someone else'."

I didn't notice any Formulist pieces or anything very non-mainstream (Woolf's pieces being exceptions). I read some parts of each story twice, in the way I read poems, and didn't read many of them at a single sitting. Some had provocative first sentences. Just a few pieces (e.g. p.38) had punchlines. More had a final sentence that was discontinuous with the preceding one. Sometimes I didn't understand the ending.

I liked p.6, p.11, p.17, p.49, p.54 and p.75. p.26 sounded too much like a stripped-down journal entry. I wasn't keen on p.30 and p.37. My favourite story is "Rich" by Louise Ihringer.