The Spring 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2009 issue of the journal features fiction by Matthew Grice, Tai Dong Huai, Lydia Williams, Arrie Brown, and Jozefina Cutura; an essay by Suzanne Cope; poetry by William Robert Flowers, Leslie LaChance, Sarah White, Gregory Lawless, Roger Jones, Ruth Foley, Steve Klepetar, Linda King, Lyn Lifshin, James Richard Brown, Chris Anderson, and Asha Choubey; and artwork by Mikel Glass.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

Four Films

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Two (at least obliquely) about writing:

Ficción (English title: Fiction), in Spanish, directed by Cesc Gay, written by Tomàs Aragay and Cesc Gay, and starring Eduard Fernández as Àlex, Javier Cámara as Santi, Montse Germán as Mònica, and Carme Pla as Judith. I liked this film so much that I watched it again the next day, though my sympathies were different the second time around.

Comme une Image (English title: Look at Me), in French, directed by Agnès Jaoui, written by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui, and starring Marilou Berry as Lolita Cassard, Jean-Pierre Bacri as Étienne Cassard, Agnès Jaoui and Laurent Grévill as Sylvia and Pierre Millet, and Keine Bouhiza as Sébastien. This was the second time I had seen this film as well. The first time, I have to admit that I couldn't relate to it somehow and found Lolita less than sympathetic as a character. However, this time, I thought that it was an interesting take on what it means to be successful as a writer, parent, spouse, and person in general.

The other two were darker in terms of subject matter but visually stunning:

Da hong deng long gao gao gua (English title: Raise the Red Lantern), in Chinese, directed by Yimou Zhang, written by Su Tong and Ni Zhen, and starring Li Gong as Songlian, Caifei He as Meishan (Third Wife), Cuifen Cao as Zhuoyan (Second Wife), and Shuyuan Jin as Yuru (First Wife). This film was absolutely gorgeous.

Aimée and Jaguar, in German, directed by Max Färberböck, written by Max Färberböck and Rona Munro, and starring Maria Schrader as Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar), Juliane Köhler as Lilly Wust (Aimée), and Johanna Wokalek as Ilse.

Poem: "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass

At gate C 22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like satin ribbons tying up a gift. . . .

[Continued on the website of The Missouri Review,
where "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass was published in 2002.]

A Few Books, Mostly Memoirs

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Despite loving Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, I hadn't read any of her books that dealt more with religion than writing. Recently, though, I read all three of them, and found that, like Bird by Bird, each was at least as much memoir as how-to manual.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Trust me when I say that this was the first time I'd ventured into the Religion section of a bookstore for some new reading material.
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Also very late in the game, I finally read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. I'd had two of his books on my shelves for years; I'm now moving on to the second (more recent) one.

A few months ago, I bought a book of essays that was supposed to be witty and wonderful, and I don't know--it just didn't work for me. I plowed through the entire book trying unsuccessfully to understand what the reviewers were raving about. So I tried not to pay attention to all the hype about Me Talk Pretty One Day to avoid being similarly disappointed, but this book was terrific.
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I meant to add this to one of my blog posts a long time ago: a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press called The Terrible Baby, a collection of poems by Rebecca Cook. The cover is what initially drew me to that particular chapbook; it's a painting by Lauren Matthews Levato called "Maternal." (The second draw was the tantalizingly provocative title of the chapbook.)

The Fall 2008 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2008 issue of the journal features fiction by Alex Myers and Rachel Ephraim; memoir by Panteha Sanati; prose poetry by Julie Babcock; poetry by Vince Corvaia, Keetje Kuipers, Philip Matthews, M.J. Iuppa, Miranda Steffens, Andrew Slattery, Richard Stolorow, Margaret Rozga, Naira Kuzmich, Jim Murdoch, Susan Culver, and Heather Mercer; and artwork by Rob Evans.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

A Short Collection of Poetry

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While I was at the conference in New York, I bought a copy of Late Wife by Claudia Emerson (from the Southern Messenger Poets series, Louisiana State University Press, 2005). This book also won The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2006, though I was (ever shallow) first drawn to its appearance.

These four were my favorites from the collection:

"Pitching Horseshoes" (originally published in Blackbird, Spring 2003, Volume 2, Number 1)

"The Practice Cage"

"Driving Glove"

"Buying the Painted Turtle" (originally published in Shenandoah)

Two Stories from One Story, One from Steve Almond, and a Novel

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Given the reasonable subscription price and the time-friendly format, it's not difficult to read everything published by One Story. The stories are also consistently excellent, so I feel like it's saying something that these two have stood out in my mind:

"Culottes" by Eileen FitzGerald (One Story, Issue Number 82, October 20, 2006)

"What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us" by Laura van den Berg (One Story, Issue Number 102, March 10, 2008)

I finally finished Steve Almond's The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). Steve Almond's stories typically feature great beginnings and witty, acerbic observations. I'd read some of his other writing (e.g., the novel he co-wrote with Julianna and many of his dead-on essays for Poets and Writers) and admired his style. In The Evil B.B. Chow, though, he does use language and subject matter that are more graphic than he might use in, say, a P&W essay. At any rate, the story that really got me was one toward the end: "Wired for Life," which originally appeared in The Missouri Review.

And I'm going to add one other book here, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (first published in 1847). I just find it remarkable that this novel, comprised of plot points that make it seem almost impossibly dated, can still strike a chord.