Crazyhorse – Spring 2005

A chemotherapy ward is transformed into the visitation grounds of the Angel of Death. A game of American Indian wars interpreted by German boys is played while a real war wages in the background. A Kansas farmer anticipates her horse’s foaling while caring for her old friend, an aerial photographer sensing early signs of brain damage. These stories highlight Crazyhorse 67, whose style can be spelled out with traits—rural, man-versus-nature, agrarian mysticism, even the very presence of horses—but for all of which the prime mover is always the imagination. Christopher Burawa’s “Visitation of the Chemotherapy Angel” is a meditative prose poem; Maria Hummel’s “Peter at the Stake” is a fictional memoir inspired by true events; and Andrew Malan Milward’s “The Agriculture Hall of Fame” is a story about memory—narrated, to surprising effect, backwards and in fragments.  A chemotherapy ward is transformed into the visitation grounds of the Angel of Death. A game of American Indian wars interpreted by German boys is played while a real war wages in the background. A Kansas farmer anticipates her horse’s foaling while caring for her old friend, an aerial photographer sensing early signs of brain damage. These stories highlight Crazyhorse 67, whose style can be spelled out with traits—rural, man-versus-nature, agrarian mysticism, even the very presence of horses—but for all of which the prime mover is always the imagination. Christopher Burawa’s “Visitation of the Chemotherapy Angel” is a meditative prose poem; Maria Hummel’s “Peter at the Stake” is a fictional memoir inspired by true events; and Andrew Malan Milward’s “The Agriculture Hall of Fame” is a story about memory—narrated, to surprising effect, backwards and in fragments. The spaciousness of Crazyhorse, with over forty poems, five fiction pieces and two essays, tends to work against intimate reading ventures, but I find that the biggest journals reap the best rewards for effort. Speaking of agrarianism and mysticism, maybe nowhere more than in G.C. Waldrep’s Zen-like poems, so profound and yet so hairsplitting to summarize, is the work a reward in itself. Excerpt from “Milton Highway”: “Generally we cannot say, generally we are noncommittal. We study surfaces. We confer. We prefer we. Not startle. What he sees as obstinance is not obstinance, it simply. Is. Another; a ghost. One steady motion—” [http://crazyhorse.cofc.edu/] – Christopher Mote