Dislocate – 2010

Unaware of any necessary precautions in the handling of “The Contaminated Issue,” I consciously folded back the front cover and crossed my fingers in hoping its pages were not infected with some sort of incurable disease. But it was already too late; the truth is that I was already contaminated; we all are.

Unaware of any necessary precautions in the handling of “The Contaminated Issue,” I consciously folded back the front cover and crossed my fingers in hoping its pages were not infected with some sort of incurable disease. But it was already too late; the truth is that I was already contaminated; we all are.

This issue features nine works of fiction that serve as warning signs: “Black Apples” by Lucas Church and “C+, B-, B, F, B, A, C-, A-” by Chris Gavaler are masterfully constructed and transport readers to a time and place where growth and demise, freedom and imprisonment, and intelligence and downright idiocy are all manifested and experienced in high school. Another prominent piece entitled “Impermanence or, Why I Can’t Stop Googling Myself” by Robert Anthony Siegel is equally fatal in its swift diagnosis and exploration of the traces of contamination that technology and death leave behind: “Google…an alternative universe of voices free of the body and the lungs, free of paper and glue and everything else that ages and decays. Fuck the copyright problem, mortality is an emergency.”

“The New Nature,” a poem by Joshua Ware and Crystal S. Gibbins presents an inventive and modern interpretation of Emerson’s Transcendentalism and notions of human purity: “The world in our head dissolves into an artificial sunrise, more beautiful than the sunrise itself. This is what we call a more perfect version of nature.” Other poems including “Wal-Mart Aquariums” by Jeffrey H. MacLachlan and “Perusing an online catalog of hipster laptop bags” by Elizabeth Aoki, are especially stimulating in the ways they speak to the impact of materialistic narcissism and the countless sources of contamination which are generated by society and dealt with by humans on a daily basis.

An interview with Adam Zagajewski by Colleen Coyne and Molly Sutton Kiefer delves into his writing process as a poet and memoirist and stirs the compelling debate over boundary lines between genres, a type of contamination that should not necessarily be seen as a sin. Zagajewski confesses that he is a regular offender and often weaves the strands of essay and poetry together, what Coyne refers to in her editor’s note as “a blending that produces something new.”

The final section of this issue is devoted to showcasing the winners of the magazine’s Contaminated Essay Contest which challenged writers to allow genres and influences to bleed together in their creatively innovative work. The winning piece, a nonfiction essay entitled “Reticulation” by Lehua M. Taitano, is subtly ingenious in its voice, style, and composition. It reminds readers that opportunities for contamination are limitless in their shape-shifting forms; however, the effect is determined by how we choose to create, treat, and allow it to affect our perspective and the way we live our lives.
[dislocate.umn.edu/]