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Green Mountains Review – 2004

Volume 17

2004

Sima Rabinowitz

What makes this issue of Green Mountains Review especially appealing is the range of styles and tones represented here. Maureen Seaton is as quirky, irreverent, playful, and original as ever in several pieces that defy classification. Erick Pankey is as solemn and soulful as we know him to be in three self-portraits composed of exacting, carefully calculated language. Lola Haskins is, as we expect her to be, both lyrical and sharp-tongued in “Parsing Mother” (“You’re the twig that slashed my eye as I pushed through the branches. / Why I see cracks, faults, flaws, in every vase and daughter. O / Mother how declensions abound: nominative sun accusative moon.”). The fiction follows suit, with solid, conventional short stories by Jenna Terry and Daisy Tsui; a lyrical folk-tale style offering by Christopher White; and stories I am tempted to categorize as “sudden fiction” or “short shorts” by Francine White. Among the many memorable and noteworthy pieces in this issue is one I simply cannot refrain from mentioning— Eamon Grennan’s marvelous poem “From the Road,” which begins:

What makes this issue of Green Mountains Review especially appealing is the range of styles and tones represented here. Maureen Seaton is as quirky, irreverent, playful, and original as ever in several pieces that defy classification. Erick Pankey is as solemn and soulful as we know him to be in three self-portraits composed of exacting, carefully calculated language. Lola Haskins is, as we expect her to be, both lyrical and sharp-tongued in “Parsing Mother” (“You’re the twig that slashed my eye as I pushed through the branches. / Why I see cracks, faults, flaws, in every vase and daughter. O / Mother how declensions abound: nominative sun accusative moon.”). The fiction follows suit, with solid, conventional short stories by Jenna Terry and Daisy Tsui; a lyrical folk-tale style offering by Christopher White; and stories I am tempted to categorize as “sudden fiction” or “short shorts” by Francine White. Among the many memorable and noteworthy pieces in this issue is one I simply cannot refrain from mentioning— Eamon Grennan’s marvelous poem “From the Road,” which begins:

What stops me is the big indifference
of weather, the remoteness it shows
in all its peremptory gestures.

But then there’s Bach coming out
of the air, an equal mystery. Rejoice!
he says, all ye ransomed souls.

[Green Mountains Review, Johnson State College, Johnson, VT 05656. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $8. http://greenmountainsreview.jsc.vsc.edu] – Sima Rabinowitz

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