Pebble Lake Review – Fall 2004

It’s nearly impossible not to pick up this issue of Pebble Lake Review, with its almost hypnotically vibrant cover photograph of a sun-dappled graveyard. Fortunately, the contents of this slim, unassuming journal don’t disappoint. The poems tend to be short and straightforward; no experimental rambles here. Likewise, the fiction moves quickly, and there is a handful of various art works by seven different people. It’s nearly impossible not to pick up this issue of Pebble Lake Review, with its almost hypnotically vibrant cover photograph of a sun-dappled graveyard. Fortunately, the contents of this slim, unassuming journal don’t disappoint. The poems tend to be short and straightforward; no experimental rambles here. Likewise, the fiction moves quickly, and there is a handful of various art works by seven different people. I was most impressed by Jill Coupe’s “Slipping,” in which a slick, young suit tries to bully an aging librarian out of her position using interrogation techniques which remind her (the librarian) of Pinochet’s 1973 power coup. She is a corporate prisoner as Chilean poet Miguel Jose Santiago was a political one; she manages to keep her dignity but, probably, not her job. In poetry, I liked Sarah Sloat’s “Winding Down,” about resting after a good run: “It is strange to observe the body / close down, like letting a clock do its work, / deciding nothing.” Yvette Schnoeker-Shorb presents a wonderful day-after-Halloween meditation in “Sense of Saints,” in which one finds a dead owl and buries it. This is a mystical experience: “Soil still under your nails, / your fingers touch the feather / to deep blue morning air, / tracing the owl’s eye moon, / yellow and cradled / by wisps of clouds.” It’s a wow moment, one of many to be found in this journal. [Pebble Lake Review] – Jennifer Gomoll