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The Laurel Review – Summer 2009

Volume 43 Number 2

Summer 2009

Biannual

Karen H. Lambert

In this issue, an essay by Lisa Ohlen Harris most stirs my mind, encouraging me to return for a second and third look. I like her outlook on life as much as the writing itself. In the piece entitled “Exiles,” the author ponders the death of her father-in-law. She lives in Jordan with her husband and two children, one a newborn. When her husband returns to the U.S. for her father-in-law’s funeral, leaving her alone, she becomes contemplative about her father-in-law’s anger toward religion that alienated him from his three sons, who chose to become Protestants. She also mourns the hope, now lost, that the relationships may be mended. The piece explores challenging family relationships, feelings of being cut off by distance and religion, and then expands to discuss broken ties between nations and with the land. I loved the history, as research abounds in the piece.

In this issue, an essay by Lisa Ohlen Harris most stirs my mind, encouraging me to return for a second and third look. I like her outlook on life as much as the writing itself. In the piece entitled “Exiles,” the author ponders the death of her father-in-law. She lives in Jordan with her husband and two children, one a newborn. When her husband returns to the U.S. for her father-in-law’s funeral, leaving her alone, she becomes contemplative about her father-in-law’s anger toward religion that alienated him from his three sons, who chose to become Protestants. She also mourns the hope, now lost, that the relationships may be mended. The piece explores challenging family relationships, feelings of being cut off by distance and religion, and then expands to discuss broken ties between nations and with the land. I loved the history, as research abounds in the piece.

The dying man’s daughter-in-law finds comfort and understanding from Tamam, a Muslim woman who is an exile, an academic, her landlord’s wife and upstairs neighbor. She credits Tamam for understanding loss in a way her other friends could not because she knew profound loss, the loss of losing her country.

There are other wise, deep and well-crafted pieces throughout that may strike a chord with another reader the way “Exiles” sang to me. For instance, Paul Cockeram takes a look at what really constitutes good writing – and the difference between really living life and living an illusion – by examining his mother’s and grandmother’s fascination with Bridges of Madison County and a series of news reports on arsonists who have tried to destroy the famous bridges the book depicts. I admire his craft in “Bridges Burn” and his ability to weave different images together to make a whole piece.

At least, I assume both the pieces I mentioned are nonfiction. One minor complaint I have is that The Laurel Review includes no titles to distinguish poem from nonfiction from fiction, although four reviews at the end are labeled. In the table of contents, different genres of writing are scrambled, and labeled only by title and author. As a result, the reader must depend on form and conventions to decipher what they are reading. Generally, in the case of poems this is easy. But, with longer forms sometimes lines seem to blur between fiction and nonfiction. Still, the magazine is a good place to sample a variety of talent, including both established and emerging writers.
[catpages.nwmissouri.edu/m/tlr/]

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