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TriQuarterly – Winter 2008

Issue 129

Winter 2008

Triannual

Stefani Nellen

Gorgeousness. This magazine looks beautiful with its elegant matte cover and the generously laid-out pages. I found the reading experience luxurious, too. Usually I read literary magazines during the day and my private books in the evening, for pleasure. When I picked up TriQuarterly in the evening, I knew I had found a treat.

Gorgeousness. This magazine looks beautiful with its elegant matte cover and the generously laid-out pages. I found the reading experience luxurious, too. Usually I read literary magazines during the day and my private books in the evening, for pleasure. When I picked up TriQuarterly in the evening, I knew I had found a treat.

The short stories (more than ten in this issue) take their time to describe the world in which they take place. This was one of the things I noticed: the wide range of locations, like a literary world trip. The stories jump from Las Vegas (“A Letter from Las Vegas” by Richard Burgin) to Asia (“The Hanging Lanterns of do” by Paul Yoon), from a bus in New York City (“Girl…There Was A Time” by Enid Harlow), to “Lisbon” (by John Tait), and more. Many stories have a streak of subtle but potent humor, and therefore sound truer than the gloomy, “gritty” stories you find in too many literary magazines. My favorites were Michael Finn’s “In What She Has Done and in What She Has Failed To Do,” where three old ladies deal with the advent of a miracle, and Siobhan Adcock’s “This Is What We’re Doing,” about the budding friendship between two cohabitating single moms. This story has some of the best one-liners and dialogue I’ve read in a long time, and it feels as real as a documentary movie. Awesome.

There is also an essay by Linda Gregerson, and a lot of good poetry. Two favorites here: Todd Boss’s trio of short poems, especially “The Deeper the Dictionary,” where the lovers’ bed is compared to exactly that, and it does make sense. I also liked Kevin Stein’s “On Being a Nielsen Family,” which dissects our TV watching habits, and our attempt to doctor them in order to appear more sophisticated than we are: “Though it’s Oprah, we circle BBC News. / Though Jerry Springer, we mark Charlie Rose. / No no Number Not South Park, not Cops / Not World’s Funniest Animal Tricks.[…] We are watched watching, / Watching ourselves watched. We are never / enough, and the lies is as we wish to be.”
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