Water~Stone Review – 2007
Volume 9
2007
Annual
Anne Wolf
Water-Stone Review is a veritable kaleidoscope, spawning with colors to amaze your keen literary eye. Plus it offers a smattering of striking, disciplined photographs that capture a specific subject very poetically – such as a pink bed, clothes on a mattress, a boy staring, a man posing on a rock, paper on fire – all ordinary scenes captured in an extraordinary way, enhancing the mystique of this volume.
Water-Stone Review is a veritable kaleidoscope, spawning with colors to amaze your keen literary eye. Plus it offers a smattering of striking, disciplined photographs that capture a specific subject very poetically – such as a pink bed, clothes on a mattress, a boy staring, a man posing on a rock, paper on fire – all ordinary scenes captured in an extraordinary way, enhancing the mystique of this volume. I found the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize winner, “Galveston Island Breakdown: Some Directions,” to be a morality and life lesson with pathos and wit, especially wit. More non-fiction includes “How to Love a Poz Man” – an exquisitely written piece about a romantic interlude, by John Medeiros. Also, Rachel Hall’s “In the Cemeteries of Saint-Malo,” a haunting non-fiction piece about a woman searching for the graves of her grandparents who died during the Nazi occupation of France. The non-fiction was so well written, and the fiction so true-to-life, that I had to check the table of contents to see which was which. “The Bones in Her Face,” by Antonia Harrison, is a short story about two men working in a mortuary, one taking an unusual interest in his work. A touching tale of family cohesiveness, from Atomic Age, by Judith Katz, pulls no punches and can break your heart, although fiction. The poetry ranges from modern to avant-garde, all stellar. “Great Gray,” by Eva Hooker, is extraordinary, having literary notes after, and the heartbeat of an angel repeated within. Ellen Weble’s “Aesop’s Frogs in August” features ethereal lines such as, “Euphoria thy name is noon” and “Pond glazy as hot silver / clouds nailed onto the water.” Nearly three hundred pages of these, plus reviews, are wrapped with a tasteful cover displaying a pink ribbon on a mottled green background that gives a proper impression of this classy publication. Water-Stone Review celebrates the literary arts annually, with this edition dedicated to the memory of writer Frank Busch. It achieves a beautiful variety for readers to take in.
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