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Michigan Quarterly Review – Summer 2008

Volume 47 Number 3

Summer 2008

Quarterly

Dan Moreau

You know you’re in store for quality fiction and poetry when you pick up a copy of Michigan Quarterly Review. Jane Gillette’s wonderful story “Divine Afflatus” combines two seemingly disparate narratives – one featuring a poetry professor who continues to mourn the loss of his son, and a modern-day housewife who has too much time on her hands. The two narratives merge in a climactic moment for both characters. Equally good was John Allman’s story, “Waiting for Z,” in which the protagonist waits for his wife to come back from a whirlwind trip around the world. Both stories are exemplars of realistic narrative fiction at its best.

You know you’re in store for quality fiction and poetry when you pick up a copy of Michigan Quarterly Review. Jane Gillette’s wonderful story “Divine Afflatus” combines two seemingly disparate narratives – one featuring a poetry professor who continues to mourn the loss of his son, and a modern-day housewife who has too much time on her hands. The two narratives merge in a climactic moment for both characters. Equally good was John Allman’s story, “Waiting for Z,” in which the protagonist waits for his wife to come back from a whirlwind trip around the world. Both stories are exemplars of realistic narrative fiction at its best.

Among the poetry, I liked Gary Soto’s “Deciding to Steal” where the speaker, a young boy, steals an eraser head from a stationery store. The poem is full of religious imagery: “The eraser head / Resembled not an infidel’s turban, / But a tiny pope’s hat.” Soto’s enigmatic yet eerie “True Story” features an encounter between a lugubrious speaker and a VW Beetle with a dog in the passenger seat.

From essays to book reviews and interviews, MQR publishes a lot of non-fiction as well. Featured are a lengthy round table discussion with Sandra Cisneros and an interview with Arthur Miller. In an essay titled “On Literary Culture and Civilisation: Autopsy for a Creative Writing Workshop,” Charles Johnson talks about some of the challenges of teaching an undergraduate creative writing workshop. Anyone who has taught an undergraduate workshop will not be surprised to hear that most the stories submitted to Johnson’s class were “steeped in violence, drugs, cynicism, and, I noticed, a profound dislike for other human beings.”
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