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MiPOesias – July 2008

Volume 22 Issue 6

July 2008

Sima Rabinowitz

A fun, quirky look. Editor and publisher Didi Menendez calls this issue “a carousel of poetry, short stories, and recipes.” The carousel image is an extension of the magazine’s cover, a full-bleed photograph of a woman clearly enjoying her ride on a beautiful merry-go-round. MiPOesias is as colorful and bold as a carousel with its full-color half and full page author photos; blue, teal, lime, evergreen, pink, brown, yellow, and tan page borders; large sans serif fonts and reverse type; and recipes, complete with color photos of pasta, muffins, Cuban meatloaf, and breaded catfish. If there is a relationship between the poems and stories and the recipes, it escapes me, although the recipes were provided by writers (though not by writers whose work appears in this issue of the magazine).

A fun, quirky look. Editor and publisher Didi Menendez calls this issue “a carousel of poetry, short stories, and recipes.” The carousel image is an extension of the magazine’s cover, a full-bleed photograph of a woman clearly enjoying her ride on a beautiful merry-go-round. MiPOesias is as colorful and bold as a carousel with its full-color half and full page author photos; blue, teal, lime, evergreen, pink, brown, yellow, and tan page borders; large sans serif fonts and reverse type; and recipes, complete with color photos of pasta, muffins, Cuban meatloaf, and breaded catfish. If there is a relationship between the poems and stories and the recipes, it escapes me, although the recipes were provided by writers (though not by writers whose work appears in this issue of the magazine).

Menendez prefers quirky voices, too, serving up writers whose work is steeped in brand names (Samsonite, Chevy, Astroturf, Birkenstock, Del Monte, Nike, Volvo, 7-Eleven, Ultra-concentrated Joy dishwashing liquid) and references to pop culture (Lee Marvin, Saturday Night TV, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dancing with the Stars, The Manchurian Candidate, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron). For the most part, these pieces are casual in tone: “There are certain things which you cannot discuss / in front of a class of sixth graders” (“Advice to Teachers,” a poem by Steve Meador); “We might just as well turn the lights on in the hallway” (begins a prose poem, “Down to the Horn Archipelago” by Charles Freeland); and “Do you know what we’re telling you?” asks Tony Trigilio at the start of his poem “The Manchurian Candidate (1962).”

There’s a healthy portion of family stories (widowhood, aging fathers, abandoned mothers, disabled siblings), a few side dishes (shorter pieces) of nature poems (bears, snow, gardens), and some spice here and there (“How can I not submit to the world?” from Kim Young’s poem “Sleight of Hand”). And there’s dessert, the end of the meal, or should I say the end of the world: “I predict nothing but an obscene, amerikan future,” which is the last sentence of Ron Anrola’s work of sudden fiction, “The End of the Short Story.” I think he may be right about the future of our country, but I hope he’s wrong about the fate of fiction.
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