CutBank – Spring 2007

Cutbank is a beautiful journal, published on glossy paper, brimming with cutting-edge poetry and prose, and highlighting a visual artist’s work with full-color images. This issue is particularly rich. Louisa Conrad’s collages grace the covers, front and back, and provide a stunning centerfold of images that are as thought provoking as they are sumptuous. The series simply mesmerizes. So does the prose in this issue. In particular, the short story by Edan Lepucki entitled “The Baby.”

Cutbank is a beautiful journal, published on glossy paper, brimming with cutting-edge poetry and prose, and highlighting a visual artist’s work with full-color images. This issue is particularly rich. Louisa Conrad’s collages grace the covers, front and back, and provide a stunning centerfold of images that are as thought provoking as they are sumptuous. The series simply mesmerizes. So does the prose in this issue. In particular, the short story by Edan Lepucki entitled “The Baby.” A haunting story of a man who suffers a kind of twisted post-partum depression, the piece describes a slide into madness that feels easy, almost effortless. The story – and its insistence that we are all but a thin line from shattering – remains with you; in fact, it won’t let you go. Also of interest is the interview with fiction writer, Aimee Bender. She describes the benefits and difficulties of the workshop model and how to guard against “the workshop story.” Of the current state of American fiction, she says, “I think there’s a huge place…for messy stories. I think Americans write the tidiest stories in the world, and there’s a great thing about that, but there’s a lot more space than any of us think for the story to sprawl.” The work Bender is known for provides both model and impetus for all writers to seek out that larger space.
http://www.cutbankonline.org