Colorado Review – Spring 2005

Two engaging personal essays, one by newcomer David Harris-Gershon and the other by award-winning essayist Floyd Skloot land side-by-side and are emblematic of the issue as a whole—expertly crafted work by new and more established writers who know how to link their personal stories or perspective to the larger world. Even work poetry editor Donald Revell labels as an unexpected revision of the confessional mode, Jenny Mueller’s “Lyric,” reaches beyond the confines of experiment or solipsistic musing to offer a broad, surprising, and accessible world: “The cicada orgasms / sing, cease. A knock and a bruise / is this afternoon, its approaches // by lapses. A blast at the sills: it’s the earth, wanting in, heat-zonked / and spoiling, prodigal.”

Two engaging personal essays, one by newcomer David Harris-Gershon and the other by award-winning essayist Floyd Skloot land side-by-side and are emblematic of the issue as a whole—expertly crafted work by new and more established writers who know how to link their personal stories or perspective to the larger world. Even work poetry editor Donald Revell labels as an unexpected revision of the confessional mode, Jenny Mueller’s “Lyric,” reaches beyond the confines of experiment or solipsistic musing to offer a broad, surprising, and accessible world: “The cicada orgasms / sing, cease. A knock and a bruise / is this afternoon, its approaches // by lapses. A blast at the sills: it’s the earth, wanting in, heat-zonked / and spoiling, prodigal.”  Not that there isn’t plenty of invention here, writing that takes risks and moves beyond convention: an excerpt from Dan Beachy-Quick’s “Mulberry,” the title poem from Michelle Mitchell-Foust’s forthcoming book “Imago Mundi,” an excerpt from Christopher Arigo’s “Breath Variations.” The fiction is somewhat more conventional, but nonetheless pleasing, with six thoroughly readable and memorable stories (so good, I think, that all of their authors deserve mention: Kathleen Lee, Seth Biderman, Naomi J. Williams, Angie McCullagh, Robin Black). Hats off to the Colorado Review for offering readers an opportunity to get to know many talented and exciting new and lesser known writers (Melanie Figg, Amy Schroeder,  Gillian Jerome, along with the afore-mentioned Harris-Gershon, Williams, and many others). [Colorado Review, Department of English, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $9.50. http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu] – Sima Rabinowitz