Denver Quarterly – 2004

Guest edited by writer Paul Maliszewski, this issue of Denver Quarterly is comprised entirely of brazen prose (the contents page does not distinguish fiction from non) that is often whimsically digressive, sometimes obtuse, but always daring. Guest edited by writer Paul Maliszewski, this issue of Denver Quarterly is comprised entirely of brazen prose (the contents page does not distinguish fiction from non) that is often whimsically digressive, sometimes obtuse, but always daring. Purely for the provocative nature of its title, my reading began with Scott Bradfield’s essay, “Why I Hate Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Starting out as a wonderfully fresh and funny duelist’s slap to the superlative-spattered face of western literature as it’s taught in the universities, the piece winds down to a moving, even beautiful consideration of the deeply personal wonder that reading is: “[Books] are, by their very nature, transitory experiences, much like our lives, and we shouldn’t judge them, or be judged by them. We should only live with them, much the same way as we live with one another.” This issue also contains some notable short fiction, such as Hasanthika Sirisena’s mournful tale of a sickly D.H. Lawrence alienated from his homeland and clumsily seeking respite in Ceylon, and Michael Mejia’s vivid, sometimes surreal story of a Jewish composer, Anton von Webern, trying to find his way in WWII Europe. Stacey Levine’s story “The Cat” is also remarkable for the metaphysical poetics with which it renders the unraveling psyche of a lonely woman confined in her urban existence. Denver Quarterly makes for a fine read. – MC