The Malahat Review – Fall 2009

Despite much evidence to the contrary, or the apparent – or at least underestimated – challenges of doing so, it is possible to write an original and unforgettable speaker-meets-nature poem; or a speaker talks-to-poem poem; or a family story poem; or a poem with diction as casual as a nonchalant conversation; or a poem with images of popular culture; or yet one more poem about the mystery of math. It is possible to write an original and satisfying story from the perspective of a child or an adolescent that is also mature and inventive, not excessively playful or childish. It is possible to write a book review that exhibits intellectual sophistication without resorting to jargon. It is, in fact, possible to find all of these original and exceptional pieces in one place, writing by Susan Gillis, Jefferey Donaldson, Sam Cheuk, Rachel Rose, Eve Joseph, Ross Leckie, Eliza Robertson, Devon Code, Jackie Gay, Eric Miller – in The Malahat Review.

Despite much evidence to the contrary, or the apparent – or at least underestimated – challenges of doing so, it is possible to write an original and unforgettable speaker-meets-nature poem; or a speaker talks-to-poem poem; or a family story poem; or a poem with diction as casual as a nonchalant conversation; or a poem with images of popular culture; or yet one more poem about the mystery of math. It is possible to write an original and satisfying story from the perspective of a child or an adolescent that is also mature and inventive, not excessively playful or childish. It is possible to write a book review that exhibits intellectual sophistication without resorting to jargon. It is, in fact, possible to find all of these original and exceptional pieces in one place, writing by Susan Gillis, Jefferey Donaldson, Sam Cheuk, Rachel Rose, Eve Joseph, Ross Leckie, Eliza Robertson, Devon Code, Jackie Gay, Eric Miller – in The Malahat Review.

Don’t skip a single piece in this issue. Not Priscilla Uppal’s rant, “Fortress,” which concludes:

Deep in the gut
of this millennium, our amazing graces
are sanctioned like cigars. We hold them
up to the light for appreciation, smell
our delicate fingertips, await the arrival
of zillions of more vulnerable babies,
until a large man with a bass tone
breaks plate after plate upon
the force field of mankind

Or Stuart Friebert’s personal essay, “Germany’s Ganges,” which retells his experience of a biking accident and a brief hospital stay in 1949 in the Rhineland in the context of post-war sentiments, perspectives, and regrets.

Or Ross Leckie’s exquisite metaphysical poems with their long lines and even longer meanings. Here is the beginning of “The Brain a Cauliflower”:

There is the negative judgement, the one that bends the tulips to the ground.
Nothing is possible in empty time. Small wonder. The brain, that is,
with its various habitats, the ants tunneling in its moist soil.

Or Eve Joseph’s poem “White Camellias,” so much restraint and refined yearning (“Those I don’t write are loyal like all broken things.”) Or Gwendolyn Jensen’s poem “Earth Has a Thousand Faces,” which sounds like so much hyperbole, and is not, not, not.

Or Eliza Robertson’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and cleverly composed story, “Ship’s Log,” winner of the magazine’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction, about an imaginary voyage to China. A made-up story about a made-up story.

Don’t skip the reviews or even the ads (you’ll find out what’s happening on the Canadian poetry scene). If you go slowly enough, you might just have enough to get you through to issue one hundred and sixty-nine.
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