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Call: Review – 2004

2004

Weston Cutter

Clearly I can’t claim that Call is, as well, the best damn debut of the year, but an argument can and should be made that: 1. It’s very, very good, with some brilliant work within (this means you T. R. Hummer); 2. All this neighing about the poor state of the literary condition seem, if not exaggerated, then at least nonsensical: if Call and Swink can both debut, we’re all fine.

Clearly I can’t claim that Call is, as well, the best damn debut of the year, but an argument can and should be made that: 1. It’s very, very good, with some brilliant work within (this means you T. R. Hummer); 2. All this neighing about the poor state of the literary condition seem, if not exaggerated, then at least nonsensical: if Call and Swink can both debut, we’re all fine. Call is slim and elegant and totally boundless, as in: the contributors within aren’t the ones at coffee shops or dinner parties arguing that form dictates function. Stephen Dixon has two stories that, like most of his latest work, seem breathless and so condensed as to be supersaturated. The aforementioned T. R. Hummer’s poetry, along with a great sampling of others—Jordan Davis, Fiona Templeton, Timothy Liu, and Medbh McGuckian, all have comet-bright poetry within—pushes the journal down a markedly poetry heavy road. And all that isn’t poetry—the excerpt from Carla Harryman’s “Mirror Play,” for instance—carries a sort of poetic DNA of incantation and sound, meaning: every single thing in here could be brilliantly read aloud. Be the first at your local independent to pick this up and read for everyone. 

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