Third Coast – Spring 2005

Interviewers Amanda Rachelle Warren and Roy Seeger ask terrific questions of Mary Ruefle whose terrific answers include this characterization of a writer’s work: “…an artist…is on a very personal journey in an extremely un-personal world.” Fortunately, the sixteen poets, seven fiction writers, and three creative nonfiction contributors represented here know how to link the personal and “un-personal” to bring us work that is both fresh (as in honest and authentic) and refreshingly free of gimmicks and empty rhetorical devices.

Interviewers Amanda Rachelle Warren and Roy Seeger ask terrific questions of Mary Ruefle whose terrific answers include this characterization of a writer’s work: “…an artist…is on a very personal journey in an extremely un-personal world.” Fortunately, the sixteen poets, seven fiction writers, and three creative nonfiction contributors represented here know how to link the personal and “un-personal” to bring us work that is both fresh (as in honest and authentic) and refreshingly free of gimmicks and empty rhetorical devices. And, as always, Third Coast deserves special mention for publishing brief, but useful reviews of new books ignored or overlooked by most other magazines. Standouts this issue are personal essays by Margot Singer and Stephen Gutierrez, both attempts to understand fathers in their real and imagined “greatness.” In “La Muerte Hace Tortillas,” Gutierrez turns ordinary speech and a conversational, personal tone into a well crafted, fast moving narrative with smart rhythms and perfect timing. Singer’s “Secret Agent Man” is a clever examination of her father’s secret past—was her father a spy? “You can poke your finger through a spy. He will scatter, like ash.” The personal and un-personal come together in the quintessential riddle of our parents: they’re never who we think they are or who they said they were.