From Tom Dooley, Managing/Fiction
This issue marks the triumphant beginning of Christine Potter's tenure as Eclectica's poetry editor. The depth and breadth of work here, to include Spotlight Runner-Up Virginia Watts, the inimitable Ravi Shankar, and many other luminous poets, is actually a little shocking. Wow!
On the nonfiction side of things, where we're lacking in quantity, we've made up for it with quality, with Nadia Arioli nabbing the Spotlight for her scorchingly challenging essay—and by that I mean she directly challenges the reader's assumptions and prejudices. Keeping her company in the prose department, Sydney Lea notches his third appearance with a thoughtful essay about addiction.
And then there's the fiction. René Bennett, Robert Osborne, and Daniel Brugioni are newcomers to Eclectica. They each have contributed "speculative" pieces, with Bennett putting us in the mind of a very literary circus bear; Osborne giving us a glimpse of a possible near future, featuring a superheated climate and a cure for aging; and Brugioni taking us back to some harrowing weeks on a South Pacific island during WWII. These are thoughtful, thought-provoking pieces, and I hope we hear from all three of them again soon.
The rest of these folks are a who's who of former contributors. Spotlight Runner-Up Jessy Randall leads the way. She first joined the Eclectica "family" 24 years ago, and she's a rare triple threat, having published poetry, nonfiction, and fiction with us. Her story "Out of String" is inventive, meaningful, and fun to read. Laurence Klavan last graced our pages a decade ago, and his "The Commodore" features a surprise cameo that couldn't be more topical. John Brandon, a Spotlight Author two years ago, is back for his third appearance. Another former Spotlight Author (for nonfiction), Jo-Anne Rosen, has also returned, this time with a tale that will somehow have you feeling compassion for an inveterate horndog. And then there's Thomas J. Hubschman, who in addition to being a mainstay in the Salon for many years (including two pieces in this issue), has now published his 12th story with us as well.
In all, it's a solid batch of fiction, and combined with a bevy of book reviews from the indefatigable Ann Skea and one from Gregory Stephenson (he writes great reviews—we just need him to send more of them!), and the usual scintillating stuff in the Salon (thank you Tom and Marko!), this here is another solid issue. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed being a part of putting it together.
Before I sign off, I just want to mention a few bits of news about former contributors. Padma Prasad recently published a work of middle grade fiction titled Flying in Colors, a year and two months in the life of a nine-year-old girl living in South India, confronting how death controls her existence through the loss of her favorite uncle. And Eli Cranor's Broiler came out this summer, chosen by Amazon as one of their "Best Books of July." Check out our Facebook page and our Facebook group page for more announcements. Congrats to those authors and to anyone else who's enjoyed a publishing success.
From Marko Fong, Nonfiction
If it's not a chemical form of substance abuse, is gambling an addiction or a character flaw? After visiting a 12-step program at a local prison, Sydney Lea, who has dealt with his own non-gambling addiction, ponders the question. Surprisingly, he segues to a story about betting small amounts of money with his ten-year-old daughter while teaching her to play "pontoon," the game we know as blackjack. Could he have launched her into the throes of something she couldn't control? How much of addiction is inherited brain chemistry, and how much is it a matter of individual personality? In "The Pontoon Problem," Lea contemplates the question of how innocently these things can start, from the distance and safety that comes with getting much older.
In this issue's spotlight piece "So What I'm Built Like a Teletubby," Nadia Arioli rants about the way our society treats fat women as if they are suffering from either a moral failing or, at minimum, a fatal disability. On my initial reading, I was drawn to the energy and the sheer anger that comes with a 220 pound woman who believes society wants her to lose 200 pounds (everything other than just bone). I'll also confess, I initially worried it was long and a bit repetitive. It took me another reading to realize the length added to its intensity and the writer's profound discomfort about being trapped in a culture where endless micro and overt judgment of her body had distorted reality. I think the best nonfiction ultimately challenges and surprises its readers. The length and the intensity of this one challenged me to look at things differently. As Arioli makes clear in her case, it's not for want of male attention (that thing we think but dare not say); it's about being relentlessly treated as somehow worthless because of other people's too narrow image of how women should look if they're going to deserve to be happy.
And introducing Christine Potter, Poetry
Welcome, Eclecticans! You're either about to read or have just experienced my very first poetry section for this bastion of Internet verse. Lately, I've learned more than I ever thought I'd need or want to know about the editors' side of Submittable, which I have taken to calling Inscrutable. Contributors who have gotten odd messages from me know the struggle was real.
I thought about our magazine's name as I chose poems. I wanted lots of different voices, and I think we've got them. We have everything from Maryann Corbett's excellent and operatic blank verse account of a back-to-college nightmare to a long prose poem by Virginia Watts about the old Chuck Wagon Dog Food commercials. She had me at its title, "Ya Ya, Giddy Up!"
We've got allusions to the Bible (well, Onan, anyway), and Zagajewsky both. And a tart, re-imagined fairy tale. We have work by Ryan Clark, who calls himself a "documentary poet." His poems are "homophonic translations" of official documents, where words are derived by the different sounds different letters can have in English. In his words: "cat" may become "ash" by silencing the ‘c' as in "indict," and by sounding the 't' as an ‘sh-‘ sound, as in "ratio." Check out his "Lajes in the 1990s."
We've got bugs (horrifying and cute both). Also a fish tank, a naked mole-rat, and Marilyn Monroe. We've got grief-stricken poetry and some poems that are truly funny. I think if there is a through-line in the section this time, it's voice. Every poem here has a really strong one, whether it is ironic, gentle, confessional, or mathematically precise. Every poem here made me say "wow" the first time I read it.
Eclectica Word Challenge poems are a lot of fun. The words this time were sear, freakout, albino, and ribald, so what would you expect? We've got an orangutang, a memory of a girls' school in India, global warming, and archaic methods of curling hair. Oh—and also the Devil. I threw in one, too, about how my cruel, cruel parents spared me from skin cancer by not allowing me to get sunburned like all the other kids, darn it. I've visited this topic before in my poetry, but this month's words gave me (shall we say) a new perspective. Next month: estuary, splat, vexed, and radiant. Have at it!
So. This was fun. I can't wait to start putting together the next issue. And one last thing: the poems I rejected—a lot of them were really awfully good. Our slush is more like a lovely pile of autumn leaves that you just want to keep rolling around in. I made some very tough choices. Enjoy the poetry section if you haven't yet, and see you next time.
