Latest Issue Of Crazyhorse

Crazyhorse is one of the well-known Greats in terms of literary journals, around since 1960, publishing biannually, whose claims-to-fames include Bukowski, Ashbery, Carver, Updike and other classic writer-stars. This past issue, #77, featured some knock-your-socks-off work that is alone worth the $9 cost.

While all the stories were unsurprisingly quality, Tess Wheelwright's "Max Donaldson and his Son" blew me away and stuck with me the most since I read the issue weeks ago. Wheelwright does a superb job of painting her main character Max Donaldson, through close third person narrative and unmistakable voice, as incredibly flawed, self-deluded and unlikeable -- and yet still a compelling character to read. The story is able to dance between casually tragic and subtly funny, most especially the climactic scene where Max Donaldson travels to witness his son honored in a public ceremony, with unexpected results that perhaps goes over the head of her clueless character Max, but is somehow both hilarious and heartsinking for us readers.

You can read the first page of Wheelwright's story in the Crazyhorse sample issue online. I looked for more work by this author, but didn't find any. (Sad face inserted here)

Secondly, Emily Rosko's poems in this issue were delightful. Poetry's definitely not my forte, but sometimes poems pop out at me and grab me and make me smile and think, "This is wonderful." Rosko's "To Pasture," "[The world is deceived with ornament]" and "Timbered" did just that. Apparently Ms. Rosko was a recipient of the Stenford Fellowship, a monetary award and prestigious teaching-writing workshop at Stanford that every writer dreams of. Here's a link to one of Rosko's poems called "Even Before Your Elbow Knocked Over The Glass" on Verse Daily (+ originally published in Quarterly West).

I love not being in school anymore and having time to read living, breathing, up-and-coming writers.

Classic Poets Read: Robert Lowell

Here's "The Old Flame," an enjoyable poem by Robert Lowell, who, aside from being considered the founder of the confessionalist school of poetry, led a seminar at Boston University attended by poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.



I don't care if it's uncool these days, I still love those confessionalists.

Classic Poets Read: Edna St. Vincent Millay

One of my favorite sonneteers! Ms. St. Vincent Millay's poems give me iambic pentamerous chills. I wanted to post her classic "What lips my lips have kissed" or "Only until this cigarette has ended," but alas, I couldn't find accessible versions of her reading either of these. I'm sure they exist somewhere.

Here is her reading "Love is not all."



Ms. St. Vincent Millay's voice is quite Marlene Dietrichy. It's so strange to hear these well-known poems read aloud by their authors -- their voices never cease to surprise me.

Classic Poets Read: T.S. Eliot

One of modernism's Greats reads his famous and arguably best poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."



I was surprised by his voice and reading style, somehow. I don't know what I was expecting: not this.

I'm not the hugest Eliot fan. I worship this poem and this poem alone, and have read "The Waste Land" and couple times, a book of his selected poems, and a couple of his literary essays. He's kind of a dogmatist when it comes to criticism, insisting that great works of literature can only be born from extensive study and alignment with the literary tradition preceding it -- i.e, dead white dudes. Overall, I didn't find his arguments particularly compelling on this issue.

Still, this poem sends me reeling even after the hundredth read, and it's different hearing the words from Eliot himself.

Classic Poets Read: Anne Sexton

This week and next I'm posting a short series of links to classic 20th century poets reading their work aloud. To go back and hear these long-past poets' voices gives us contemporary readers/listeners a bit of insight into the charisma and personality that, along with their writing, played into making these people famous figures in the literary world. Plus, I'm a stickler for the classics.

Anne Sexton was, and still is, my favorite poet. The Awful Rowing Toward God was the first book of poetry I read front to back and it really stuck with me. The first time I heard a recording of her reading her poetry aloud, I got goosebumps all over my body. She has an incredible, chilling voice, a cigarette-husky drawl that accentuates the eeriness of her poems. Listen to her read one of her definitive poems, "Her Kind," originally published in her first collection To Bedlam and Part Way Back in 1960.



Sexton was a histrionic and famously disturbed woman who apparently used to fall into bizarre trances after giving a reading like this. I've read her biography by Diane Middlebrook, which, like many biographies on writers/ musicians/ etc. shed a not-so-pretty light on Sexton. Sexton was suicidal, in and out of hospitals, a distracted mother, unfaithful to her husband, dramatic, selfish, a bit vain and quite bizarre. But a fascinating woman, and a wonderful poet.