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Eleven Poems: An Audio Chapbook
Elli Hazit
J.D. Salinger: A Life
Kenneth Slawenski
Reviewed by Norma Gay Prewett
Birds of Wisconsin
B.J. Best
Reviewed by Amy Lou Jenkins
Lord of Misrule
Jaimy Gordon
Reviewed by Bob Wake
The Masturbator
A short story by John Lehman
Consultation
A short story by Ruben Varda
From the Archives
Origins of FIS (Factory in a Suitcase)
An excerpt from Redshift: Greenstreem
Rod Clark
Rod Clark stopped by this morning with the much anticipated fiftieth issue of Rosebud magazine. Congratulations are in order. Certainly to Mr. Clark and his tireless editorial helmsmanship. To graphic designer Parnell Nelson. To associate publisher John Smelcer. To founder and editor emeritus John Lehman. And to the general excellence—past and present—of the magazine’s contributors and its masthead personalities who have kept Rosebud running and the quality unwavering since the inaugural winter 1993/94 issue. The 50th brings back the artist showcased in the first issue: the wildly original and often disturbing Wisconsin illustrator Dierdre Luzwick. There’s a wealth of new fiction, essays, and poetry. Known names like Ray Bradbury, Elie Wiesel, and Ursula Le Guin combine with new voices. Wonderful, too, to see contemporary Wisconsin poetry represented by work from Sarah Busse, Michael Kriesel, and Wendy Vardaman.
Published in June by Duluth-based Holy Cow! Press, Amy Lou Jenkins’s Every Natural Fact: Five Seasons of Open-Air Parenting has a blurb from me on the inside front cover. One of the book’s chapters was a runnerup in Rosebud‘s X. J. Kennedy Award for creative nonfiction in 2007, which I co-judged with editor Rod Clark. Here’s the blurb: “Her vivid imagery mixes a naturalist’s precision with a spiritual seeker’s poetry”—Robert Wake, author and editor of Cambridge Book Review Press and co-judge for the X. J. Kennedy Award for Nonfiction. And here’s my complete write-up on Jenkins’s piece, titled “Close to Home,” from 2007:
In “Close to Home,” writer Amy Jenkins uses the occasion of a Wisconsin nature walk with her 11-year-old son DJ to weave a meditation on the topic of death. “It is July second,” she informs us, “the date of a full moon in the month that Buddhists believe the dead return to visit the living.” Mother and son together catch sight of a majestic buck moving through the forest. (“His coat was caramel with cream trim, and scratched from shoulder to rear as if keyed by an angry hoodlum.”) They discover the remains of a decaying fox carcass. “Everything dies,” DJ remarks. Jenkins struggles to find the proper parental response: “Right here is the place where I’m supposed to have the answers, I thought.” We are deep in the woods now and Jenkins movingly shares with us that her stepfather died from prostate cancer two years previous. She and DJ nursed the old man in his final days. Suddenly the essay deepens as a testament to loss and remembrance. “The entire forest,” Jenkins writes, “is a composition of bits of organic matter that came from life feeding on death.” Her vivid imagery mixes a naturalist’s precision with a spiritual seeker’s poetry. “The woods felt so busy today,” says DJ, “like we were not alone.”
A terrific Saturday afternoon of good food and literary talk with small press publishers at Edenfred arts residency in Madison. The event was sponsored by Verse Wisconsin, a newly launched poetry magazine edited by Wendy Vardaman and Sarah Busse. The magazine is a reboot and redesign of Linda Aschbrenner’s much-admired Free Verse, which flourished for over ten years until Linda decided to pass the torch last year.
Wendy Vardaman and Sarah Busse were kind enough to spend a few minutes talking with Coffee Spew at Edenfred about their co-editorship of Verse Wisconsin:
Thanks is due Edenfred executive director David Wells for preparing a startlingly upscale gourmet lunch. See below for photos of the attendees:
Left to right: Jerry and Paula Anderson (Echoes), B.J. Best (Arbor Vitae), Sarah Busse (Verse Wisconsin), Rod Clark (Rosebud), John Lehman (The Village Poet).
Left to right: Linda Lenzke (Our Lives), Jeri McCormick (Fireweed Press), Ralph Murre (Little Eagle Press), Charles Nevsimal (Centennial Press), Erik Richardson (Signs and Wonders).
Left to right: Wendy Vardaman (Verse Wisconsin), Lester Smith (Popcorn Press), Shoshauna Shy (Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf), F.J. Bergmann (Mobius), Jason A. Smith (Wisconsin People & Ideas).
Watch bookstore magazine racks or check online for the Spring 2009 issue of Rosebud. Included are the winning essay and four runners-up for the fifth biennial X.J. Kennedy award for creative nonfiction. ($1,000 first prize, $100 runners-up, plus publication in Rosebud.) I’ve had the honor of co-judging the last three contests with the magazine’s editor, Rod Clark. This year’s winner: Kim Garcia for “Water and What Contains It,” praised as “the luminous reverie of an expectant mother.” And feast your eyes on the vibrant psychedelia of featured Neenah, Wisconsin artist Bruce Bodden (that’s his work on the cover). Don’t miss Rod Clark’s piece on Bodden, “Mad Cows and Electric Trees.”
Coffee Spew 