Every fall, hundreds of university-affiliated magazines face the tumultuous challenge of editor turnover. While starting anew each year can make it difficult for these student-run journals to carve out a lasting identity in the literary landscape, it is also an opportunity for these publications to branch out in new directions, foster emerging styles, and present readers with an ever-evolving perspective.
One such journal, Portland State University’s Portland Review, breeched it’s sixtieth volume with the release of it’s fall 2013 issue. The theme of the issue is transitions, and it is billed as the nonfiction issue, although there are a couple pieces of short fiction and some poetry scattered throughout.
For the most part, the nonfiction could be labeled personal essays. Few of these essays or memoirs look far beyond the author’s own time and place and experiences. Instead readers are given detailed accounts of images and events that had life-altering effects, either in the moment or in retrospect.
A selection of opening lines:
“When I think about my 31st birthday, I don’t remember celebrating.” (“On the Telephone,” by Lauren Camp)
“The street-side windows of my house growing up provided images that have stuck with me every since…” (“Writing the In-Between: A Life of Movement and the Myth of Homeland,” by Aaron Brown)
“The summer after I graduated from high school, my father started wearing jewelry.” (“Blue-Black #4,” by Sara Nelson)
Perhaps you can understand the sort of narratives that follow these beginnings. They are sharply focused, tinged with emotion, and largely introspective. Lauren Camp reckons with her transition into adulthood and simultaneous loss of her mother. Aaron Brown muses over the idea of home for a man whose life has been spread out among four continents. Sara Nelson explains what it means to have a former mobster and paroled murderer for a father.
These stories are populated with intimate details. Nelson recalls how she and her father dyed their hair together, repeatedly, to the point of permanently staining the bathroom sink. Brown tells of smoky taxi cab rides through Amman, Jordan. Camp reveals how she could recognize her mother’s excitement through the movement in her wine glass.
Of course the real power behind these meditative essays is their implications outside the immediate realm of the story. Directly or indirectly, each writer manages to make a broad statement about their society through their individual stories. Perhaps Sara Nelson does this best, poignantly depicting a stubborn culture that is obsessed with labels and suspicious of reform. The closing of her essay pinpoints the difficulty of registering others as complex human beings: “How nice, maybe, to be able to say you are just one thing: a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher. Innocent.”
The only two pieces of fiction fit right in with the theme of transition. “Dead Languages,” by Miles Klee, is a funny flash fiction that imagines the extinction of the English language. “Sixteen Cans of Pineapple,” by Cathy Adams, deals with aging and mental deterioration without being dry or somber. The fiction-heavy issue of Portland Review, slated for Spring, 2014, should be very entertaining.
Many of the contributors are local to that west-coast literary Mecca (nine by my count), but not all of the writers and artists have Portland connections, including contributors from as far away as Paris and Xinzheng, China. MFAs are not uncommon among the authors. Some are professors/teachers, editors, and at least one is a “certified Genealogist.” Writers included in this issue have also been published in top-tier magazines (i.e. Tin House, Ploughshares), as well as many other fine independent journals (such as Hobart, The Collagist, Housefire), but none mark this as their first publication.
While none of the essays are wildly experimental, or even a stone’s throw from conventional structure, there is a pleasant variety of voices. Some stories take on an academic tone, while others are more conversational, like this colloquial prose from Bradley K. Rosen:
“I lived in this same house for the past thirty-five years. The street still made of dirt. Lots of ruts and potholes. City never does much about ‘em and me and my neighbors, we don’t mind keeping it that way. Cuts down on traffic. Keeps everything quiet.”
One essay that stands out for its larger scope is “Wampum and Beavers.” Author William Verdigris writes a compressed history of the Lenni Lanape (or True People), a tribe of Native Americans eradicated by Western settlers and all but forgotten in contemporary society. The abuse, slaughter, displacement, and mistreatment of Native Americans is well-documented, one of the most shameful elements of our nation’s history and development. Verdigris approaches this subject not from the stance of looking back from the twenty-first century, but rather from the point-of-view of the indigenous people, from just before the arrival of the westerners to the industrialization of their homeland, all in five fast pages. The American Revolutionary War is described like this: “Generations later, the pale people made war against each other. Though they all spoke the same language, the blue coats fought the red coats until the red coats departed.” Verdigris concludes that the Lenni Lanape are forgotten, but the essay itself proves otherwise.
This current incarnation of the Portland Review editorial staff, though recently acquainted, seems to share a certain aesthetic. They’ve chosen to fill the pages of this issue with thoughtful, reflective work, stories from writers who look inward to make sense of the outside world. Approaching its fiftieth anniversary, Portland Review is evidence of the staying-power of a good student-run publication.