Fiction Amidst Turmoil

The photograph on the cover of The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine (No. 31, Winter-Spring 2009), taken by Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Timothy Monaghan, prepares you for what's inside. It portrays the back of a tenement in Queens, dark windows for eyes and a tangle of fire escapes and laundry hanging out to dry. The publication's twentieth anniversary edition is filled with a selection of poignant, funny, and sometimes embarrassingly intimate poems and stories. Like the tenement, each piece is like peering into a room through someone else's eyes, a collage of brief glimpses of moments in time. 

Dozens of poems, which make up the most of the journal, are scattered around short stories, though most of the verses have a story-like quality to them. There are no ponies or rainbows here, unless one of them is getting garroted by a random maniac. There are definite scenes, many focusing in on death and loss and lust. There are many examples of these themes: Jennifer Perrine's "Portrait of My Lover as Medium," where the ghosts of a woman's past are resurrected through digging reminders of a man; Joyce Meyers's "A habit of loving," where, in simple but poignant terms a woman comes to accept her new lover as the tangible replacement of a dead man; Leslie Anne Mcilroy's raw "Whore Universe"; Kristen Hoggatt and her "Pregnant Adolscent" with "the slaps across her" cheek. Even Florence Cassen Mayers's "RICHARDHOWARD," an anagrammatic puzzle playing with the letters comprising the title, has depth and wit in line with the others. 

The list goes on, and it is good to see so many talented women getting their work in equal measure to men in the journal, something happening slowly within the sea change of the literary world, but something that still seems to not happen enough, especially among some older publications. 

The short stories, though sparse in number, are hefty, both in length and in tone. Dawn Houghton's "Big Laughing Mouth" is smoking from a simmering brew of domestic violence. Justin Vicari's 25-page "Hugo Largo" is about the right people in the wrong end of town, "bohemian slummers" who fill their empty lives with music. The characters aren't always familiar, or at least weren't to me, but there are moments that stand out (such as Houghton's line: "[My wife's] against hitting kids.") and bring the stories into stark relief. 

Like the poetry, there is a reality in the fiction, and though some of the prose tends to be baroque, the dialogue in all the pieces is honed to an eerie reality. The stories are contrived, and yet come alive. Perhaps it could be best summed up by the line from the piece by Xujun Eberlein, first prize winner of Ledge's 2007 Fiction Award: "Regardless of her own turmoil, she might as well treat it as fictional." 

There are also reviews, penned by Ledge Co-Editor Emeritus George Held, of three recent publications of poetry. The reviews are woven together into an interesting narrative itself, with correlations drawn between the works. Held also uses an erudite selection of comparisons from the world of poetry for the emerging writers, ranging from T.S. Eliot to Richard Brautigan. The collections are varied in subject: Roger Sedarat'sDear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic is a political mashup; Fail-Craft by Jessica Fisher is loftier and more formal in form; Tim Suermondt's Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance etches out, Held says, the author's "absurdist view of life." Held "sells" the authors' (two of whom have previously appeared in Ledge) work well, but most impressive is his way of drawing connections linking disparate work. He also treats the authors, who are yet to be household names, with the respect due any writers' work.