The Shining Star of Literary Journals

In his introduction to the Winter 2010-11 issue of Ploughshares guest editor Terrance Hayes compares sentences to museum exhibits-- “Should you encounter a particularly perplexing work, please feel free to move on to the next piece…if you leave this museum with even one dynamite sentence…that would be a special bit of magic.” This is great advice when it comes to reading literary journals. Since each reader has her own poetry and fiction preferences, why waste time mulling over something that simply doesn’t appeal to you?

According to writer Robert N. Casper who profiles the poet in the issue’s final pages, Terrance Hayes is “one of America’s most talented and daring young poets.” He has written four collections and received two Pushcart Prizes, among other awards. As is tradition with Ploughshares, Hayes, as guest editor of the issue, had the honor of soliciting half the stories and poems (the rest of the pieces are unsolicited works chosen by staff).

For one reason or another, the poems about animals (there are several) are among my favorites. “The Leopard,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, alive with details of chilling ferocity, presents a leopard on the cusp of attacking her prey-- “Sinew, muscles, gratitude… / down to growl, tussle, gristle, / & blood-lit veins… / quivering in the passing night.”

In Lance Larsen’s “To a Braying Donkey,” the poem’s narrator goes through the motions of an ordinary day-- shaving, making the bed, eating scrambled eggs-- only to find that a nearby donkey’s “braying turns everything tragic.” Larsen writes, “…everyone needs / to embrace the sad animal of their life. / But must it be first thing in the morning?” The narrator ultimately admits to sometimes wanting to join the donkey in his “honking psalms,” suggesting a sort of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach.

David Mills’ “Pigeon” is a melancholy poem in which the bird, “once wings and lift,” is sprinkled with pepper and onion in preparation for the oven, reduced in the end to “a mere piece of deceased machinery.” Denise Duhamel’s “Ode to Your Eyebrows” is a lighthearted and flirtatious piece-- “They are, my love, a cross / between Einstein’s and wheat fields.” (As seen on the page, the poem with its varying line lengths rather cutely takes on the shape of an eyebrow.)

“Fat Ass” by Aaron Smith is a brutally and hysterically honest list of people he considers to be fat asses, including his mother, editor, co-workers, Jesus, and the devil. Even poets Robert Pinsky and Billy Collins make the cut. It should be noted that the poet doesn’t forget to throw himself into the mix-- “…Me on my fourth cookie: fat ass.”

In “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” Tracy K. Smith pays homage to David Bowie, referring to him as “the Pope of Pop,” an entity immune to death or aging. The lines “He’s got / The whole world under his foot, / And we are small alongside” epitomize this star-struck narrator’s romantic notions.

My favorite short story in the issue is “The Red Balloon” by Benjamin Percy, which includes a couple of wonderful illustrations by Danica Novgorodoff. When a fast-spreading, inexplicable illness descends upon the residents of River Falls, Oregon, Sara, “thickly built with a face as round as a dinner plate,” fails to get sick. People accuse her of being somehow responsible for the sudden outbreak and for the astonishing number of deaths that ensue.

Meanwhile, a self-doubting deputy sheriff spends his days waiting for speeders to pass his squad car, imagining that his radar gun is a rifle. “His real gun…he has never actually drawn, though he dreams of doing so every day.” Hank Haines longs to find purpose and meaning within an otherwise bleak existence.