Stick Out Your Tongue! A Lit Mag Gets a Bold Redesign
The latest issue (Vol. 25, No. 2) is the first since the journal’s redesign. It has a new trim size—a little shorter and closer to square—and what seems to be a new approach to cover art. Instead of the paintings and drawings shown on the covers in the GMR archives, the latest issue has a startling photo of a tongue sticking through a hole in lavender drywall, an image that kept me wondering as I read—who is sticking their tongue out? and why? and at what?
Sticking out a tongue can have many meanings. Children do it to show defiance or aggression. It can have a sexual connotation, but the tongue on the GMR cover isn’t sexy (or at least, not to me). It can imply illness—people might stick out their tongues during a medical exam, but this tongue (which I suspect has been digitally manipulated because it is so smooth and pink) looks perfectly healthy. It certainly implies LIFE—only living things have tongues, after all, and this tongue is emerging from sheetrock, which never has and never will be alive, and the hole in the sheetrock appears to have been made by the tongue (i.e., the tongue has pushed its way through the sheetrock).
Of course, we also associate the tongue with speech. “Tongue” can be a synonym for language, as in “what tongues are spoken here?” Many anthropologists argue that it's language that distinguishes humans from animals (though that theory is changing in the wake of discoveries abut animal communication) but in this case, I think the tongue stands for written speech (as in poetry and prose) and the tongue here is penetrating/breaking down a wall or barrier. Thus, what appears to be an expression of defiance can actually be viewed as an expression of a desire to connect—though of course you could argue that the desire to connect despite humanly constructed barriers (walls) is an act of defiance.
So much for the cover. What’s inside? This issue of GMR has three sections, though only two of them are set apart physically. The winners of the 2012 Neil Shepard Prizes in Poetry and Fiction (Neil Shepard being the magazine’s founding editor) are at the front of the book. These are followed by about 30 pages of prose and poetry. Then comes the Special Feature on Eileen Myles. I had not heard of Myles, but I follow fiction more than poetry. She is described in the Contributor’s Notes as “a central figure in New York’s independent art and literary world for more than thirty years.” (One suggestion I would offer the GMR editors: this background on Myles should have been in the text itself rather than in Contributor’s Notes. I myself read the special section wondering all the while—why is so much space being devoted to this woman? I found her work interesting, but wanted some context as I read.)
I don’t know if GMR does this type of Special Section regularly, but I liked the combination of ten poems, an essay (more or less an extended artist’s statement), and an interview with Myles. There were also a number of photos; I guessed that these were of Eileen Myles, but they were unlabeled. Another comment to the editors—the photos were quite small and not especially crisp. Rather than placing small photos in the center of an empty page, give me a bigger picture and a label so I know what I’m looking at. It might not be as artsy, but I’m actually interested in this woman and want to know what I’m seeing. I am grateful, by the way, to GMR for introducing me to Myles and her work with this multifaceted approach of poetry, prose, and interview.
The Special Section is followed by another 60 pages or so of prose and poetry selections. There are roughly 9 prose selections (mostly fiction) and about 40 poetry selections in the current issue, not including the Special Feature on Eileen Myles (which included 10 poems as well as the essay and interview). In addition, the Neil Shepard Prize Winners included another short story and 5 poems.
The theme of loss was prevalent in the prose. Short stories deal with topics such as coming to terms with a husband’s death (Neil Shepard Prize Winner Suzanne McNear’s “Swimming Lessons”), the death of parents and the effect of AIDS on the gay community (“Hide Town” by John Weir), death in general (“The Gun Room” by Jason Schwartz), and a father-daughter relationship following the death—or departure—of a wife (“Systems of Place” by James Robison). “The Madonna at the Midland,” Patricia Duncker’s charming story about Clarissa Dalloway stumbling into an unexpected costume ball on her 70th birthday, anticipates the end of life, though with a lot of humor. Prose selections tend to be short, though not always. Some, such as Molly Giles’s “Compliments for a Bachelor” or Schwartz’s “The Gun Room” are just a paragraph, while the Neil Shepard winning short story “Swimming Lessons” is 9 printed pages.
While many of the poetry contributors have just one poem in the issue, a number have two or more. Nearly all the poems are written in free verse; some read more like flash fiction (“Roseanne” by Denise Duhamel and “Senchimental: A Kind of Valentine” by Lee Ann Roripaugh). It’s interesting to note as well that the two very short fiction pieces noted above (Giles’s “Compliments for a Bachelor” and Schwartz’s “The Gun Room”) seem as though they could have been listed as poetry selections. From what I can tell, the only reason Duhamel and Roripaugh’s pieces are listed as poems rather than prose is that both authors have other selections that are obviously poetry in the issue.
This is not likely to be a journal where you publish your first poem or story, but it might be one that helps you learn about the writers who are getting published and winning awards. Nearly every contributor has at least one book out or forthcoming; some have more. The only contributor who does not have a book out or forthcoming is Dana Russo, who earned her BFA at Johnson State College (and her MFA at Bennington). A number of the contributors have won fellowships from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Since VIDA has raised my consciousness on this issue, I’ll mention as well that 13 contributors were male and 20 were female (with two undetermined as neither pronouns nor full names were used in the contributor’s notes).
