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Last night, as the deadline hit for my portion of the editors’ notes, I complained grumpily, "I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about literature tonight.” I was upset for a variety of reasons: a comment on the radio, from Dr. Laura about how she had been working for thirty years to remove the "brainwashing” done by "femistas” that encouraged women (especially mothers) to find work an important part of their lives; more new bad news about the "quagmire” in Iraq; and some disheartening proof of the water quality in Northern California.
It occurred to me that the issue at hand was not my deadline, but my concept of what "needed” talking about: new epiphanies on the quality and ineguity of current literature. Phooey. Rarely, if ever, does a writer sit down to write the next poem for another Norton’s Anthology. Writers pull their hair out, stare at walls, scratch, pick, mutter, and keep odd hours - writing because they need to say something.
In the essay "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde questions, "What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? ... I am a black woman warrior poet doing my work - come to ask you, are you doing yours?” Sorry, Dr. Laura, your working against women working has failed for thirty years because of Audre Lorde and her poetry. Because of Adriene Rich and her poetry. Because there are wars and dying rivers. The new issue of Blood Orange Review addresses some of these and other human struggles.
One selection from this issue, "How to Make Yourself a Small Target,” a poem by Jeff Cahoun, advises "Bring someone else into your little war. / Hope that when their ribcage dissassembles / you are not struck by any bio-shrapnel.” There is some safety we cannot or will not accept - be it the "safety” of using another as a human shield in battle or the "safety” of silence. So, we happily bring to you, another issue of Blood Orange Review in defiance of silence.
Heather K. Hummel, Editor
Blood Orange Review
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We have two poems in this issue of Blood Orange Review with “how-to” titles: “How We Begin to Repair” by Ronda Broatch about the death of a loved one and “How to Make Yourself a Small Target” by Jeff Calhoun that directs the reader to consider the inevitability of violence and pain. Jeff's pooem, in speaking to the reader in second-person, invites the speaker and the reader to become one, sharing a common past and familiar helplessness:
Recall your uncle, the bone piercing his heart,
how when your family rushed to help,
you stood very still and watched the calamity unfold.
The inevitable, the unavoidable: this idea wells up in many of the works collected here. In “Shorn,” Semia Harbawi tells the story of a Tunisian woman beaten by her brother, a story that transpires with the “ineluctability of clockwork.”
Harvey Goldner’s poem “Merrily, Merrily” is equally unrelenting:
…We, the blood-fearing remnant, continued
killing time with our toys: paint brushes,
poetry, cosmetics, computers, careers,
bibles, baseballs, and babas, and we had
a bunch of fun but got so lonesome
at 3 A.M. that we had to pay someone —
psychiatrist, prostitute, priest, or
chiropractor — to pretend to give a
shit about us, but we knew better, having
seen the anteater in the mirror of each other…
Under the trappings of civilization and decency, Goldner see us as “anteaters.” Definitely not an attractive portrait. But keep reading, you might be surprised where he takes the poem.
I like what Heather said above, about the refusal to be silent. The writers in this issue confront some harrowing topics. The success is in forming something solid out of it, giving it shape and definition, and participating in a discussion that moves beyond a traumatic or sensational experience.
Pat Daneman’s poem creates the ending that I can’t quite put into words myself. Her poem “Times Square” shows how a jovial scene can turn on a dime, how even within the best of times lie the kernels of sadness. It’s all about perspective, and she ends on a note of hope:
They’re holding hands,
trying not to get too excited as it starts
to look like their hard-luck team
is finally going to win.
I like calling each new edition of Blood Orange Review a volume. It’s a little bit of noise out there for all those writers and readers doggedly cheering for our hard-luck team.
Stephanie Lenox, Editor
Blood Orange Review
Return to Volume 2.4
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