The Weekly Atticus (02/16/2019)

Shape Your Breath Into Words | The Weekly Atticus

February 16, 2019

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

Like many aging fathers and sons, my dad and I spend a fair amount of time talking about the weather. The other day, he sent me a picture of his car almost completely buried by a Milwaukee blizzard, just a thin strip of red-painted steel showing through the snow. I countered with a picture of my front door left open to let in some air and California sunlight. He responded with a string of good-natured insults, which we followed up with promises to see each other soon. That's the way it usually goes for us. Once again, this time, not a single line from Shakespeare or Plath was necessary to reaffirm our dynamic.

Yet literature persists, always inhabiting the background of our lives. For me, that's poetry and short stories. For my father, it's whatever sci-fi novel or thriller he can pick up at the local Goodwill to keep him company at the airport. I mention all this because even though my father and I both read all the time, and he is probably the one who got me addicted to books in the first place, we almost never talk to each other about what we're reading.

It's not because we are interested in different things. Actually, my father has been known to read poetry and "literary" fiction at times, and I've read as much sci-fi as anything. It's just that some things are so fundamental that it hardly seems necessary to acknowledge them by shaping breath into words.

Often, I think and wonder about whatever it is that literature gives us—even though, paradoxically, I also think that there is no real need to try and articulate exactly what that is. It's enough that my father and I are tapping into the same wild vein of energy, even though we are in different states. Just as it's enough that you're diving into the latest issue of

Atticus Review

, or submitting to our 

, maybe while coastal sunlight jostles the wind chime on your porch. Maybe while your car molders in a snow drift alongside last season's fallen leaves, the leaves already well on their way to becoming something else.

Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here. Michael MeyerhoferPoetry Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

ONLY A FEW MORE WEEKS TO ENTER!WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

BOOK REVIEW: PERPETUALLY APOCALYPTICA Review of EDGE OF THE KNOWN BUS LINE by James R. GapinskiReview by Michael Barron"...shows us a side to the struggling youth story that we don’t often see."READ ON

FICTION: TWO FLASH FICTIONSby Justin Herrmann"I awake in a web seat inside a C-17 somewhere between Christchurch and McMurdo Station, Antarctica. I’m next to Wendy, who I’ve been following since orientation in Denver because she’d been to the ice before..."READ ON

POETRY: METEORby Michael VanCalbergh"I’m not the sun or the moon, thoughI dream of being centered."READ ON

CNF: TOO MANY LOVE STORIESby Freda Epum"He waits, I apologize profusely, shaking my head and big hair and big body and flapping gums, muttering something, I’m sorry, something, I’m sorry, something, I’m sorry(!)"READ ON

FILM: LOCAL PROGRAMMING FOR THE INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISTOlivia Funderburg examines three new TV shows focusing on young women of color, queer young women, and queer young women of color."Multiple times a week, I get to watch women who look like me going through the same things as me. This is remarkable. It wasn’t always true."READ ON

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