The Weekly Atticus (07/15/2017)

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

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Dear ,Today's Weekly Atticus comes to you from Nonfiction Editor Dorothy Bendel.Last month, I attended a StarTalk Live! event hosted by the first Canadian to walk in space, astronaut Chris Hadfield (also known for that viral Space Oddity video that broke the internet). Traveling to Mars, and surviving there, was (of course) the main topic of conversation. During the audience Q&A, someone asked Mr. Hadfield (an engineer, fighter pilot, and musician) what he thought about the role artists play in this endeavor. Pointing to the numerous astronauts who express their experiences through painting and writing, and the inability of machines to process these experiences in human terms, he stressed that all humans are, inherently, explorers. This struck a chord with me, not only as someone fascinated by space travel, but as a writer. I don't think writers are so different from people who willingly strap into a seat above 7.8 million pounds of thrust, although the initial lift-off for a writer is far slower going. We must continually build upon our skills and trust in the process if we are to begin. We are all searching, exploring, interpreting the universe we know and the ones we can only imagine. The process is a series of leaps into the unknown. It takes a certain amount of bravery to stare down a blank page and turn a nothingness into something whole and teeming with life. That bravery may waver—we are human, after all—but we return again and again. (Maybe we could be better at forgiving ourselves for wavering, no matter how long it takes, though I am guilty of this faultfinding myself.) And If I'm going to beat this analogy into the ground—which I am—then the venues and organizations that provide a platform for writers and artists are the life support. They give explorers the space to wonder—a practice too often viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity. Without wonder, we wouldn’t have dared to ask the questions that took us into orbit and revealed our world as the small dot it is. I would like to see more exploring, and wondering, on the page. Sometimes, we complete a journey and return without definitive answers but enough to lead us in a specific direction, to help us explore further. And this has value. This, I think, is closer to truth. Science and art never stop moving toward a greater understanding of what it is to be human. And just as scientists welcome challenges to a hypothesis, we too should welcome challenging ideas that are worthy of exploration, ideas that take us into an expanse where conclusions might not yet exist within our reach. We here at Atticus Review welcome those who wonder. We’re glad you’re here.Dorothy Bendel, Nonfiction Editor

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

CALHOUN

PsychoanaLITical: Mortal Souls on the Bat LadderIf you have not yet watched/read Boo Trundle's column, today is a good day to start.She takes on THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE by Carol Gilligan. Topics include trauma circles, the incest rife within the Greek God community, and Batman and Robin. So it pretty much covers all the bases.Also, there is this gem:"The idea arises that passionate love can only thrive at the fringes of our orderly lives. Let us rethink the structure of our orderly lives."Go. Stop what you're doing. Watch.

BOOK REVIEW: Life RattlingA Review of WE COULD’VE BEEN HAPPY HERE, by Keith LesmeisterReview by Barrett Warner"Although he firmly roots life matters in front of “issues,” Lesmeister uses images in series to suggest infinity—'I flick my cigarette out the window and start driving. A gust of wind kicks up dirt. A plastic grocery bag kites by'—giving his prose an elastic quality. There’s a wonderful endlessness in these stories. Each story doesn’t begin so much as take up where an untold story left off. Literary tricks are secondary gifts to a writer whose primary concern is empathy and predicament and the bigness of a small town."READ MORE

FICTION: SAVAGINGBy Diana Clarke"My husband often tells me how much he likes me. He says, I like you so much I don’t know how to process it. Sometimes he looks at me and his eyes are young and afraid and he says, I like you so much I want to eat you. I want to bite through your skin and chew on your muscles and gnaw on your bones like chicken wings. He says, I want some of your sinew to be stuck, dangling, between my two front teeth. I am quite scared of my husband. I fear his famished eyes."READ MORE

POETRY: SMOKE BETWEEN HIS TEETHBy Kirk Schlueter"What are the words she uses,soft as eyelashes, to this man she loved,how does she gesture with her handsso that he relents, lets her track bloodout to her car where, with the knifestill wedged between her ribs,she drives around town while his friend,meth dealer armed with a pistol, follows."READ MORE

NONFICTION: THREE ELEGIES FOR MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS By Ileana Florian"My mother once told me that she knew she would end up being alone in her old age. Somebody had told her that, and although there was no reason to believe it, she did, with the same reverence she believed in prophecies, dreams, religion. This is her greatest fear, I thought then: to be alone."READ MORE

MIXED MEDIA: EXPLORING CONTEMPLATIVE EFFECTS IN TEXT-BASED VIDEO POEMS By Sarah TremlettAtticus Review is proud to be one of the few literary journals giving space to the genre of video poetry. Here's an academic piece by Sarah Tremlett about text-based video poems. READ MORE