Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Bliss Review of Atheist Manifesto Review of The Stones Cry Out Film review of "Karov La Bayit" Creative Nonfiction A Reverence for Words By Virginia Hendry For the Wife of Bath and the Wife of Yeats, I Give Thanks By Sara J. Ford Birth By Clint Pearson Poetry Gong Fu By Tim J. Brennan Phases By Tolu Ogunlesi They Are Driving Their Cars Again, They Are Driving... By Anne Cammon Death of the Travelers By Abigail Grant Leaves By Matt Gee Fiction The Wood Splitter By Michael Phillips Boogie & Sarah Leigh By Sandra L. West What Happened to Matt Dillon By Chris Drangle Red, Manhattan, 523 By Beth Hogan Titanic Hat By D.K. McGill About the Contributors © 2007, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Vacant Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz Senior Editor - Neeldhara Misra Senior Editor - Mike Munsil Assistant Editor - Steve MacNeil Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs Blog Contributing Editor - Maggie Koster Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch. |
Notes from a Journal Pre-spring in Pennsylvania. It is that frustrating time when one day I can venture out my door in short sleeves, and the next leaves me sweeping snow from my sidewalk. Usually I just have the ups and downs of the thermometer to contend with, but this year I have more family issues than normal. My youngest son will be starting kindergarten next year. We had a rough time with him during preschool – he was held back one year, and has been receiving occupational therapy this year. Admittedly it is one of those passing situations since it was for hand strength and dexterity, but unsettling nonetheless. His attention span is rather short as well, but that is improving. Last evening I was extremely happy when he managed to sit still long enough for me to read two books to him. Also, for the first time I can remember, I was actually happy while I was taking him by the hand to get to our car – he was screaming and crying, and I was smiling because he didn’t want to leave the library! James, my youngest son’s father, looked as he usually does in these situations, like under the nearest rock would be a good hiding spot. I can hope that one day he’ll figure out the difference between the tears on leaving the library, and those at the end of an evening at Chuck E. Cheese. There is hope that James will learn that it would be a good thing if our son shared his mother’s love of words. A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren’t enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl. From “The Black Art” by Anne Sexton James has usually been the worst offender in the vicious cycle of explaining why writing should be taken seriously. Although he isn’t openly supportive now, he also isn’t openly hostile as he once was. It is a small improvement, and like everything else, I will take what I can get while hoping for a little more. Stealing words from the grave is one of the various sins of writers. I went through my fascination with death stage a few years ago, but I still prefer the verse of dead poets. “The Black Art” will always be a third of a poem for me, as the last two stanzas will remain outside of my experience. While a small part of me will always crave the artistic and yearn for a bonding with a fellow artist, the more pragmatic rest of me will remain dominant. The pragmatic parts hold the survivalist in me, and without that, I could easily succumb to the same sort of demons that left Sexton to suffocate. Although I repeatedly say that I don’t often “get” poetry, on an intuitive level I have always been able to grasp deeper meaning from the intermingling of words and images in classic poetry. Poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were under my radar, and once I finally discovered them, they initially seemed too self-referential to be of great value to me. No doubt I made many of the same arguments against them, as did the poets of their time who called them “confessional poets”. “The Black Art” is from All My Pretty Ones [1962]. Sexton was incubating her poetic skills under the tutelage of poets like W.D. Snodgrass and Robert Lowell. Although I am able to relate to the personal messages in Sexton’s poems, I know I probably will never reach the levels of achievement she did. All My Pretty Ones was nominated for the National Book Award. I am filling the room with the words from my pen. Words leak out of it like a miscarriage. I am zinging words out into the air and they come back like squash balls. Yet there is silence. Always silence. From “The Silence” by Anne Sexton The words filling my personal silence aren’t usually making it to any page. I let them rattle then fill the rooms within my mind. It is frustrating that I cannot seem to take the dare, and commit those words to some sort of permanent existence, if only on silicon. But no matter what, they are my words. For Sexton, “The Silence” may have been expressing the solitude of a writer without people who understood her. From The Book of Folly, published just over two years before her death, Sexton was writing from an empty house. Her children were away at school, and she had divorced her husband. I face that same solitude out of cowardice. I am divorced, but I am not alone. James and I have been dancing around the concept of commitment, sidestepping between what we actually feel for each other and a sense of responsibility for our son. I want to trust him – I want to trust someone – but I constantly wonder if my previous marriage removed my ability to open myself up that much again. Your own ideas may be too fanciful to be practical. My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch. Each like an advertisement for change. My husband always plays King and is continually shopping in his head for a queen when only clown, carpenter, nurse, witch can be seen. From “February 3rd” by Anne Sexton It is the perpetual plight of woman – feeling the pressure to be something she is not, to fit the perceptions of a man. I was not what my ex-husband perceived I should be, and I am not what James hopes I can be. For that matter, I am not what any man I have been involved with in recent memory has wanted. There was a time when I would have believed that somehow made me defective. I will never reach perfection, but I will never allow another to define my imperfections – they are mine alone to determine. Perhaps Anne Sexton would have lived much longer if she could have reached that conclusion… Elizabeth Ross |