Symmetry: The Talking Stick Vol. 23 (2014. Jackpine Writer’s Bloc. ISBN 9781928690269)
Every year, I have a table at the Northwoods Arts Festival and Book Fair held in Hackensack, MN. Over the span of a decade, I’ve met many members of the local writers group, Jackpine Writer’s Bloc, and on one occasion I conducted a self-publishing workshop for those folks, trying to impart the little knowledge that I have about publishing, marketing, and the like. Great folks. Some fine writers. So, whenever I’m at the festival, I pick up a copy of the latest volume of The Talking Stick, Jackpine’s compendium of fiction, non-fiction prose, and poetry complied as a “best of” collective effort for the year. Because it is a volume featuring unknown writers (much like me), the included pieces are often uneven: gleaming gems cast amongst rougher, less polished stones. This year’s volume is no exception.
First, the highlights. “Walking the Line”, a short story by Cheyenne Marco is a fine, fine piece of fiction. It’s not difficult to understand why Cheyenne’s tale was the winner in the fiction category:
She always walked the tracks when she needed to think. She mounted the rail, walking the thin line like a tightrope walker…Every time she did she saw the same thing: her clothes falling away. Zack’s sure hands on her hips, his lips against her neck…(S)he held onto these moments…calling them to memory with fondness and a flush she could feel all the way to her toes. Until the strip turned pink.
See what I mean? “Josephine” a short story by Paisley Kaufman is nearly as well-crafted and evocative. In the non-fiction category, though not adjudged a winner, my favorite essay of the lot is “Touching Wild” by Michael Forbes. I’m sure I enjoyed the imagery so much because, well, it’s familiar and something I wish I’d written:
I walked far upstream before entering the river. The evening was still too bright for the trout and too hot for me so I stood in the water, waiting. While my fly drifted in lazy S-curves below me, a summer-red doe parted the green curtain of grass…
Anyone who has fished for browns or brookies in Minnesota can relate. I certainly did.
Not being a poet, I hesitate to delve into critiquing verse. But “Tornado”, a poem by Lina Belar, a piece also not recognized by the judges, sang like a winner to me:
Here at the center there is nothing
undamaged, unturned, unskewed…
Unskewed. What a marvelous word choice!
Other selections are as equally powerful, though there are some, sadly, that do not reach the level of expertise or imagination established by the best of this collection. I won’t list the poems, essays, or short stories that fail to meet the mark, because, quite frankly, who am I to judge? But I will say this: After reading through this slender volume, I was struck that there was a sameness to many of the pieces, fictional or not, that reflected cancer, death, departure, loss and the like. Of course, in the end, those are universal themes that most writers rely upon as linchpins for their work. But I found this lack of variety in theme somewhat boring and repetitive. The book contains good work, for certain, by many of the Jackpine writers I know as friends and acquaintances. But I can only hope that next year’s judges seek out a larger variety of themes and topics to flesh out an otherwise noble endeavor.
Peace.
Mark
3 1/2 stars out of 5
