FENCE #39 (Vol. 21 #2): 39 WIN-SPR 2022

 

Isabelle Huppert

Vengeance is as dignified

an option as any, less lightning
than thunder, less timbre

than quake. Collared encore,
blank applause, trains stalled

for towns at a time. what good can
come of bad handsomes? What god

would hum through a hurricane? (Eileen G’sell)

As you most likely know by now, one of my favourite literary journals (a list that includes The Capilano Review, Canthius, Tripwire and filling Station, among a handful of others) is FENCE magazine [see my reviews of issues #20 here, #21 here, #26 here, #27 here, #28 here, #29 here, #30 here, #32 here, #34 here]. This latest issue is also the first to include Emily Wallis Hughes and Jason Zuzga in the shared position of Editorial Directors. As Hughes writes as part of an introduction to the issue:

When, in the early fall of 2021 Rebecca [Wolff] offered us this shared position, the history of my way to Fence flooded my mind, and I imagined a 21-year-old who might stumble upon this issue in a bookstore, like I did in 2006, when I urgently needed to find all of the differing language-people one reliably finds in Fence, which I don’t need to describe – you can see for yourself. If you have come across this online, or if you found this in a Barnes & Noble in a town very far from New York City, welcome, I’m glad you’re here with us. I know and remember what it is like to pick up a literary magazine and say: where was this before? Why didn’t my teachers give us this to read?

This new issues offers, as is standard for this particular venture, a wealth of material, and I’ve a list of names a kilometre long (0.621 miles, for American readers) of contributors to this volume with stellar work (most of whom I hadn’t heard of prior), including Eileen G’sell, Trey Moody, Ben Jahn (whom I contacted since to solicit work for periodicities), Hazel White, Kirstin Allio, Jen Frantz, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Cate Marvin, Peter Myers, Jesi Bender, Jennifer Kronovet, Alyssa Perry and Samuel Amadon, among many, multiple others. As Nick Flynn’s poem “sacred trash” opens: “I cut a picture of a stranger // out of a newspaper, my daughter / took a pen to the man’s face // & scribbled it out—it is // a black cloud now. I saved it, / I have it here—whatever // a hand touches could be // the word of God.” Or the infectious rhythms of Annelyse Gelman’s “The Story,” that begins: “He has killed, the man, a doe. / To be sure, it was an accident, but there was / one private moment, just before / he slammed on the brakes, when / he hit the gas. Just to see. / It is dusk. It will be years before he makes his confession. / The eyes of things that shine in the dark / have started to shine.” The strength of FENCE emerges from the range of styles and the sheer among of work included, but most of all, just how damned strong the material included is.

The issue also includes a hefty folio towards the end, some fifty pages of “A portfolio of writing by nurses,” produced in large part to acknowledge the period of time we’ve been in, as well as their ongoing work and experiences throughout. The section floats through an assemblage of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and memoir, working through the multiple facets of a period of health crisis, from what can easily be seen as the front lines. In Shirley Stephenson’s “COVID & Locusts & Protests & Love—A Community Nursing Perspective,” she writes: “In the first weeks of COVID, I often wondered, Is this the way I will get the virus, and will it kill me? It wasn’t an ambush of panic, but a slow recurring thought, like fireflies drifting and flickering around the exam room.” For all the talk of crisis and anxiety around those initial months, it was easy to feel overwhelmed, for those of us who remained home, as well as those unable to make that choice, even beyond the fraction of the population who insisted on minimizing the entire situation. How does one maintain composure, maintain living, even while attempting to attend to the uncertainty of health? As Sarah Cluff’s short poem “Santa Monica” ends:

The sign at your dentist’s office says
“We cannot undo what you will not do.”