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?
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.”
