Contributor Spotlight: David Ryan

“The Man with the Boat” is a chapter from a novel-in-progress whose idea came from a conversation about the worst jobs a friend and I’d ever had. Jobs so bad they attracted people who couldn’t really work anywhere else—cash-under-the-table people who were running from the law or who’d immigrated to the U.S. illegally. Others were simply dodging any of a million terrible choices they’d made, or that life had made for them. Choices few of them would probably ever paddle back from. Throughout my life, these people have been the best storytellers, and the conversation between my friend and I turned to the stories we’d heard these co-workers tell us, back then, about the worst jobs they’d ever had. Jobs whose circumstances were a rung or two deeper in the inferno. Jobs so bad that they didn’t seem possible.

In one sense the nameless main character in this story is a composite of all these people I once knew—many of whose names I’ve forgotten, a few of whose I haven’t. But very little from that conversation between my friend and I ends up in this story. The truth is, even in the earliest drafts, various anxieties from my own life began falling into place, entering this nameless guy’s life. I’m a new father, for one thing. The image of an infant swaddled, cocooned here, is drawn from a photograph taken just after my daughter was born, wrapped in the hospital blanket. Other personal details get displaced and condensed in the story, enough that the dreamlike, ghastly strangeness of this man’s life feels, to me, entirely reified and personal. Of course that's inescapable with writing fiction—I think most writers find themselves inside what they’ve written, even when it’s a story entirely apart from their own day-to-day experience. I suspect the displacement of ourselves, whether we think we intend it or not, is much of the point.

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David Ryan’s fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Fence, BOMB, Tin House, The Encyclopedia Project, failbetter.com, Unsaid, Booth, Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, several Mississippi Review Prize issues, Nerve, Cimarron Review, Salt Hill, and Hobart, among others. His work has been anthologized in Flash Fiction Forward (WW Norton), The Mississippi Review: 30, and Boston Noir 2: The Classics (Akashic).

Contributor Spotlight: John A. Nieves

I was honored and excited to find out that another of my poems, “Apogee,” had found a home at HFR. “Apogee” is a very important poem in my forthcoming book, Curio (Elixir Press early 2014). It begins the second section (Talismans). The poem is an anti-sonnet that tries to recreate the imagined tale of a real fossilized dead bat, referred to by tour guides as “Splat Bat,” in Osage Caverns, Missouri. When I first saw the tiny and relatively new fossil and learned that the creature had starved and dropped on the spot, I knew I would at least attempt to tell its story. I believe nearly all poems are tiny acts of empathy. The section of my book the poem introduces deals with the way folk tales and stories create empathetic bonds with those who share them, how they resonate, how they mean. Some of these tales are well known, some obscure, some personally generated. In fact, the poem “One Booth Over,” which originally appeared in HFR 49, appears later in the section. I hope in some small way I have dignified the death of that little bat more than its very playful nickname has.

The other three sections of my book also take on the meaning of the things we collect and hold close to ourselves in order to better understand and cope with the world around us. Section one, Specimens, deals with personal memories and discoveries. The third section, Grave Goods, deals with the absences and enshrinements caused by people and things lost. The final section, Correspondences, deals with the relationships we collect and move through as a lens—a sort of epistemological alchemy—in which we transmute what we choose and experience into what we know.

Last night, I was reading through back issues of HFR and I was struck with how many poems have nuggets of mythos and epistemology. I went to other fine journals I subscribe to. The proportion was far less. Perhaps this is what draws me to HFR as I wait with anticipation for each issue. Hopefully, some of you (fellow HFR lovers) will check out and enjoy my new book when it makes its debut. Finally, I would like to thank the HFR staff and all the fine contributing writers for the inspiration they have provided through the years. Oh, and if you dig the poem, please visit my website johnanieves.com for links to some others on the publications page.

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John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and Cincinnati Review. He won the 2011 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and is a 2012 Pushcart nominee. His work has also been featured on Verse Daily twice recently. His first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize and is due out in early 2014. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University. He received his M.A. from USF and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

21st Century Reading: TONIGHT!

Just a reminder that our 21st Century Reading, featuring readers of prose, poetry and translations from issue 52, begins tonight at 7 EST. Join us here when the time comes.

Reader schedule
(all times EASTERN, order subject to change):
7PM-Introduction by Sam Martone
7:10-Alexandra Teague
7:20-Lydia Ship
7:30-L.S. Klatt
7:40-Pireeni Sundaralingam
7:50-David Ryan
8-Daniel Riordan
8:10-Aparna Sanyal
8:20-Christopher Watkins
8:30-Bradley Harrison
8:40-Katy Chrisler
8:50-Max Somers
9-John A. Nieves
9:10-James Henry Knippen
9:20-Zana Previti
9:30-Suzanne Marie Hopcroft
9:40-Anna Rosen Guercio
9:50-Susan Lin

Contributor Spotlight: Alexandra Teague

I started writing “The Journalists Set the Record Straight on Sarah Winchester” literally in the midst of researching at the History San Jose archives last summer. After three years of working on a manuscript revolving around Sarah Winchester—writing mostly from secondary sources—I had gotten a University of Idaho seed grant to spend two weeks doing archival research. Finally, I was able to read Sarah Winchester’s own letters to her lawyer and others; to hold the tiny book in which she recorded the list of Christmas gifts she planned to get her staff and relatives; and to look at original copies of pictures of her niece and the house’s grounds at the turn of the century. Amid these wonderful sources, I also encountered a trove of newspaper clippings—spanning from the 1880s (when Sarah first arrived in California) through the 1910s and ‘20s (she died in 1922).

I knew that rumors had been printed during her life that she was communicating with spirits in her large strange house, and was following their directions about building (the same rumors perpetuated by the Winchester Mystery House owners today). But I hadn’t realized how utterly conflicting the accounts of her life were, or how often the same inaccurate “fact” got picked up from article to article over the decades and repeated as truth. And of course as I started seeing these contradictions and outright mistakes, I became both frustrated and intrigued by the way in which the legends about her had built up in as piecemeal of a way as her famous house. The legend says that she was crazy or eccentric (claims I was already very doubtful of after my years of research), but here was page after page of ostensibly credible journalists making contradictory claims.

So—to respond to both my sense of irony and frustration—I started a prose poem that abutted these claims with one another. With a box of clippings in front of my laptop as I typed, I didn’t know where I was going—or if I would really end up anywhere. Very fortunately, the title, which I had uncharacteristically come up with as I started writing, led me to the final line, which felt like the right ending. I spent quite a bit of time playing with rhythm and spacing in the lines, but the basic form and content are still what I wrote that morning at the table in the San Jose Archives—sort of pretending to myself and the wonderful archive curators that I was just typing up notes.

***
Alexandra Teague is the author of Mortal Geography (Persea 2010), winner of the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and 2010 California Book Award, and The Wise and Foolish Builders (Persea 2015). Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Willow Springs, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor of Poetry at University of Idaho and an editor for Broadsided Press. More at www.alexandrateague.com.

21st Century Reading: Issue 52

To celebrate the release of Hayden’s Ferry Review issue 52, we’re going to do another 21st Century Reading! That's right, a reading broadcast over the entire internet! The one we held for issue 51 was such a success, we could not resist giving you more of our lovely contributors reading more of their lovely words.

Across the country, contributors to issue 52 will read via web cam this coming Monday, May 13 starting at 7 o’clock Eastern time. The reading will last several hours, but since it’s online, you’ll be free to come and go as you please! So grab the popcorn, fix yourself a drink and prepare yourselves for another twenty-first century reading experience brought to you by Hayden’s Ferry Review! (Details of where to find the stream will be forthcoming. Stay tuned!)



Tentative reader schedule (all times EASTERN):
7PM-Introduction by Sam Martone
7:10-Alexandra Teague
7:20-Lydia Ship
7:30-L.S. Klatt
7:40-Pireeni Sundaralingam
7:50-David Ryan
8-Daniel Riordan
8:10-Aparna Sanyal
8:20-Christopher Watkins
8:30-Bradley Harrison
8:40-Katy Chrisler
8:50-Max Somers
9-John A. Nieves
9:10-James Henry Knippen
9:20-Zana Previti
9:30-Suzanne Marie Hopcroft
9:40-Anna Rosen Guercio
9:50-Susan Lin

Behind the Masthead: Allegra Hyde, Prose Editor

You’ve met her counterpart, Jeff Albers (twice now!), but allow us to introduce you to our other prose editor in this edition of Behind the Masthead. Allegra Hyde, along with Albers, will be selecting fiction and nonfiction for issues 53 and 54. Kacie Wheeler caught up with her to find out about her current life as a prose editor.

Kacie Wheeler: What are you currently reading (outside of HFR submissions)?

Allegra Hyde: I’ll read just about everything. Coupon booklets, cereal boxes, wanted posters, people’s tattoos. Oh, and sometimes books.

KW: What are you writing right now?

AH: All I’m going to say is that it’s 50% tragedy, 50% comedy, 110% inappropriate.

KW: Who is your favorite writer? Why?

AH: Mark Leidner is my current poet of choice. He’s funny, sometimes aphoristic, says things like: “Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it.”

KW: What kinds of things do you like to see show up in the submission queue?

AH: Sexy photos. Offers of cash. Writing that makes me want to read it aloud to everyone in earshot.

KW: How many times do you practice your fiction reading by yourself before you read in front of an audience?

AH: What are teleprompters for?

KW: What are three reasons why you reject fiction?

AH: I haven’t had my morning toast and I’m in a terrible mood. The reader’s bio sounds suspiciously like that of an ex. My psychic suggests I “let go.”

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Allegra Hyde just finished her first year in the Arizona State University MFA program. Her fiction has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Glasschord, and Spork. Originally from New Hampshire, she enjoys thinking about New Hampshire.

Contributor Spotlight: L.S. Klatt

I’ve long been fond of something Wallace Stevens pointed out about the attraction of poets to the irrational: “those who seek for the freshness and strangeness in poetry in fresh and strange places do so because of an intense need.” I suppose I am one of those mendicants looking to be surprised by what they write and willing to follow language wherever it leads, even when it veers into the feral and nonsensical. Or to put it another way, one must risk nonsense if one ever hopes to make new sense.

My poem for HFR began with a profound experience of isolation. I was visiting Seattle, a city I love for its waterways and restaurants, but I was alone. That solitude generated a narrative. “Leadhead” came to my mind as a character who, cut off from family and employment, seeks the vibrant energy of the city while at the same time can’t keep up with it. It seems to me, as I reflect on the poem, that Leadhead is trying different strategies to assuage his grief—sightseeing, art, introspection, invention—but he can’t escape the omnipresence of his pain. Perhaps by donning a “suit of magnetic stripes,” he can engage, and do business with, his fellow consumers. Such interactions are tentative at best, and at times dehumanizing, but for better or worse commerce is how disparate Americans come together and commiserate.

I admire Leadhead’s resilience and the many ways he probes the world even as he is victimized by it. I see this kind of creative tenacity in friends and acquaintances who bounce back from ponderous losses to embrace the vitality still available to them.

In composing the poem, I was suspicious of and yet enjoyed the bizarre imagery: “leopard prints,” “coconut cream,” “giant propeller,” “monkfish.” As I considered revisions and continued to let the poem steep, I realized that these images were taking on and expressing the wild antics of the protagonist. Leadhead, though burdened with heaviness, is somehow irrepressible. He may wear his suit like a hair shirt, but he’s also subject to the hallucinations we often associate with mystics. Does this ennoble his suffering, transmute it, make of it a voice crying in the wilderness? I’m not sure, but I hope so.

For me, writing is a strange synthesis of abstraction and fellow feeling. The real world must be summoned, but it also invites extrapolation, at least if it is to activate the brain; emotion is essential as well if the imagination is to run hot, not cold-blooded. The wild card in any poem, though, is language, which, when all is said and done, has a mind of its own.

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L.S. Klatt has published poems recently in Colorado Review, Washington Square, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review and New Orleans Review. New work will appear in The Common, Narrative, Blackbird and The Michigan Poet. His second collection, Cloud of Ink, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His poem, “The Suit of Magnetic Stripes,” appears in HFR 52.