Hayden's Ferry Review: Issue 56, The Chaos Issue

from the editor

The ancient Greeks saw Chaos as the dark abyss from which life sprang.

Mathematicians use Chaos theory to explain how small decisions can give rise to unexpectedly grave consequences.

Chaos is a cluttered bedroom, a busy street corner, a blinding snowstorm.

In Paradise Lost, John Milton described Chaos as “the vast immeasurable abyss, / Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.”

Most of us spend our lives trying to ward off Chaos. We keep agendas, we make grocery  lists. We look for patterns, symmetry, and structure. But what happens when we no longer avoid Chaos, and instead embrace it? As writers and artists, a big part of our job is to revise and to edit, to impose order on an unordered world. How do we preserve the thrill of inspiration, of turmoil, when we work in a medium with inherent structure? What if, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”?

Issue 56 of Hayden’s Ferry Review is about celebrating the unordered, the frenzied, the messy, and the “dark, wasteful, wild” in all its forms. The pieces in this issue start conversations about how and why Chaos can be important and powerful to us as artists and as human beings. 

Thank you to our wonderful editors for their creativity and their spontaneity. Thank you to our contributors, who explore Chaos in content, style, and form. Thank you for trusting us with your work—trusting us to read it, to share it, and to turn it sideways.

 -Dana Diehl


Please visit our table at the AWP bookfair (1226) to purchase a discounted copy of Issue 56. Copies will be available online soon.

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Issue 56 Contributors

Prose: Megan Mayhew Bergman, Jaclyn Dwyer, Lindsey Drager, Miles Klee, Lisa Locascio, Maia Morgan

Poetry: Gavin Adair, Lindsey D. Alexander, Partridge Boswell, Eric Burger, Lauren Clark, Mary Cisper, Mary-Alice Daniel, Ezra Dan Feldman, Sally Houtman, Alyse Knorr, Calgary Martin, Phoebe Reeves, Courtney Mandryk, Martin Rock, Sam Sax, Kent Shaw, Chris Siteman, Lauren Goodwin Slaughter, Donna Steiner

Translation: Alireza Taheri Araghi [Sodeh Negintaj], Margaret Jull Costa [Medardo Fraile], Dennis James Sweeney [Ronald Legrand], Toshiya Kamei [Claudia Apablaza], Jeffrey Zuckerman [Antoine Volodine]

Art: Ron Bimrose, Brenton Hamilton, Forrest Solis (Cover Artist)

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Issue 56 Masthead

Editor: Dana Diehl

Managing Editor: Chelsea Hickok

Poetry: Dorothy Chan, Jacqueline Balderrama

International: Alex McElroy, Brian Bender

Prose: Allegra Hyde, Gary Garrison

Art: Ashley Czajkowski

Special Projects: Heath Wilcock

Copyeditor: Mindy Wilson

Get Lucky and Be the First to See Four “Leaves” from Issue 56!

Starting this Tuesday, March 17^th (St. Patrick’s Day) if you subscribe or resubscribe, we’ll send you a lucky Four-Leaf Clover: four pages from the proof of our upcoming issue. That’s right—you’ll be able to view what we’re working on right now, before anyone else. Buying a sample or back issue will get you three pages, but everyone knows the Four-Leaf Clovers are the lucky ones, so be sure to subscribe before the offer ends next Tuesday (March 24)!

Behind the Masthead: Editors at Work

When we're not reading, we're writing. This is where the magic happens.

"This chair was my husband's grandpa's.  The sun hits it perfectly in the late afternoon and I just sink in and scribble away before everyone else gets home at night.  At least one dog is usually around to lay on my feet and its close to the record player so I can be swallowed up by tunes while I work." -Chelsea H., Editor

"I bought this desk for $5 dollars at a surplus store, and the typewriter was the best goodwill find in my own personal history of thrifting. The desk faces East and overlooks the McDowell Mountain Range from my 3rd floor patio. The desk has a shelf underneath that holds my space heater for chilly nights - also, my cat, Thesis, loves hide there and fall asleep on the cool metal." - Kyle B., Poetry Editor

"I was going to post a picture of my desk, with its incense holder and neat pile of books and potted cacti and shaded lamp, but this feels way more honest. More often than not, I do my writing on the dining room table - one of my housemates barely visible behind a messy pile of overdo library books, a full bag of snacks close by (usually less respectable than pretzels), a pen "borrowed" from my latest hotel stay on hand, and one of my housemates' many pets stalking behind my laptop screen." - Dana D., Editor

"'Isn't the exterior an old intimacy lost in the shadow of memory?' -Gaston Bachelard" - Alex M., International Editor

"My workspace is in the living area of my apartment. I'm usually crosslegged on the small sofa typing away. I love this comfy spot because of its natural lighting, bright colors and my chirpy parakeet who sits by the window." - Jackie B., Poetry Editor

"This cozy space, nestled in the comforting bosom of my television, serves as my central writing zone, or WriteZone. To keep this brief I'll stick to an inventory of the present: a desk procured from the freshly-soaped back alley of a Christian university; a chair mined from a Xerox subsidiary--well worn in the pivotal places; a lamp and shade with unknown origins; roughly 84 unread Cease & Desist letters from local delis concerning an undisclosed personal matter; and one cat--a known associate and a cappella partner of a myriad of local shelter-bound street cats." - Gary G., Prose Editor

"My workspace is in my living room. The desk has a fake marble top. I got a nice deal on it from the furniture store I bought it from because it was damaged, but it's nothing you can see from the picture. I always keep candy at my desk, mostly to hand out to people that I ignore when I'm done ignoring them, but I also occasionally will have a piece. There are two pictures above my desk. One is a picture of a plant and is framed. One is a portrait a DJ did of me at a party. The portrait is done on a small paper plate. The fake tree in the corner is paramount to me sitting down to do anything at the desk for any significant amount of time. I like to pretend I can harness some kind of creative energy from it." - Dustin P., Editor

Behind the Masthead: HFR Editors' Winter Fashions

Winter is our favorite season in the Sonoran Desert. Get inspired by our editors' super trendy winter fashions. What are your favorite Arizona winter trends?

Class in the front, breeze in the back. Hospital gowns are the desert way to go. - Kyle B., Poetry Editor

"Shoes: Brown boots. Good for scorpion-stomping. Coat: Faux-fur coat borrowed from friend two Halloweens ago. Originally intended for a Mrs. Peacock outfit. Never returned. Hat: UV rays are the enemy." -Dana D., Editor

"I like to think of this coat as my Kate Hudson in Almost Famous coat.  Hardly ever get to wear it here so I've got to improvise." -Chelsea H., Editor

"Florida Chic." -Allegra H., Fiction Editor

"Though many young writers are burdened by obligatory self-discovery, through the act of writing, I find myself most productive when when wearing my replica 'Young William Gass' costume. Sure, the material's itchy, and some might consider the two hours I spend every morning applying makeup a waste of valuable writing time, but when it comes to imitating the greats, there is no substitute for dermal transmutations. Additionally, Gass's chilly demeanor really helps keep me cool in the desert!" -Alex M., International Editor

Review: Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Almost Famous Women

Megan Mayhew Bergman

Scribner, 2015

Biographical Fiction

Review by Debrah Lechner.

Almost Famous Women, as the title promises, delivers entertaining, touching, and very absorbing short stories based on the lives of women who in their time found a marginal fame, were written about, talked about, and seen, but then were almost lost to history, almost forgotten, and almost became invisible.

This is a fate most of us will share, to one degree or another, sooner or later, and it’s the root of what make these stories powerful. By restoring the lives of these extraordinary, if not immortal, women, Bergman invokes meaning into all our lives.

The breadth of examination into the meaning of women’s lives is striking. The book begins with the story “The Pretty, Grown-Together Children,” the story of conjoined twins. Surely there could never be a more intimate relationship than this─sharing a single body with another person for the entire length of existence. Bergman takes her time exploring what it means to be a woman who is bound to another in such a circumstance, a circumstance which defines her world. What is left of self and world when these two women are literally separated by death is the question that haunts the end of this story.

Toward the end of Almost Famous Women, there is a little gem of a short story, “The Internees,” only five spare paragraphs, about the women found in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. A section of this camp became the “women’s camp,” and Anne Frank was one of the women who died there shortly before the camp was liberated. The story is told in the voice of the newly liberated women, who had been denied both their individuality and their humanity.

There was a box of expired lipstick that came off the truck. The British soldiers opened the box and threw tubes of lipstick at the crowd, and we wanted it─we were surprised at how badly we wanted it… We had pink wax on our rotten teeth. We were human again. We were women.

Yes, there is a great humor in these stories, as well, and inspiration, and a great deal to simply engage and satisfy curiosity. But the great accomplishment of this collection, and one not to be missed, is in the insistence that every life is an historic event.

Megan Mayhew Bergman is also the author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, which was one of Huffington’s Post’s Best Books of 2012. She writes a sustainability column for Solon.

Book Review: Jonas in Frames: an epic by Chris Hutchinson

Chris Hutchinson frames his modern epic, Jonas in Frames, with quotations. The most fitting comes before the Prologue—Aristotle’s “Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst.” Jonas in Frames presents the life of Hutchinson’s loveable protagonist and too-humble-and-bumbling-to-be-an-everyman, Jonas, in episodic bits of poetic prose. These episodic bits create a writing that is contemporary: a hybrid of both form and content. Jonas, our anti-hero is neurotic and socially awkward. His story is framed by his diagnosis, in the form of the “Lab Notes” that precede each chapter. Jonas recalls events in bits, yet his story ends with a poetic, modern Ginsberg-style rant, which merges events in popular culture:

What is the Holocaust, the Old Man might say, without me? Who remains to speak on behalf of Hiroshima’s irradiated silhouettes? Only I was there. Only I saw the shit go down right before Mao Zedong was caught whispering the word “rosebud” in his sleep. Citizen Kane, let me tell you, wasn’t directed by Orson Welles, but by Frank Sinatra, who was really Veronica Lake in drag…

Part of Jonas’ charm is the self-awareness that Hutchinson presents. Though fragmented, the book shows self-awareness in both popular and poetic culture, breaking the fourth wall to the literary audience. Hutchinson plays with the taboo of mentioning “poem within a poem”—Jonas is a self-proclaimed artist, becoming a writer and audience avatar. Clever literary references are made, for example, Gymnastics’ “How many times can you pretend to be about to start to read Ulysses” and “But maybe you could still hook an existential thread, unravel the fabric of your ache, and have some new material with which to begin again—as an MFA creative-writing student?” With the MFA reference, Hutchinson plays homage to a writerly lifestyle, and Jonas in Frames is the contemporary writerly book that balances hybrids of sorts.

Hutchinson also treats love, or at least infatuation in a contemporary way. In today’s fast-paced world, our protagonist experiences love and lost within the chapter. Jonas shares Brooklyn hipster tidbits with Ursula, an early love interest. The contemporary sense of the book comes in the dialogue followed by swift narration. As the reader transitions between paragraphs of dialogue between Jonas and Ursula, we later become lured by longer italicized and scientific descriptions, following the pattern of symptom and diagnosis. Jonas’ later flashbacks of Ursula’s blue eyeliner ground the book in poetic device and repetition—Hutchinson grounds the prose with this musicality and swiftness.

This swiftness creates a narration that isn’t just a story, but a full-on twenty-first century research experiment: breaking down the not-quite everyman. Jonas may be episodically framed, but his story is fully Generation Y.

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REVIEWER: Dorothy Chan is a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. She is poetry editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume, Cha, decomP, and The Great American Poetry Show.

Behind the Masthead: Dorothy Chan

Only a few weeks until Issue 55 is released! Meanwhile, we are gearing up for our special themed issue: CHAOS. Lauren Mickey interviews our poetry editor, Dorothy Chan, about boy bands, Nylon, and our upcoming issue.

Lauren Mickey: What are you currently reading (besides submissions)? 

Dorothy Chan: I'm currently reading a bunch of fashion blogs: We Wore What, Sea of Shoes, Luxirare, etc. I like to keep up with current trends in fashion and lifestyle -- I truly believe this enhances my writing and gives me a different perspective besides the literary. On the literary side, however, I'm reading The Crucifix Blocks by Todd Fredson as well as the current issue of APR. 

LM: How has being a poetry editor at HFR changed the way you write / read?

DC: Being poetry editor for 2 years has enhanced the way I read. Besides the benefit of reading submissions with greater speed, I'm also reading much more meticulously. I'm trying to get to know the person behind the writer behind each poem. 

LM: What is your go-to play-on-repeat song?

DC: Oh wow, I have so many. And I promise you, I'm not one of those writers who names obscure bands just to sound cool. Let's see, right now I'm hooked on 5 Seconds of Summer, this adorable band that's labeled as a "boyband," though they strive to be more pop-punk. I like their song "She Looks So Perfect" because it keeps referencing "American Apparel Underwear." Interestingly, I'm also a big Sinatra fan--I fell in love with his voice in a taxicab in Hong Kong when I was four. I love his duet with Bing Crosby from the film, High Society. With that, I love songs from old MGM musicals. As far as a playlist: "Evil" by Interpol, "Live While We're Young" by One Direction, "Biggest Part of Me" by Ambrosia, "Forever Young" by Rod Stewart, "Eyes As Candles," by Passion Pit, and [fill in the blank with almost anything catchy]. 

LM: Issue 55 — the “Chaos” issue — is coming out soon… Were you surprised and/or impressed by how poets incorporated themes of chaos into their submissions? 

DC: I am very pleased with the Chaos collection Jackie and I are curating. At first, I was worried we'd get hundreds of Dada poems, but there's lots of standouts in this collection. I'm glad that many writers incorporated narrative with chaos.

LM: I read your previous “Behind the Masthead” interview and saw that you read Nylon. Do you have a favorite Nylon covergal? (Mine is Tavi Gevinson, I think, probably.) 

DC: I love Tavi! I saw this fabulous pink fur outfit she wore on a fashion blog the other day. My other favorite would have to be Sienna Miller for the anniversary issue. I also like Taylor Momsen's cover on a summer issue of Nylon Singapore.

LM: What is your ideal writing environment (coffee shop, a dark room, lost in the woods, etc.)? 

DC: My ideal environment is anywhere noisy...hopefully with enough attractive things or people to look at.

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Dorothy Chan is a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume, Cha, Keyhole, and Vine Leaves. She is a poetry editor at Hayden's Ferry Review.