September 2016 – Mid-American Review Blog

Pets with MAR: Ori

You’ve seen some cats, a bearded dragon, and now, let’s bring a dog into the picture. Get ready to meet Ori, owned by Teri Dederer. Teri is Ori’s faithful and devoted human slave, dedicated to carrying out his extensive feeding and exercise regime. She and Ori have been together for seven wonderful years, beginning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and ending up here in Bowling Green, Ohio where Teri is a second-year graduate student pursuing her M.F.A. in fiction. She is the Fiction Editor at the Mid-American Review.

Now, let’s meet Ori!

Job: MAR reader/contributor

Title: Head of the Committee for the Veracity of Animal Characterization (CVAC)

Meet the amazing, the wonderful, the one and only, Ori! Entering into his middle-age, Ori would ideally like to eat and nap his way through each day. His laid-back personality stems from his island roots, given that he was rescued from St. Maarten. In dog terms, Ori is a Coconut Retriever, which is simply an island mutt of unknown origin. Rescued when he was still fairly young, Ori had had his fair share of health concerns, having to undergo treatment for Lyme disease, heartworms, canine ehrlichiosis, worms (eww!)…but now he faces the threat of the developed world—obesity. Ori is happy to report that having undertaken a rigorous running program, his figure is now trim and slim once again.

Always a bit shy and timid, Ori would prefer that all people let him do the “covert sniff” upon first meeting, whereupon you ignore him, and he MIGHT decide to give you a sniff when your back is turned. Despite his social anxiety, his affection can be bought with high-quality dog-bones.One place that Ori always feels secure is at the MAR classroom! Ori is a frequent contributor toward discussions, and as Head of the Committee for the Veracity of Animal Characterization (CVAC), he is a valuable consultant for our team.

*Please note: no animals were harmed in the making of this ridiculously cute blog post.

Chapbook Review: My Fault by Leora Fridman

My Fault by Leora Fridman. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2016. 86 pages. $ 16.00, paper.

The ambiguity of Leora Fridman’s title, My Fault, is compelling. Perhaps this is a collection of confessions of guilt, intended to clear the speaker’s conscious? Fridman does not offer a direct answer to this question, but rather leaves it up to the reader to interpret the meaning behind her words. While her prose poems are very clear in language and sentence structure, the message is often hidden and requires a second or third read. Sentences that seem to be nonsensical at first, will eventually reveal their meaning, like in “Factions”, where she writes:

I have not found

any skin yet but I will

be there soon, just as

soon as I can fight off

the beavers peeling fibers

from my scalp, trying

to open my mind,

making me feel far

more awake than

I ever intended to find

myself, laughing at

how much human I am

My Fault does not focus on one particular topic, but on a plethora of personal thoughts of the speaker, evolving around everything and anything that is important to them.

– Tanja Vierrether, MAR

Spotlight on Coral Nardandrea

Mid-American Review would like to feature Winter Wheat Festival of Writing Coordinator and poetry editor, Coral!

Coral Nardandrea hails from Ocala, Florida, a small horse town landlocked in a state known for its oceans, swamps, and glades. She got her undergraduate degrees in creative writing and women’s studies, which complemented each other more than you’d think. She came to Bowling Green to get her MFA in poetry and to get to know another small, landlocked town. This year, Coral is coordinating Mid-American Review’s Winter Wheat Festival of Writing and serving as an assistant editor on MAR’s staff. She’s enjoying the other side of the country (and its seasons) so far, though she wishes there were more trees.

Q: What drew you to the writing world?

C: Just a love of stories, really. I started making up stories when I was pretty little—all of my toys had extensive, dramatic backgrounds. Each time I sat down to play, I had to decide what the story was—who was related to who, their likes and dislikes, where they were from, what their goals were. Eventually I started writing those things down, because acting them out wasn’t enough. I was always reading, too, and that really nourished my imagination.

That shifted a bit, of course. In college, I was converted from fiction writing to poetry, and my appreciation of words and what they can do is always growing. While I still lean towards the narrative—a good character, a good story—my understanding of how words shape that narrative is much deeper.

Q: How has your time in the MFA been?

C: I really enjoy the writing community we have here. Our cohort is very close-knit, and it’s amazing to be surrounded by people who are creatively wired, who can discuss the pros and cons of Sylvia Plath’s rise to fame over a beer or two, and who will make time for a road trip to see Rita Dove in the middle of a school week. My writing has also really improved from being immersed in poetry and connected with people who love it.

Q: What makes you want to accept a submission?

C: I’m always looking for something that makes me perk up a little. If the language can make me say, “Oh, that’s different from the fifty other submissions I’ve read today,” I’m perking up. Also, the fiction writer in me always loves a good narrative. Poems have to matter. You have a short amount of time to pack a punch, to tell me something important, and I want to feel changed by the time I’ve finished your poem.

Q: What’s your favorite story/poem MAR has accepted?

C: This is hard! “Lesson” by Christina Duhig was a poem I fought hard for when we discussed its publication, so it has a special place in my heart. But I think my all-time favorite has to be coming up in Volume 37: Matthew MacFarland’s “Mosaic Floor Depicting the Rape of Persephone, Uncovered at a Tomb in Amphipolis, Greece, October 2014.” There’s just something so quietly haunting about it. It’s a powerful poem. I’m so excited for everyone to read it.

Q: What’s the best advice a writer has given you?

C: I’m lucky to have a lot of mentors in my life who give amazing advice. Probably the most helpful thing I’ve ever been told is to be kinder to myself. To stop saying “should.” There’s enough rejection in the writing business without adding my own doubts before I can submit a packet to a journal or print a poem off for workshop. I’m still working on this, but respecting my poetry for what it is has helped make me a more confident writer.

Q: Best experience in Bowling Green so far?

C: Honestly, each week has been its own grand adventure. Spending time with those in my cohort, whether we’re watching trashy television, staking out the Black Swamp Festival, or riding every coaster at Cedar Point, has always left me with a story to tell or an inside joke to reference. The people have made my experience here, and I’m glad to know them.

Chapbook Review: dear girl: a reckoning by drea brown

dear girl: a reckoning by drea brown. Gold Line Press, 2014. 47 pages. $10.00, print.

drea brown’s dear girl: a reckoning is the winner of the 2014 Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Competition and a hauntingly beautiful glimpse into the Middle Passage and the life of Phillis Wheatley. brown’s poetry attempts to envision not only Phillis Wheatley as the poet, but also Phillis as the girl aboard a slave ship struggling to understand not only her situation, but also her new identity as someone’s property.

Each of brown’s poems deals with a specific moment in the harrowing journey across the ocean and the themes of haunting, rememory, and giving voice to the dead. This theme of rememory, a term which brown borrows from Toni Morrison, is one that occurs in each poem and calls into question how memory itself influences not only an individual, but also perhaps, an entire group of people. brown tells Wheatley’s story not only to show how portions of the poet’s identity were erased or unacknowledged, but also to address how the girl in her poems could embody not only Wheatley, but also countless unnamed girls.

brown asks readers to reimagine, remember and employ rememory to give voice to the dead and through doing so, exorcise some of our own haunted, unacknowledged pasts and shared histories. The chapbook opens with a poem emphasizing the voices of the dead, but end’s with a similar request successfully closing the narrative. brown’s rich imagery, variety of poetic forms and narrative tells readers that the dead will have their stories told: “the dead will have their due. they will speak from graves or whisper into the ears of poets or search oceans, to begin here or rupture or capture loss” (45).

-Chelsea Graham, MAR

Pets with MAR: Smaug

Last week you met some adorable cats, and this week MAR brings you a new pet–a bearded dragon, owned by the great Lisa Favicchia.

Lisa Favicchia is the Managing Editor of Mid-American Review and a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at Bowling Green State University. When she is not reading or writing, she is busy pampering the dragon whom she affectionately calls Smauggles (much to his chagrin).

And now, meet Smaug!

Smaug is a bearded dragon and Mid-American Review’s honorary Office Lizard. While his ancestors came from the harsh deserts of Australia, Smaug prefers spending his days in air conditioning with the Mid-American Review staff, preferably sitting on somebody’s shoulder or keeping a close eye on office proceedings from his perch on the back of his owner’s chair. He enjoys digging around in office mail, licking things, and running circles around laptops. He has been very graciously received not only by the staff members ofMid-American Review, but by the BGSU community as a whole, much to the joy of his owner who loves to bring him everywhere she goes.

Smaug has come a long way since his days as a starved, abused, and abandoned baby dragon to the illustrious Office Lizard you see before you today. His memoirs relating the tales of his difficult childhood and his struggle up the corporate ladder are forthcoming.

Month: September 2016