Chapbook Review: Candy in Our Brains by Anne Barngrover and Avni Vyas

Candy in Our Brains by Anne Barngrover and Avni Vyas. Missoula: CutBank Books, 2014.

Anne Barngrover and Avni Vyas recently collaborated to co-author Candy in Our Brains, a humorous and raw take on life and relationships told through a collection of poems. Full of unlikely combinations, and using a series of poems following “the heroine,” Barngrover and Vyas take the reader through the struggles of love. In the poem titled, “It’s My Party and I’ll Implode If I Want To” the authors pair interesting combinations such as, “You show up with a cake and moths fly out when I slice it” with the gritty thread of thread of dissatisfaction, “For your birthday: / heavy petting and a cake with your name in purple, gouged as if by my nails.”

Barngrover and Vyas pursue turmoil in nature in “The Heroine Shamwows Her Way Through A Hurricane” where “The fissures in our youth show up in our faces…tiny mushrooms breaking out in a rash: this / could be the tumor in my happiness swelling. This is my joy split wide open.” In “Fossils,” the language of forest and animal combine: “We were together, a cawing / battalion” and later, “How could we / have foreseen how much to camouflage in bruise and how much to coddle?” A collection that is unified by startling and vivid language, the turmoil of our relationships seeping through metaphor and everyday reality, Candy in Our Brains makes for a powerful collaboration.

Teri Dederer, Mid-American Review

Pets with MAR: Chloe and Lucy

Welcome back to Pets with MAR. Meet two adorable cats, Chloe and Lucy, owned by our Winter Wheat Coordinator and editor on the poetry staff, Coral Nardandrea. Her fellow MFAs designated her a crazy cat lady even though she only has two cats. (And a cat pillowcase. And a cat blanket. And a cat wine rack.) Coral is finishing her second year at BGSU’s MFA program and plans to go into the business of publishing.

First up, meet Chloe!

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Chloe has been training her human for twelve and a half years now. The human has since figured out which blanket is her favorite, which meows signal hunger, and the list of the few movements allowed when being sat upon. Once a hunter of bottle caps, hair ties, plastic bags, and flip flops, Chloe has since retired, and can rarely be persuaded to play by any toy except her old tennis ball. To earn her favor, hopefuls must be impressed by her snore and respectful of her disdainful expression.

 

And now, Lucy!

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Lucy is the most recent addition to the family, much to Chloe’s displeasure. A little round, simple-minded, and unable to meow, Lucy likes her life just the way it is, with a lot of food and even more sleeping. She’s preferred her quiet lifestyle since getting stuck in a chimney for a week when she was a kitten under another human’s care, and certainly avoids traipsing over roofs several years later. She can be distinguished from her sister by her often-dazed expression and signature waddle.

 

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Chapbook Review: Waiting for the Enemy by Brandon Davis Jennings

Waiting for the Enemy by Brandon Davis Jennings. Kindle Edition, 2014. 44 pages. $2.99, electronic.

Brandon Davis Jennings’ Waiting for the Enemy is composed of five distinct, yet connected, stories examining the life of men linked to the United States’ armed forces. This collection is aptly titled because these stories explore the moments and experiences of war when there is no clear enemy present; however, just because there are no depictions of the traditional battlefield does not mean that this collection lacks urgency. We see the characters deal with trauma, loss, horror, and detachment.

The title story, “Waiting for the Enemy,” best encapsulates all that Jennings is able to accomplish. In this piece, the narrator and his comrade, Rake, are stationed to keep watch in a control tower, and while they are there a camel falls into the barbed wire that surrounds their location. The characters’ respective personalities are revealed and explored in the ways that they react to the trapped and tormented animal. In fact, it is this injured animal that most haunts the narrator years after he returns from war.

Jennings has crafted five pieces that can stand well on their own, but when viewed together create a cohesive view of war’s effects. While all of the connections may not be clear the first time through, this fact allows readers to uncover new discovers with successive reads—each one as rewarding as the first!

-Dani Howell, MAR

Interview with Fiction Editor Teresa Dederer, No. 4

Mid-American Review welcomes our new Fiction Editor, Teri Dederer, to the staff! Teri grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently a second-year graduate student pursuing an M.F.A. in fiction from Bowling Green State University, where she takes long walks alongside corn fields with her beloved dog, Ori.

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Q: What drew you to the writing world?

T: A love of reading! My parents are big readers, so our house had hundreds of books, and when you live in the middle of the woods (literally), summer breaks were usually spent reading on a couch. I started writing after a sixth grade teacher gave my class a creative writing exercise. I wrote a story about how Edgar Allen Poe might have died from rabies after an unfortunate encounter with a black cat.

 

Q: How has your time in the MFA been?

T: Being around my cohort and the graduate faculty here at Bowling Green has been expansive. I’ve encountered new authors, new styles of writing, and I think it has pushed my own writing to be more daring. I’ve also made some lifelong writing buddies who have introduced me to the pleasures of wine tastings. Still debating which was the more important discovery.

 

Q: What makes you want to accept a submission?

T: Tough question—I tend to like a variety of things and styles. But if I’m going to take something, it needs to be great on every single page. I like pieces that pack an emotional punch, and quirky and unusual stories tend to draw me in. It needs to feel fresh and new and shiny!

 

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

T: Maybe it’s my favorite story because it’s the first one I accepted since taking over as Fiction Editor, but “Goon” by Micah Cratty, which will be featured in the next issue. The voice is comically tragic, and so well-crafted that I wanted it immediately, and I still can’t stop thinking about the image of a ditch with cows looking on.

 

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

T: Probably just to keep writing—something that several writers/mentors have told me. It’s easy to say, ‘I’ll write tomorrow’ when you’re feeling stuck or blocked, but sometimes the reason you don’t want to write a scene is because you’re scared to write it. And those are usually the most important ones. I’d rather write it and revise it than sit there feeling guilty about not writing.

 

Q: Best experience in Bowling Green so far?

T: Seeing my dog try to hide in the neighbor’s cornfields. He thinks he’s so clever.