Shenandoah – Page 3

Now Accepting Entries for the Bevel Summers Prize for Short-Short Fiction

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From March 1 to March 31, 2012 Shenandoah will be accepting entries for the Bevel Summers Prize for Short-Short Fiction. This $500 prize is awarded to a story of 1,000 words or less, and will also be published in an upcoming issue of Shenandoah. There is no entry fee, and entrants may submit up to three previously unpublished story. Please mail 2 copies of each story (one with name and contact information, and one without) and a SASE to Shenandoah: Bevel Summers at 17 Courthouse Square, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA 24450. The judge of this year’s prize will be Chris Gavaler, his colleagues and students are not eligible to enter. Please see this page for more information about the judge and past winners: http://shenandoahliterary.org/bevel-summers/

Contact shenandoah@wlu.edu with any questions.

Food: A Vehicle for Personality

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Shenandoah’s new issue is featuring a piece of flash fiction by Nicholas Roerich Prize winner, Sharon Hasimito, entitled “Vindaloo.”The piece contains cancer, a subsequent death, and food. You would think that the first two would be the more attention worthy, but surprisingly it is food that takes center stage (or in this case center of the table). Hank Teroka remembers his wife through the meals that he has experienced with her. We are given very little description about her physical appearance and specific personality traits, but the types of food that she wants to eat and wants her husband to eat tell us everything we need to know. We find out that she is adventurous, caring and vivacious. Her husband, Hank, on the other hand, is more cautious and pragmatic. The fact that he is willing to try the things that she loved reinforces both the fact that he loved her and the fact that even after death his own decisions remain subject to hers.

I particularly liked this story because I’ve always said food can tell a lot about a person. I pay particular attention whenever eating is involved in a story and perhaps it is just my obsession with all things food related, but I like to think it helps me to develop a better understanding of the character. Like “Vindaloo” it can show whether a person is willing to try new things or not, but it can also tell a lot about a person’s background. For example, if a person only likes to eat McDonald’s perhaps they grew up with blue-collar parents who worked all of the time or if their comfort food is black-eyed peas and collard greens, you can bet on some type of Southern origin. Having the character eat something unusual is another tool that helps to create a more three-dimensional character and allows the author to segue into another aspect of their character’s personality.

A Somewhat Melodious Undertaking

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There have been countless studies showing that music improves intelligence. Recently, however, there has been some disagreement to as to whether or not it is beneficial to studying, especially when that studying involves memorization and numbers. Well, memorization is not my cup of tea. I got Calculus 101 out of the way my freshman year and I’m happy to say I’ll never take another math class again. Looking back, perhaps I shouldn’t have listened to the Rolling Stones so much when I was studying for exams- maybe it would have improved my performance, who knows?

Personally, I’ve always liked background noise when I’m writing. Complete silence makes me antsy. I find that it’s most helpful when I am writing because it helps me to block everything else out and let’s me focus solely on what I am doing. I have only one stipulation: there can be absolutely no lyrics. Slow tunes enable me to concentrate on my own words; if there is an alternate storyline going on in the song it invades my thoughts and permeates my work without my even realizing it. This definitely gets me into trouble when my iPod is on shuffle mode. The type of music depends on both my mood and the material that I am working on. I find that when I am working on creative writing, I tend to lean more towards jazz, mostly Chet Baker or John Coltrane. For critical essays, I stick with classical- there is something about it that just makes me feel smarter.

In my opinion, I think that music is an enormous help creatively. It can bring back specific memories you thought you had lost or help you imagine new places you never knew existed, it provides an escape that still allows you to remain grounded. What do you think, is music an aid or is it a distraction? And if you do listen to it, what do you listen to?

Poetry as Place

Lauren Starnes

One of the English classes I am taking this semester is Twenty-First Century Poetry: Here, Nowhere. The course is taught by the esteemed professor and poet, Lesley Wheeler who is a contributor to the current issue of Shenandoah. In Professor Wheeler’s class we are reading poetry and assessing how the poet describes a real or imagined space. We spent the first part of the term reading works focused on Hurricane Katrina. During the past few weeks I have become immersed in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, studying poetry by Cynthia Hogue, Nicole Cooley, and Nathasha Trethewey. Although I have never visited New Orleans or its surrounding areas; their poetry transported me to this beautiful, tragic, and unique landscape.

This week, however, we shifted to reading poetry depicting an imagined space, The Hollow Log Lounge by Shenandoah’s very own R.T. Smith, to be exact. I expected that reading poetry about a fictional place would be a completely different experience than reading about an actual place. However, I was surprised by what I discovered. After finishing Smith’s book, The Hollow Log Lounge was just as real of a place to me as the Mississippi Gulf Coast or New Orleans’ French Quarter.

It is the author’s job to transmute a real or imagined space on to the page, so that the place becomes real for the reader. This is the beauty of an immersive reading experience. To me, there are few better experiences then becoming totally engrossed in a poem or work of fiction. What are your thoughts on immersive reading? Do you think it is a detrimental experience? Is it better for the reading to be constantly aware of the author’s artifice?

Senior at Washington and Lee University. Originally from Chattanooga, TN. Majoring in English.

Holy… what?

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Professor Smith wrote in an earlier blog about the utilization of “I swan” in order to avoid using a stronger oath. His blog left me thinking what phrases I use in order to avoid committing a social error. The only thing that I could come up with is the somewhat trite “holy cow!” Perhaps it is redeemed by the fact that it possibly stems from Hinduism, but it still produces snickers from my peers when I inadvertently say it in a moment of surprise. I am again surprised by their laughter. I always thought of it as a common expression. But it seems that as we grow older the swear words become more common and the polite cover-ups less so. Curse words don’t seem to be nearly as shocking as a simple “holy cow” or “oh my gosh!” in everyday language.

And yet, when we see the curse word written on a page, we are shocked by it. Why? Why is the transformation from spoken word to written such a jump? I admit that I’m guilty of it. I’m offended by it in a way that I would never be if someone said it in casual conversation. Perhaps it is because the spoken swear word is fleeting and transient and the written word is permanent, there for the entire world to see.

So what are your thoughts? Are you like me and feel that there is a difference between written swear words and spoken ones? Or do you think that there’s no difference at all?

Speakin’ Southern

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The other day I was making polite conversation with some friends when someone I didn’t know very well interrupted me and said, “Where did you say you were from again? You have such a strong southern accent!” I was quite taken aback. Some people have told me that I have a slight one, but never more than that. I tried to think back over the last words issued from my mouth and couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary. Puzzled, I asked him why he thought so. He promptly replied, “Well, you just said you were fixing to go to the store.” So that qualified me as having the strongest southern accent he’d ever heard? And we were in Virginia! But I just smiled and conceded, “Well, I guess you have me there.”

On my way home I thought some more about the short exchange. It wasn’t that I was offended by the thought of having a southern accent; I actually think it’s a nice one to have. I’d just never thought of myself as having one. Sure, I use certain idioms common in Southern Georgia, but I am completely lacking in either the twang or lilt required in a southern tone. I feel as if I speak a partial dialect – I use the slight turns of phrase and yet I pronounce them in Standard English. For me, it has always been the pronunciation that makes the accent, not the words themselves.

Last semester in Professor Smith’s creative writing course we talked a lot about how colloquialisms are a more effective tool for providing a character’s dialect than changes in the orthography. Having read my share of books that looked as if they didn’t contain a word of English, I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Colloquialisms and idioms were definitely more successful than butchered spelling when trying to convey a certain tone of voice on the page. If you use enough colloquialisms the readers can and will imagine the accent for themselves. In light of my recent conversation, apparently that theory did not just apply to writing, but speaking as well. Use enough southern sayings and people will probably project a southern accent onto you whether you have one or not.

So what do you think, do colloquialisms an accent make?

@Shenandoah #AuthorsandSocialMedia

Lauren Starnes

Lately in our Shenandoah Internship meetings we have been discussing the shift from print to an online medium. We live in a world where practically everything and everyone seems to on the web, logged on, and high speed. In this fast paced and instant gratification society one has to wonder what will happen to print, authors, and literature in general.

Here at Shenandoah we have come up with a few ways to work within the online the community. The journal has a Facebook page, which is now under new management by the brilliant and witty team, Tim McAleenan and Caitlin Doyle. In addition, you can even follow your favorite literary journal on Twitter @ShenandoahLit! The idea of Shenandoah having a Twitter made me wonder what famous authors would subscribe to the popular social media site. After sifting through my mental catalogue of authors I came up with at least one writer who would definitely have a Twitter. Mark Twain, the legendary nineteenth century humorist and writer, was exactly the type of author who would have fully embraced Twitter. Twain’s illustrious wit is perfectly suited to the frank and concise nature of Twitter’s 140-character per Tweet format. I even took the liberty of choosing a few of my favorite Mark Twain quotes and converting them into proper Twitter-form. Enjoy these hypothetical Mark Twain tweets!

TheMarkTwain: Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint #hypochondriacs

TheMarkTwain: I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting. #healthnuts#lazydays#oldage

TheMarkTwain: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. #annoyingfashions#toughlifefornudists

TheMarkTwain: It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. #stupidquestions#ignorantpeople

What are your thoughts on authors using Twitter? Can you think of any other writers who would be avid “Tweeters”?

Senior at Washington and Lee University. Originally from Chattanooga, TN. Majoring in English.

Snooping out the Snopes

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If you aren’t familiar with the works of William Faulkner, you might be wondering about where the name of the blog originated. Prepare yourselves for enlightenment. The Snopes are a fictional Southern family from Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. They are at the roots of Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy that includes The Hamlet, The Mansion, and The Town. Faulkner presents these characters that dwell in Frenchmen’s Bend as crafty beyond belief. He begins in The Hamlet by illustrating in a rather ironic way the arrival of Flem Snopes into town. This memorable scapegrace will do anything to make a buck – be it working hard or letting others do the hard work for him. For example, after marrying the grocer’s daughter he then manages to extract a preposterous price for her mansion amidst a fog of rumors about buried gold coins. Each relative, whether closely or minutely related, has his or her own adventure (or misadventure as the case may be) adding up to a boisterous if somewhat chaotic compilation of tales.
Why use this unlikely band of characters as a muse for our blog? Perhaps it is because we wish to emulate their cleverness in order to obtain success. Perhaps it is because of our own motley ensemble of bloggers. Or maybe the title serves as a warning, a reminder not to be taken in by all of our words (though I must admit that they are wise ones) and to disagree with us every now and then.

What are your thoughts?

Some thoughts on being somewhat educated

Isabella Martin

As the semester, and the Shenandoah Internship, concluded this week, I prepared to return home to Southside Virginia, where I will spend some of the break working at the local library. Yesterday was my first day back at the library, and as I was wandering among the bookcases, trying to force books onto overcrowded shelves, the authors’ names and book titles jumped out at me as I passed, just like they always have. It’s almost like playing a word association game. As soon as I’ve seen an author’s name, certain thoughts spring to mind. Charles Dickens – orphans. David Foster Wallace – footnotes. Dixie Cash – seriously? I realized yesterday that many names and titles I had hardly known before this past semester had taken on different meanings. Umberto Eco now makes me ponder innocence and sincerity in a postmodern age. When the biography Papa Hemingway catches my eye, I remember that the author, A. E. Hotchner, was Hemingway’s friend and is said to have suggested the title of A Moveable Feast.

In the midst of this reflection, my own thoughts begin to sound pretentious to me. Highfalutin, as people around here might be expected to say, although I’ve never heard it said.

In “Two Ways of Seeing a River,” from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Twain, now that he has learned to see the river as a steamboat pilot, reflects “No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river.” He suggests a comparison between himself and a doctor who can no longer see the beauty in a woman because he is instead looking for the signs of disease in the color of her cheek. I don’t mean to say that when I became an English major, all the mystery went out of books. But I do think that my humility, my sense of the vastness of literary knowledge and my own inability to begin to understand even a significant portion of it, has been reduced somewhat by the new sense of knowingness that studying English intently has given me.

I don’t mean to say that getting an education is in any way a negative thing, but for writers, I know there is some debate over who is, well, cooler: the academic/career writer or the “real person” with a “real job” who writes based on their “real” experiences. To offer an example of the value of experience, I would put forth the Shenandoah Internship. I personally believe I have learned more than I likely ever would have known otherwise about publishing and literary journals without writing a single academic paper, but instead being occupied with the blog and other tasks–all part of the modern literary journal trade. Yet, all the pretentious thoughts I was thinking at the library I learned in a pretty intense, research-filled English course, and I derive a great deal of satisfaction from having taken it and I know I will write better for it. Both have been equally valuable to me. For writers and readers, is anything lost in becoming immersed academically in literature and writing as opposed to learning about literature through other experiences? Obviously an immeasurable amount of knowledge (and experience) is gained, but is there a hidden cost to becoming an academic (besides tuition)?

I Swan

R.T. Smith

“I swan.” I’ve heard it all my life, so far. My father still says it from time to time, and on occasion I catch myself using it in polite company, substituting the benign phrase for something less delicate. And yet, every now and then when someone says, “I swan,” I get this vivid image of the bird, elegant in the water, from a distance its feathers fresh-snow pristine. I may even think of Yeats, the swans at Coole, the one with Leda in its rough embrace. Well, maybe not that far.
But I know the phrase has nothing to do with birds or even much to do with the word “swan,” which can be backtracked to Swedish, Saxon, German. The Indo-European root means “to sing,” which the birds do, as well as whistle, whoop and all sorts of other discord. Pens and cobs and cygnets. All beside the point, as “I swan” is a mild oath, sometimes rendered as “I swanee,” but nothing to do with the river or the college of the literary journal. It’s a way of saying “I swear” without sounding crude. “Dodging the curse,” they call it in Ireland, as when an old landlady of mine in Gort emphasized statements by adding “be jay,” which was nothing to do with the blue bird but a way of not quite saying “By Jesus” while still exclaiming, still hitting the bold case exclamation mark.

So we say “I swan” either because we learned it early or to escape any penalties the Almighty has in store for those who use foul language. We seek refuge in fowl language, instead, but when someone says it, catches me off guard, I see a graceful thing gliding, and it lifts me, as if I had caught a little thermal and rose.
Does anyone use it a different way?

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.