American Chordata, New Literary and Arts Magazine (Clara B. Jones)

American Chordata, New Literary and Arts Magazine*

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones

Five Stars

Free form poetry, as well as, fiction and artwork emphasizing emotional experience

The current (September/October) issue of Poets & Writers says the new journal, American Chordata (http://americanchordata.org), “is on its way to solidifying an editorial identity with an impressive debut issue”. The magazine, published twice each year (Spring, Autumn), is currently available in hard copy (from booksellers) and is free to download online (PDF). AC is open for submissions year-round, and guidelines are available on their website. The first issue includes three selections of fiction, work by eight poets, and two photographic series, in addition to other visuals. The new magazine's Editor, Ben Yarling, told me (via e-mail) that, “We're founded on the belief that a good literary magazine can celebrate sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same 5.5” x 8.5” page. What interests us most—what we love to read and what we want to share with our readers—is work that's new but not slick or sarcastic, that's brave enough to give us emotional detail and skilled enough to do it without melodrama. Stories and poems (and works of art and photography) that are surprising but not flashy. Unusual but not esoteric. Clear-sighted without being cynical. Cool without being cold. We try to do what we do with a deliberate respect for the plurality of human experience.”

Upon reading AC for the first time, I immediately noticed that the magazine's masthead lists an “Art Director”, Bobby Doherty, and that artwork (photography and painting, in particular) plays a major role in the publication, so much so that I have come to think of AC as a small “coffee-table” publication. I asked Yarling whether he considers AC to be a combined Literature-Art magazine. His response? “Absolutely! One of the most rewarding aspects of putting together this first issue was creating conversations between the writing and the art and photography. Conversations in which both sides carry more-or-less equal weight. We included two photo features in Issue One, and we have a couple already lined up for Issue Two that Bobby Doherty and I are really excited about.”

As Ben's comments suggest, AC is seriously curated, reminiscent of several magazines that I read on a regular basis (TANK, Sleek, Zoo, Interview) characterized by deliberate attention to detail and cross-referencing of themes and images. Like many European publications, AC explores numerous aspects of Human Nature, including, its ambiguous and unconscious dimensions. AC, however, is targeted to the literate American audience but is not self-conscious, elitist, or patronizing, evidence of the editors' concern that their magazine should be accessible to the general reader. In addition to appreciating AC's content, one is immediately impressed by the respect the magazine offers to contributors, a posture evident in Yarling's introductory “Note” and by the placement of contributors' bios directly after the Table of Contents. The magazine's title, also, reflects respect for readers as well as contributors, since the biological category, Chordata, includes many of the most complex, (evolutionarily) recent, and social organisms on Earth (including Humans and other primates). AC continues the tradition of highlighting Literature and Art as fundamental modes of communication.

Diana Xin's short fiction presents a portrait of lovers, neither of whom likes to talk. This (heterosexual) couple is not OK. After an uncomfortable interaction, the sexual act becomes an avoidance mechanism rather than a method to reconcile, and the female character is designed in a stereotyped way—no agency, no identity, no name. These young people simply settle for whatever happens to come along, imputing significance to irrelevant things in order to feel alive. Ultimately, though Xin's minimalist writing is well-crafted, her characters did not sustain my interest, nor did they tell me anything that I wanted to know. The ladder in the center of the couple's studio apartment might be a metaphor for escape or transcendence; but, ultimately, there is no sign of relief or progress. Colby Halloran's short story describes a family obsessed by rules violated by a father's infidelity. Echoing Xin's contribution, Halloran's piece addresses identity fractured and ill-defined and is effectively illustrated by a haunting, unsentimental painting whose markings and reflections are reminiscent of tears. The most expressionistic and, in my opinion, the most effective, piece of fiction is Carianne King's coming-of-age story featuring a vulnerable high-school student with an ineffective and ineffectual mother. A temporary facial injury serves as a metaphor for the girl's unstable self-image, though it is clear that her intelligence and insight may rescue her from a grim present and depressing future. All three stories belong to the American tradition of “grotesque” or “Gothic” fiction (Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Bobbie Ann Mason); however, the strongest examples of this genre raise questions of morality. With the possible exception of King's piece, none of these stories rises to that bar. As Paul Fry (Yale) pointed out, literature doesn't have to reconcile issues, but it should make us better citizens.

The quality of poetry in AC's first issue rises above its fiction. As a poet, I have a few “pet peeves”, a major one being that words or phrases should not seem obvious or expected or formulaic. For the most part, this wasn't a problem; however, Cal Graves' fragment, “Living Forever”, made me think of a Woody Allen joke (“I want to live forever; so far, so good.”). Distracting. Many contemporary poems considered publication-worthy begin with an imagistic or a concrete phrase or sentence leading into an experiential space or interlude like daydreaming or feelings/emotions or “ostensive moments” (Paul Fry). CA's selections are no exception, and D. Eric Parkinson's poems are excellent examples of this form (“You've seen the boy on the bus/Whose brothers beat him?/.../Think, though, of a bee-less world;/In breathtaking, useless rows.”). The poem, “Saccades”, by Emma Furman attaches words to feelings with an effect of hallucination (“There is no happy childhood. You just grow away.”), and Sarah V. Schweig's poem, “Stories (II)”, interestingly, produces a type of visual-auditory enjambment (“It is your last night on Earth. I am unaware./.../It is your last night, I am unaware, and have nothing to tell her./.../Tell me..../”). Soren Bliefnick's poetry is very strong. His prose poem, “Curio Storage”, “unspools” (Helen Vendler's referent) like a prayer or supplication ending, seemingly, inevitably, with the phrase, “time resumed”, as if what came before was an interlude of dreaming, a distortion of reality pulling back on itself, becoming whole (“I am the absolver of gooseflesh, I knew.”).

The expertly-chosen artwork unifies the issue by continual cross-referencing and interweaving of images, characters, events, and themes throughout text and artwork. Thus, yellow, green, and red are iterated. Images occur recursively [balloons, horses, plants, space (NASA, astronauts, atmosphere, altitude) and themes are repurposed—impermanence, phallic symbols (ice-cream cone, ladder, charred trees, tears), hands, social insects, sand...many more]. As anyone who has assembled a coherent project will understand, such curation takes a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and a lot of work. AC is, in my experience, a virtually unique publication, indeed, a carefully- and beautifully-crafted product. When I encountered Talena Sanders' remarkable series of photographs titled, “Body Memory”, it occurred to me that the magazine would, not only, make a “coffee-table” volume for pleasurable perusal, but could, also, become a source of games whereby players might compete to identify the largest number of repeated references or themes or list the most interpretations for a given work of art or poem or story. My five-star rating of American Chordata is a measure of its impeccable production and of my enthusiasm to have it receive the largest possible audience.

*Originally published in The Review Review, 2016