Adam Clay

The Center for Writers at the University of South Mississippi published this volume in 2021. There are a couple poetry standouts, Stacey Balkin's ode to the bayou country, Benediction, and Clare Banks' Lying about the childhood urge to lie about their family. To have two such standouts in poetry seems rare with my literary journal reading, as all the poetry usually seems so contrived and so preciously handled - but these were about something concrete and the lyricism not so heavy as to veil the themes. In Fiction, Fei Sun's Shadow tells of a grandfather's actual shadow that grows to envelop everything in the family, a blunt metaphor but the execution was wildly evocative. And Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirk describes artistic obsession with Untitled Sculptural Disturbance.

Not a bad journal entry, but not universally standout material.

3 1/2 bones!!!… (mais)