Is Confession Good for the Soul? Time to Find Out

Welcome back to Blog del Sol! Did you miss me? No? Well, I understand; our relationship is still so new. We're still figuring out how we feel about each other. But I missed you. Not to make you feel guilty. Just saying.

So, in the interest of strengthening our relationship, I have a confession to make: I am a recovering print-only snob. What I mean is that I used to be one of those people who thought that online-only publications--well, I thought they all sucked, to be blunt about it. And this was not a situation where I had perused a great many online publications and had developed an informed opinion on the topic. No, I was mainly just prejudiced based on the medium a publication appeared in. Does that make me a mediumist?

A recovering mediumist, that is, because fortunately I have been disabused of my narrow bigotry by such publications as storySouth, failbetter.com, and Web del Sol's very own La Petite Zine. These journals and others like them are publishing some of the best prose and poetry available on the literary scene today, period. Disregard them at your peril! You’ve been warned, callow youth (or jaded elder).

To prove my point, check out the two short but great poems by Kathryn Mockler in the latest issue of La Petite Zine. These are poems that tell stories--not personal stories, but very human stories nonetheless. The first one, "Wedding Reception," envisions how God and the Devil might get along if they were seated at the same table at the event named in the title:

You've got
a good sense of
humour, God said.
I don't know why
I never
liked you.
God patted
the Devil's shoulder
affectionately.
I don't know either,
said the Devil.
I think it
might have had
something to do
with bad
behaviour.

Mockler's second poem, "Rock Out," is suffused with grim humor:

This weekend
I'm going to
rock out, he said.

Good for you,
I said. I'm planning
to kill myself.

The language is simple, but spiked with strong verbs and clear voices. And both poems give a sense of payoff that poetry too often lacks. You read these poems because you enjoy reading them, not because you're trying to get in your RDA of poetry. So do yourself a favor and go read them in full. Go on, treat yourself. You deserve it.

Reality Got You Down? Here's a Hit of Fiction to Get You Through the Day

Most of us can recall that moment when we first fell in love with books and stories and reading. For me it was the Saturday afternoon in fourth grade when I was snooping through my mom's closet, looking for--well, I don't know what I was looking for; some interesting and hidden artifact from the adult world, I suppose. (I was a little too young to be looking for dirty magazines; that came later.) Anyway, what I found was a cardboard box on the closet floor, filled with paperback science-fiction and fantasy novels. Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren was way over my head, but Robert Heinlein's The Rolling Stones was about right; the math and science parts were beyond my ken, but the character and plot stuff was fun, and the writing was just challenging enough to make me have to reach for it. And reach I did, into that cardboard box, again and again. I think my mom was so pleased by my enthusiasm for reading that I didn't even get in trouble for closet-snooping.

Since then my reading tastes have broadened considerably, but a love of fiction is the acorn from which all my subsequent love of reading and writing has grown, which is why I'm glad to see fiction on Web del Sol. Do we got fiction? Boy do we got fiction. Not only do we link to, like, a million or so good literary journals that publish excellent fiction, but we also grow our own. See the estimable 5_trope for a great example: "Three Fantasies about Women I Sort of Know," a short-short by Trevor Houser.

This story has a sense of humor, thank god, and it's well-written besides. The tone is generally light, but Houser sneaks in events and turns of phrase that raise the emotional stakes, until by the end it almost feels as if the fate of humanity depends on the possiblities inherent in the fantasy life of one relatively small-minded man. Here's a paragraph from the story's first section, "Fantasy No. 1: My Tennis Instructor Sue":

Life is perfect from that point on. We spend our days full of contentment. We have intercourse all the time, and she revitalizes my backhand. I school a roving gang of howler monkeys on how best to bash in the heads of possible rescue parties. Sue keeps busy on her tan using real coconut oil because the island we've chosen is loaded with them.

Sweetness and aggression, violence and tenderness, and prose that reads easily without being simple or dumb. This, my friends, is a good story. Go ye forth and read, and look at the rest of what 5_trope has to offer while you're in town. Tell 'em Blog del Sol sent ya.

Hello, World! BLOG DEL SOL Has Arrived!

Greetings, wanderers in the literary wilderness, mariners on the wine-dark Internet. It's time to heave that sigh of relief you've been saving for a special occasion: Blog del Sol is here to help you find the short story, the essay, the book review or literary journal or political rant (yes, we've got those too) you've been seeking for lo these many megabytes. Lost in the mountains without a map? Fear not; the Saint Bernard has arrived, and he brought you a cask full of poetry.

If you're here, you probably already know that Web del Sol is one of the best places to look for literary content on the Web. That's been true ever since Michael Neff founded the site in 1994, back when Mosaic was the leading Web browser, Kurt Cobain was still alive, and none of us knew anything about Monica Lewinsky or her blue dress. The site has grown organically since then, until now it resembles a topiary maze planted on the site of a massive fertilizer spill. There's so much here--so much top-notch literature; so many informative interviews with talented, kind, articulate authors; so many video clips and contest deadlines and manifestos and "best of" lists--that the site can seem overwhelming.

That's where Blog del Sol comes in. Every week we'll be highlighting some of WDS's best content, both as a way to turn you on to some excellent literary culture and to help you learn your way around the place. For instance, you might know that WDS provides links to great journals like Exquisite Corpse and Missouri Review; but did you know that WDS publishes no fewer than seven of its own literary journals, such as La Petite Zine, Double Room, and Del Sol Review? We also have a site that reviews literary journals and their Web sites (Portal del Sol) and a site dedicated to the InterBoard Poetry Community and its monthly poetry contests. There's so much great stuff here that I'm going to have to make up a whole new cliché to describe it all. I'll get right on that.

In the meantime, please direct your attention to Jan Owen's poem "The Irises," in WDS's poetry journal Perihelion. I love this poem for the way it addresses a very recognizable, very human experience--the death of a loved one--without being an ordinary lyric poem about the poet's life experiences. I tend not to like poetry that's too baldly autobiographical, and this poem skirts that territory neatly without veering into full-on depersonalized Language poetry. The grammar and syntax are relatively straightforward; it's in the images that this poem really sings:

There is my camera closed
on the promise of smiles,
and the square black bible from school
with its rainbow-crocheted bookmark
of Celtic rings and crested snakes
hallowing chapter 10 of Job.

Be sure to prowl around the rest of Perihelion while you're there, and we'll see you next week with more of Web del Sol's greatest hits. Promise! Cross my heart and hope to blog.