Decant – 2004

The ten stories of this issue are eclectic in style and, alas, quality: most are engaging, many are well-written, and some could use a bit more work. Descant opens with Paul H. Williams’ “Seeds in the Cellar” about a young man who is somewhat embarrassed by his Cherokee heritage but embraces it in a private moment of mourning for his dead grandfather. The ten stories of this issue are eclectic in style and, alas, quality: most are engaging, many are well-written, and some could use a bit more work. Descant opens with Paul H. Williams’ “Seeds in the Cellar” about a young man who is somewhat embarrassed by his Cherokee heritage but embraces it in a private moment of mourning for his dead grandfather. “Good Works,” by Vivan Lawry, takes us to China, where the patriarch of a missionary family loses his leg to gangrene. Kurt Ayau defies political correctness with “Culture Clash,” in which a librarian complains of the “East Wajooans,” a member of whom he insults, resulting in his having to participate in a ritual, which he botches. The story is pointed yet humorous, putting a mirror to our own secret assumptions about Others. My favorite line of the issue appears in M. Elizabeth Weiser’s “The End of the World,” in which a travel writer, suffering the loss of her husband to suicide, treks to a point in Canada called “the end of the world” by the Micmac Indians. She is told by a companion that this place is not an end but a beginning; wryly, she notes, “I came 5000 miles to see a failure of perception.” Descant‘s poems are short and well-crafted – the one standout, I thought, was Charles Harper Webb’s “Ceci N’est Pas Une Poeme,” which takes the ego, beatniks, and bongos out of the popular conception of poetry, asks the reader to replace them with beautiful images, then humbly asks something few poets ever will: “Forget me.” [descant, Department of English, Texas Christian University, TCU Box 297270, Fort Worth TX 76129.E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $12.] – Jennifer Gomoll