Colorado Review – Summer 2003

This last issue to be edited by David Milofsky (“…it’s important to know when to write the conclusion…”) is a study in contrasts. For the most part, the fiction is plainspoken, colloquial, and of the moment. The poetry, on the other hand, tends toward the abstract, fragmented, and difficult, with marvelous syntactical configurations in poems both long and short.

This last issue to be edited by David Milofsky (“…it’s important to know when to write the conclusion…”) is a study in contrasts. For the most part, the fiction is plainspoken, colloquial, and of the moment. The poetry, on the other hand, tends toward the abstract, fragmented, and difficult, with marvelous syntactical configurations in poems both long and short. Of the half-dozen solid pieces of fiction here, my favorite is “Urban Renewal” by William Henry Lewis, the emotionally satisfying story of how one woman responds to losing her son and parts of her neighborhood to racism, violence, and indifference with a private memorial of celebration and survival. In this issue, which features the work of nearly 30 poets, the opening of Brenda Hillman’s poem, “On Carmerstrasse,” could almost serve as a sort of summary of much of the poetry: “Beneath balustrades selected against / Your going, a breezened / Day anticipates a hope; / Then the walk into / Each word is infinite / And navigates the stumble.” These are exciting and challenging poems, many with an odd, backward motion, a syntax un-doing itself, as in this poem by Sundin Richards: “Adamant is / diamond from / the first.” A personal essay by David Hicks about life as a divorced dad and reviews of recent poetry releases from university and independent presses round out the issue. [Colorado Review, The Center for Literary Publishing, Department of English, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $9.50. www.colostate.edu/Depts/English/coloradoreview/review.htm] – SR