From Volume 35: A story by E. G. Silverman

E. G. Silverman

Four Leads

 

Yesterday, alone, I drove for many hours through the geography of my childhood, to the house where I was young. I wanted to see an old playmate of mine. But it was gone. Gone like time. Only a stump left. A fat round stump of concentric circles. And my memory of it.

I was a tomboy. I loved to climb trees, feel the rough bark rubbing against the fabric of my denim overalls, listen to the leaves rustling around my head like angels, and breathe deep the scent of the wood and the sap. I was comforted by these beings that nestled me in their arms.

When I was a little girl, a grand old sugar maple stood guard beside our house. Its green fingers tickled my bedroom window. My mommy told me the tree was a ladder to heaven. She said that if I climbed too high in the maple, I would find myself up in the sky and unable to return. I didn’t believe her, but I steered clear of that tree anyway, just to be on the safe side. Every day I would gaze at the tree, beckoning me like a gateway to a magical land.

In the Spotlight: E.G. Silverman

When it comes to writing, E.G. Silverman is blunt: “[T]here’s no magic involved. …[A]t the end of the day, writing is hard work, and only those who are serious about it will be successful.” The author of the story “Four Leads,” appearing in volume XXXV of The Worcester Review, Silverman here explains his writing process and influences (and what his writerly instincts would have him save if his house were on fire).  


F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have to say something.” As the author of four novels, what is your response to this? 

To paraphrase the Pope, who am I to disagree with F. Scott Fitzgerald?  However, in my experience, most writers write simply because they have to. Maybe they have something to say. Maybe they don’t. Do I? I’m not really sure, but I suppose that if my primary reason for writing was because I had something to say, I’d have said it by now and been long done with the entire enterprise. Writing is tough and, if anything, it gets tougher the more I’ve written. So, at the risk of over-generalizing, what writers have in common, at least writers who’ve been at it for decades, is some overwhelming, all-consuming, annoyingly relentless inner voice that just won’t leave them alone, a voice that needs an outlet, a voice that demands putting words on paper (or okay, a computer screen), a voice that makes them go to work every day, writing, writing, and writing some more. If that’s what Fitzgerald meant by having something to say, then, who am I to disagree?

You mention on your website that you have worked with Brian Morton, Sheila Kohler, Carol DeChellis Hill, and Jonathan Baumbach. Could you talk about how these writers have helped you develop your craft?

Congratulations to TWR Editor Parker Towle

I'm delighted to to share the happy news that poetry editor Parker Towle's second full-length collection of poetry, The World Spread Out, was for published in April 2015 by Antrim House Books.

“Parker Towle’s poems achieve a fine balance between our coming and going on the face of the earth and the magical presence of the earth itself. An inveterate hiker, he testifies to human beauty and human difficulty, those flashes of feeling incited by terrain, exertion, camaraderie, and the insight love bestows. His recall of a campground or adolescent moment feels deeply accurate, the stuff of lived imagination.”~Baron Wormser 

Parker will be a guest on Bookshelf, NHPR on August 7, and he will also be reading at the Gale Free Library in Holden, MA library on Sept 16 at 6:30.

Congratulations to BILiNE Contributors

Congratulations to the following contributors to The Worcester Review whose work has been selected for inclusion in Best Indie Lit in New England Volume 2!

Douglas W. Margeson, short story "Barton's Pipe," TWR Volume 33
Karen Nunley, short story, short story, "Thirteenth Summer," TWR Volume 34
Colin Dekeersgieter, poem, "Gutting," TWR Volume 34
Dmitry Berenson, poem, "The Fishing Village," TWR Volume 34
Judy Ireland, poem, "My Pillow, a Stone," TWR Volume 33


There will be a a release party for the 2nd volume of BILiNE at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20, at Nick's Bar and Restaurant, 124 Millbury St., Worcester.  The reading will be co-sponsored by the Worcester County Poetry Association.


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From Volume 35: A poem by William Jolliff

William Jolliff

 

Explanations for the Night

 

 

Her doctor, she says, claims he can't do a thing

for her other troubles until she starts to sleep.

Anybody who goes a day or two without it

is likely to forget things, lose things, maybe

even find things that aren't really there.

In the Spotlight: William Jolliff

The writer of “Explanations for the Night” and "For Rebecca, Off to Spain,” two poems published in The Worcester Review Volume XXXV, William Jolliff is a professor, old-time country and traditional music enthusiast, and poet who here offers writing tips and insights into his own work as a poet. 

You have noted on the George Fox University faculty page that you are interested in traditional Appalachian and Midwestern music. Could you discuss how your interest and involvement in these genres has influenced your poetry?

That's really hard to say. I assume there may be some mutual influence but not much that would lend itself to easy correspondences. I've loved old-time country and traditional music since the cradle, but other than the shared fascination with words, such art forms seem very different to me from literary poetry. When I write songs in those genres, I put a very different kind of formal demands on myself than I do with my poetry, which is largely (more or less) free verse. Probably the main influence might simply be that the kinds of people who show up in my poems are often people who like old-time country music and live in that little demographic slice. I did happen to notice a few summers back that I'd written about forty poems of sixteen lines each: four, four-line stanzas with about four pulses to the line. That happens to be the structure of a traditional fiddle tune... So I suppose on some deep structural level there's a bit of merging going on.

You have also noted that you like to focus on countercultural writers. Could you share why and which works in particular have stuck with you and your writing? 

From Volume 35: A poem by Becky Kennedy

Becky Kennedy

 

Golfing

 

 

It's Sunday morning and sun the color

of honey spills on the kitchen counter;

it’s ten or eleven o’clock and they

fill our kitchen, our son and his new wife

and their friends and the laughing, the way that

people laugh when laughing is like breathing,

laughing about beer and golf and bad luck

and graduate school, laughing at jobs they’ve

had or never had, the two wives rolling

eyes, laughing, planning Sunday. His new wife

humming as if she were baking or were

planning something really nice like golfing

while you test your clubs in the living room

where I sort my photos. In the night you