Volume 47 marks a turning point for the Denver Quarterly and represents new editor Laird Hunt’s first hand at curating the content rather than overseeing work chosen by his predecessor, the poet Bin Ramke. When asked about his goals for the Denver Quarterly, Hunt says he aims to increase the drive for excellent fiction:
I am a novelist, and while the Quarterly has long been friendly to fiction writers, I think it is fair to say that it is better known as a venue for the best of contemporary poetry. I would love to see if we can make people rip open issues to get at the fiction in the way I know many do to get at the poetry.
Hunt says we can also expect more attention paid to “reviews, essays, and various kinds of conversations, be they traditional interviews or transcripts of panels, etc.” With fiction from writers like Lance Olsen, Brooks Sterritt, Elisabeth Sheffield, Dan Beachy-Quick, Lily Hoang, Matthew Kirkpatrick, and others, Numbers 3 and 4 move towards giving fiction equal footing in the Denver Quarterly.
At first glance, the covers of Numbers 3 and 4 give us an indication of how these issues might differ. Number 3’s cover is a drawing of a sneakered mono-ped sipping from a fountain above the words ‘drinking up the moon juice…’ Drink up seems like a good way to come at Number 3, an issue in which oddities and indulgences are encouraged. Number 4’s cover is a handmade collage called “Waste Wave,” which contains a pair of strangely-shaped Levi’s, what could be a shoreline, and a sign with the word ’emergency.’ Both covers suggest that contents inside are curious, protean, and interested in form-shifting as well as altered perspective. Number 4’s cover, however, implies an urgency, while Number 3 is more of an unhurried investigation. Death, ghosts, and other types of life beyond the grave are some of the themes Numbers 3 and 4 explore with varying degrees of humor, from David Carillo’s review of Caryl Pagel’s Experiments That I Should Like Tried at My Own Death to Turkish poet Melih Cevdet’s “Flower of Darkness” and “We’ve Turned into Clouds.”
Number 3 contains work by 32 writers and focuses more on poetry than Number 4. There are four essays (all on poetry) and an interview with Evie Shockley. There are three pieces of fiction, two of which are framed as nonfiction (an art review draft and a transcription). Number 4 has 32 writers as well and contains four essays (two on prose, one on what the author calls a book of “lyric research,” and one on poetry). There is also an excerpt from a book-in-progress on Henry James going to war, as well as seven pieces of fiction.
Let’s take a look at the fiction in Number 3. The first is Lance Olsen’s “An Arsonist’s Guide to the Empire.” This piece takes us through an attempt to describe an 8-hour experimental film by Andy Warhol. By including crossed-out words, revisions, comments to himself, and incomplete sentences, Olsen allows us to see how a mind works when reviewing a piece of art.
In An Arsonist’s Guide to the Empire, filmic provocateur Senna Cello both celebrates and deconstructs jesus i hate the word undoes? ____ complicates? ____ the terms of OK complicates Warhol’s celebrated controversial undertaking.
At first this seems uncomfortable to read, but the crossed-out words and stop-and-start quality of the language has a pleasant give to it. Including errors goes along with 3’s playful cover, and shows truth as being a give and take, prodding thing tough to pin down. This is language that is real, correcting itself as it goes, like in a conversation where the corrections one makes are marked yet still present. This text gives permission to let your errors breathe, wobble, and work themselves out.
Another outstanding piece is Elisabeth Sheffield’s “1 Revenant File,” a humorous, fictional transcription of a man who died in 1995. The dead literary folklorist is speaking familiarly to someone called Tim, who has asked for an account of his passing.
Timmy, I loved your very gizzards and now you’re asking me, a preeminent if no longer extant literary folklorist, to participate in your anthropological study? As if I were some Baffin Island savage bearing witness to civilization and its discontents?
Speaking of savage, the final fiction in Number 3 is Brooks Sterritt’s “Libra,” a story about a man named Fred who seems to have violated odor laws and desecrated human remains. The piece is tightly crafted, odd, and funny. The police attempt to communicate with a man in his house in the spirit of common decency, yet they don’t seem to make much progress. What other laws has this man violated? What’s he doing inside his house? Sitting scared? Doing something depraved? Desecrating more dead bodies?
The first piece of fiction in Number 4 is an excerpt of Dan Beachy-Quick’s novel, An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky. A strange man—who makes sure to tell the class he is not the professor—leads a discussion on Moby Dick and the ideas of death in the book.
Ahab knew another world hid darkly behind this bright one, and in that ancient quest, as every hero must, he found a way to thrust himself into the dark world where living and dying aren’t opposites.
The narrator intersperses his monologue with questions. Is death a return to anonymity? Why is Ahab, who declares himself ‘madness maddened,’ so magnetic? Is class really about learning or reading? What is the point of book, words, worlds?
Next are two stories about the small, slow deaths that gradually weaken relationships. Lily Hoang’s story “the Gamblers,” shows us the crinkles in the relationship of a couple that has been together for “like a billion light years.” Farrah is good to her boyfriend, Mike, “she just doesn’t care what he’s interested in if it doesn’t interest her.” Another type of relationship is explored in Matthew Kirkpatrick’s “The Work Marriage,” a story in which two lonely coworkers start to eat at the “shitty” place instead of the good place “because their coworkers preferred the good place.” There “he would order salad and fries and she would order sandwich and sweet potato fries, and they would split their lunches, each taking half of the other’s food into their mouths.” Will the coworkers find happiness in their work marriage? Can their relationship translate to a real, at-home marriage? This is a story with no proper nouns, which makes it both more anonymous and more intimate in showing us the many small endings that occur when new relationships form.
Altogether, the fiction in Numbers 3 and 4 is outstanding, exciting, and well-placed alongside a slew of fantastic poets like Mary Jo Bang, Anne Carson, Robert Currie, Justin Marks, Unica Zürn, Melih Cevdet Anday, Susan Howe, Valerie Hsiung, Joseph Wood, and many more. The essays are also well worth reading, particularly Lindsay’s Drager’s “The Shape of Our Lacks: Migration as Method in the Work of Bobbie Louise Hawkins.” Hunt seems to be making great strides toward publishing top-quality fiction, and these issues clearly reflect his efforts.
Maria Anderson is from Montana and lives in Providence, RI. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Atlas Review, Metazen, Fiddleback, NY Arts Magazine, and others. You can find her online at mariaanderson.net.