words There are other places in the world to worry about besides the Middle East. No one knows that better than the folks at The Virginia Quarterly Review. They’re determined to keep Africa in our hearts and minds. Last year, they presented a series of articles on widespread AIDS in Africa. And now, in the current issue, their focus is on the effect of the oil business on that continent.
Of the four essays, two—John Ghazvinian’s look at how foreign oil companies have been extracting millions of barrels of oil from the Niger Delta with little or no benefit to the local people, and J. Malcolm Garcia’s look at the nefarious politics of oil in Chad—are especially notable in their use of a narrative journalism style. In fact, their pacing is suppler than the issue’s two short stories.
 A near-flawless winter edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review expands the social conscience of the literati. |
Testifying to VQR’s signature variety, the other big feature of the issue is a symposium on “Lyric Poetry and the Problem of People”—i.e., is lyric poetry’s concentration on “I” always a deterrent to a wider social focus? After David Baker’s excellent but somewhat obvious points about how cultural identity is often developed through interiority and self-interest, the symposium takes flight with Linda Gregerson’s look at the political poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, and with Stanley Plumly’s essay about Wallace Stevens’ transference of literal figures into archetypes.
“Lyric Poetry and the Problem of Concrete Detail” could be another VQR symposium one day. The poems in this issue, by Glyn Maxwell, Debra Bruce and others, demonstrate how good contemporary poets are skilled in the art of incorporating the plain things of the world with refined elements of language and style.
There’s so much more to mention: J. Hoberman’s examination of the political and cultural implications behind Steven Spielberg’s “entertainments” Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal and War of the Worlds; Charles Burns’ photographs consisting of two disparate images yoked together; David J. Morris’ account of American soldiers’ experiences in Iraq; Harry Berger Jr.’s essay about Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”; and Pauline W. Chen’s “Morbidity and Mortality: A Surgeon Under Exam.”
And there’s very little to criticize. I had to force myself beyond Berger’s amatuerish beginning: “You go to the museum and you see this huge Thing staring you in the face and there doesn’t seem much you can say or feel about it except: Wow!” But I was glad I did. Chen’s essay, on the other hand, begins with a masterful description of a surgeon at work, and then sags.
The issue ends appropriately with a lovely piece by David Rieff, son of Susan Sontag, about his late mother’s legacy, regrets, and passion for erudition—“for her, the joy of living and the joy of knowing really were one and the same.”