Oh my, what a shock for literary snobs to behold a comic book image on the cover of the new issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review. Regular readers of the journal know, however, that one of the features of Ted Genoways’ editorship is frequent nods to the art of the graphic novel and all its permutations.
But wait—that’s not quite what’s going on this time. The “spring fiction” issue contains three “superhero stories,” each with an accompanying illustration by Gary Panter that looks like the cover of a comic book. These stories, says Genoways in his introduction, “share the goal of demythologizing the nature of heroism.” The main character of Scott Snyder’s “The 13th Egg,” for instance, is a war veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder. The whole package has a dual effect: Immersion in a specific theme offers much pleasure (by the end of George Singleton’s “Man Oh Man—It’s Manna Man,” the satire lies replete in the mind, like a thought-through thought), and at the same time the theme often feels forced (Tom Bissell’s “My Interview With the Avenger” begins with the line, “This is a story about heroes”).
Stand-out literary journals present a mix of well-known and lesser-known poets, and VQR is no exception. What’s especially striking about the mix in this issue is the gap between the two camps’ writing styles. Big names Charles Simic, Charles Wright, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser and Linda Pastan are represented by poems that employ relatively spare language and imagery, while “small names” such as Temple Cone and Sara du Sablon strain—not unsuccessfully—to concoct aesthetic and intellectual sparks. You must earn the right, VQR seems to be saying, to speak quietly and still command attention.
Regular readers also know that VQR dishes up more than fiction and poetry. Among the highlights: Bill Sizemore’s profile of Pat Robertson—the almost overwhelming amount of objective details Sizemore provides doesn’t muddle his strong voice; Ezra Pound manuscripts that are reproduced so clearly that a reader may feel he’s pilfered them from Pound’s desk drawer; and an intimate investigation by Kwame Dawes of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, with stunning photos by Joshua Cogan.
But back to poetry, and what is arguably the issue’s ultimate highlight: In “Jamie’s Hair,” a poem—perhaps more of a prose poem—about his son who was the German teacher slain at Virginia Tech last year, Michael Bishop generates solace by artfully organizing a wealth of details from a full, if shortened, life, and relishing (and proving) how memory can be more sensuous than real time. The subject alone commands attention, but Bishop sets out for transcendence, and makes it there.