Southern Literature's Journal

Southern Literature's Journal

Southern Literature

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Grotesque!

[08 Aug 2012|10:27pm]

thewhippoorwill

"Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

(Flannery O'Connor, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction")

Sorry if that's been posted by eighteen people already over the years. It's just one of my favorites, and it seemed like a good way of getting started.

Now I wonder if anyone's still around...

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[11 Aug 2008|02:25pm]

tabby_of_doom

Rick Bragg. Who's read him?

Let's talk.

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New literary magazine

[05 Jun 2008|12:20pm]

helima

[

mood

awake

]

New South

Campus Box 1894
Georgia State University
MSC 8R0322 Unit 8
Atlanta, GA 30303-3083

E-mail: New_south <at> langate.gsu.edu
Web: www.review.gsu.edu

Simultaneous submissions: yes Email submissions: yes for international submissions / Query first Reading period: year-round Response time: 3-5 months Payment: copies Contests: yes, see website ISSN: 1078-3121 Founded: 2007 Issues per year: 2 Copy price: $5 Average pages: 165 Sample price (postpaid): Current: $5 / Back: $3 Subscription (individuals) 1 year: $8 Subscription (institutions) 1 year: $14

Publisher’s description: In the inaugural issue of New South, Jake Adam York speaks of the responsibility of being a “Southern” writer, of writing conditioned by place. While we work within the literary traditions of a geographic “Old South,” we are not a “Southern” journal, with its myriad implications. We are Southern by default, not by design. Your work does not have to be set in the South or refer to the South for us to consider it. We are dedicated to finding and publishing the best work from artists around the world.

Inside Volume 1, Number 1: Keith Lee Morris mines his fever dreams, and Jon Sindell chronicles an aging hippie’s struggles with fatherhood. Billy Reynolds’s speaker loves his ducks, and Cody Lumpkin’s catastrophic wing shacks become and hover. Brian Ray discusses the rise of the “9/11 novel,” and Sarah Manguso’s Siste Viator gives reviewer Anis Shivani something to smile about.

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Allen Tate in Russian

[27 Apr 2008|12:20pm]

k_a_t_z

Аллен Тейт (1899-1979)

ОДА ПАВШИМ КОНФЕДЕРАТАМ

За строем строй, с готовностью небрежной
Надгробия сдаются в плен ненастью
Под ветра вой, что память разметает
И в пасти рвов кидает листьев плоть
В давно привычном таинстве причастья
Перед сезонной вечностью распада…
И избран вознестись в дыханьи мощном,
Страшась небес взыскующего взгляда,
Прошепчет лист о смерти неизбежной.

Осень запустение несёт
Земле, где память проросла травою
Из бездыханных тел, чья плоть гниёт,
Чужую жизнь рождая строй за строем.
Не первый тут промчался листопад!
Ноябрь кичливый с тщанием вандала
Пятнает гнилью ряд могильных плит
И ангелов потерям счёт ведёт.
Вот треснуло крыло, рука упала…
Бездушье лиц застывших сердце сжало,
Тяжёл горгоний взгляд.
Густеет воздух, грудь сковало,
Мир обернулся вязкою тюрьмою –
Ты словно краб слепой, что вяло
Ворочаясь, клешнями шевелит.

Это всё ветер, только лишь ветер
Мятые листья кружит…

Ты знаешь, стоя молча под стеной,
Тот зов, который слышит зверь ночной,
Что чует кровь и жертву ищет жадно,
Суровых сосен строй и дымный мрак,
Сигнал внезапный, бой – ты знаешь, как
Потопом бурным пруд вскипает хладный.
Зенона немоту, и Парменида
Ты знаешь… В вечной жажде разрубить
Проклятый узел и ускорить исполненье
Желаний, смерть приблизить ты был рад,
И жребий чудный
Ты славишь – тех, кто гордо выступал
За строем строй,
И пал, спеша на битву безрассудно –
Здесь, у провисших врат, перед стеной.

Листья, листья, только лишь листья
Падают, кружат, умирают…

К неистовой эпохе обратись –
Бойцов непостижимых твердь рождает –
Рать демонов, которым не спастись.
Поля залитые, Стонволл-стена,
Булл-Рана, Шайло, Антьетама дни…
Перед рассветом яростным склонись
И вялый свет заката прокляни.

Пусто – только лишь листья плачут
Словно старик в вихре бури…

Что это – крик? Безумная цикута
Во мрак немой перстом дрожащим тычет –
Ты мумия, оглохшая навек.

Лишён добычи,
Беззубый волк, в овраге издыхая,
Лишь ветер слушает…

Давно уж кровь их ран,
Дав силу хищной чистоте потопа,
Соль возвратила в древний океан
Забвенья… Что же, дни свои с тоскою
Считая и поникнув головою,
Одеты в траур, с мрачным торжеством –
Что скажем мы об их костях нечистых,
Поросших безымянною травою –
Обломках рук, осколках черепов,
Затерянных среди опавших листьев?
Взвод серых пауков гарцует строем…
Во тьме глухой, среди сплетенья ив,
Совы зловещий крик-призыв,
Зерно невидимое в душу заронив,
Напомнит нам о рыцарстве былом.

Скажем – только лишь листья
Падают, кружат, умирают…

Мы скажем – это только лишь листья
Шепчут, страшась многокрылой ночи,
Кружась в полумраке мглистом.
Ночь тёмная – начало и конец.
Меж альфой и омегой просветленья
Немых доктрин нас ждёт холодный плен,
Что взор темнят иль, словно ягуар
В пруду заросшем, с отраженьем бьются.

Что скажем мы, упрятавшие знанье
В свои сердца? Ужель всё унесём
С собой? А может, сразу сделать гробом
Свой дом? Разверстым гробом?

Что ж, ступай…
Врата закрыты, и стена гниёт.
Премудрый змей на шелковичном ложе
Тишь смерти языком тревожит –
Могильный страж, который всех сочтёт!

translation (c)k_a_t_z

5 comments|post comment

New Community

[14 Feb 2008|04:19pm]

brown1dgirl

[

mood

calm

]

Hey y'all! I was searching around for a community about Southern fiction but couldn't find one. So I started my own. It's called southernpages and you can get there by searching Southern fiction as an interest. THEN I ran across this community and felt really dumb. However, southernpages is just about reading and discussing Southern fiction, not writing it, so maybe there's room for both. So this is an open invitation to check out southernpages. There's not much there now, as there are no members, but you could be the first!

1 comment|post comment

[04 Dec 2007|01:44pm]

cherry_pizza

Anyone know what "bimeby" is meant to mean?

It appears to be some kind sort of interjection that Uncle Remus uses, but for the life of me I can't figure out what word/s it's meant to be.

7 comments|post comment

[19 Sep 2007|05:48pm]

tabby_of_doom

4 comments|post comment

mississippi's buddy norden on fiction vs. autobiography

[19 Sep 2007|09:18am]

dabroots

(reposted from my own blog)

From pages 95-96 of Lewis Nordan's memoir, Boy with Loaded Gun

"That's why I like fiction better than autobiography. Fiction has that built-in obligation of irony and its riches. It circumvents the more obvious conclusions that might easily be drawn from the narrative--that the kid is headed for trouble, for example, that he might be in the early stages of a serious drinking problem, that for the rest of his life once the romance has worn off a new situation, he will have a hard time accepting responsibility for its consequences, that those qualities which seem endearing in a naked kid in a midtown hotel won't change much over the years and will come to seem, in a middle-aged man, hideous. We don't think that someday that child in the hallway will grow up and take all these same wrongheaded notions about life and use them to ruin lives, marriages, or worse. I'm not saying I did those things, made those darker turns, participated in those rumination; and I'm not saying I didn't do them either. I'm saying that in life whatever happens, really and truly, is in fiction always transformed, the possibility of grace for its characters is never lost. And I live my life today, as I did then, in the hope of finding real transcendence, after the manner of fictional characters, though I understand the danger of such hope."

2 comments|post comment

[18 Sep 2007|08:12pm]

tabby_of_doom

It would be completely bitching if people still came to this place. I want to talk about southern writers!

9 comments|post comment

Hollywood sinks teeth into Faulkner

[20 Mar 2007|08:50pm]

dabroots

Well, this could be interesting: http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21411666-16947,00.html

2 comments|post comment

[22 Aug 2006|06:44am]

barnhauler

hello, people.
i'm kind of sad to see this community so inactive, but whater ya gonna do?

in any case. i'm not southern, buut the style is my favorite and i'd like to think my own writing is rather southern.
i'm just here to point out that if anyone cares to have a look at my writing and give constructive criticism/heap praise for emulating my literary heros so very well yet not ripping them off hahaha, help yourself.

::salute::

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OUR TOWN

[17 May 2006|12:16am]

lady_west

Hello!
Can you help me?
E-book by Thornton Wilder "OUR TOWN" is needed!
THANK YOU!

villelovesme@hotmail.com
or
link

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i have not yet found flannery o'connor on lj or myspace

[26 Apr 2006|02:13pm]

bise_mo_shuil

is there a group for her on lj and a tribute page for her on myspace?

a good woman is hard to find.

2 comments|post comment

HELP!

[26 Mar 2006|09:03pm]

dirty_x_glitter

I am so stressing over this. Does anyone know William Styron? He wrote Sophie's Choice and I think that's his most popular book.

Well, his nephew sent me a message on myspace telling me I have a good taste in books because I said that Lie Down in Darkness is my favourite, and now I want to tell him to ask William something for me but I have no idea how to find him. He sent me that message at least four months ago and it got deleted. Does anyone know his name?

I'm desperate here! lol ♥

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[24 Mar 2006|05:02pm]

aftrnooninpaper

I need some knowledged opinions for an English project. We have to independantly choose and read a play; it can be any play by any playwrite on any subject. One of my friends said that any work by Tennessee Williams, I would enjoy. Unfortunantly, he is not available for me to talk to to help decide which one to read. That is why I am here.

I have a few of his plays selected that I can choose from, and I was hoping you could tell me which one out of the list you prefer.

I'm looking at:

The Rose Tattoo
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Orpheus Descending
Sweet Bird of Youth

Your input would be grealy appreciated.

5 comments|post comment

A little bit pretentious and very self-indulgent.

[22 Mar 2006|01:32am]

goatunit

The smell of gasoline on my hands is strong enough to put a taste in my mouth when I take a drag off my Marlboro Light. I have never done this before and am afraid to research the logistics of it on a library computer, so I fill some bottles with straight gasoline, and some with bleach. I have a bottle of Wild Turkey as well, though whether it was half full or empty is something of a philosophical quandary. I guess when it comes to this, you have to say it's half empty.

There's a misery that blankets my demographic like a tarp. And so many varieties of and reactions to it. I'd say there must be something in the water, but all we ever drink is Coke and Pabst Blue Ribbon. There must be something in the french fries. Something in the Xanax.

Some of us suffer dumbly, coping through a stiff ritual of hard work, alcohol, sleep. And some of us made it into some community college and learned enough to turn the dull aches into a deep fog of despair. And some of us are intelligent enough to suffer the ennui that comes with an awareness of the meaninglessness of it all. I guess that's me, but I would like to think that I contain multitudes. And in these last weeks, I am become suffering.

Am I Sisyphus or Jesus Christ? Is my life a boulder or a cross? These delusions of grandeur are probably indicative of a broken mind.

The rough of my tongue bristles with the unpleasant taste of gasoline and too many cigarettes. I swig from the whiskey bottle like a real life sinner before stuffing another of my mother's white hand towels down into the neck and twisting the bottle over a few times until I can feel the fabric growing damp. They say this shit burns, but I've never actually seen it. The taste of strong liquor sends a shudder down my spine like it was God's fingernails across the sky.

If anyone is to be held accountable for my sin, it should be Sartre. Actually, it should probably be Nietzsche, but I don't like to admit that because it makes me feel like a fraud. Nihilism is too easy. All it can do is keep you in bed for two weeks at a time. The existentialists are the killers. It's my acceptance of the legitimacy of my own subjective values that has turned all this anger and frustration toward politics. But it's despair at the meaninglessness of my actions that has made me radical.

And this small town Mayor's office is full of trembling primates in suits and ties, cowering in the corners of the room. An elderly secretary is under her desk, and I can hear her voice quivering into a cell phone.

For a moment, I'm a phony. I'm a fraud. I'm a suicide too terrified of obscurity to swallow some pills. Too afraid of the criticism and mockery that might follow a simple, and I think honorable, "Goodbye cruel world!" But then I am Joan of Arc. My flesh cracks and curls and blackens and blossoms like a blanket of flowers. The heat sends ripples up the walls as the paint hisses and the paper twists up into coils over the darkening, bubbling plaster.

I am Jesus Christ with my outstretched arms and the suffering and sin of the world crawling across my chest and arms in red and orange and yellow flame. I am God Almighty and my wrath is terrible to behold.

I am blind. I am deaf from the fire. My nerves burn and my fingers curl into hard fists that I can't open. And in my palms, I think I feel something. I think I am holding something.

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Two Whole Years

[19 Mar 2006|01:32pm]

la_vie_boheme42

We broke up.
Sad.
Lonely.
Pissed at myself.
REALLY pissed at him.
Breathing harder.
Freedom.
Guts.
Things are different.
I'm gone.

5 comments|post comment

Last day

[17 Mar 2006|03:10pm]

la_vie_boheme42

I packed up
Packed it all up
In the Red bag
The Red Grass tote
Men don't
Call them totes
Went to my Red car
Drove south
Sunlight to my right
Attacking my funny glasses
I found them at a CVS
Then into my Grass Red tote
Black wool coat
Not Atractive today
This tote-which is Red
Was then seated into my Red car
With the right imagination
I could be Riding Hood
Wolfless
In my Red car
All packed up
Where to go now

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[16 Mar 2006|12:25pm]

goatunit

In the cold night we gathered to watch the descent of slipshod sleds on a slipshod hill. A young boy crashed against a tree but laughed, and his friends with him. She said she was reminded of God's eternal accident and I thought it was a bit much. But now I think she was right on.

By noon, the snow was gone. There isn't much to cling to in Southern soil these days, beaten and dragged along in the foot falls of escaping genius. The stagnancy left behind is reviled for its representation of man's will to follow blindly in the absense of leaders - to hate or love with all the shallow resolve of a Mississippi creek.

A hundred years ago, a woman watched her child descend this hill in a cotton coat she'd sewn from her husband's crop. His sleeve snared a jagged patch of dead thorns and he crashed gracelessly - the fruit of her womb undone by the fruit of her labor. There was a flower bed planted on the site of the tragedy, but it washed away in some long ago April. It occurs to me now that's why the infinite ditches of Tupelo clog with Indian Turnips and Beggar's Ticks in the spring; splayed clusters of color in the brambles and mud.

He is a fortunate man whose wash-away grave spreads veins of yellow daisies down long country roads. To spangle the shallow earthen curl between the gravel and the soy fields of this fine State is to live eternally as we must live temporarily: confined to a blank and useless space - and creating here an unquestionable beauty by our mere passing.

7 comments|post comment

Tickets

[16 Mar 2006|10:12am]

la_vie_boheme42

I found myself back at the deserted train station. Needham Heights, MA. Where the Hell is that? I was lost here once, on a train ride that failed to Providence, when I was dumped here by the mis-scheduled train, and told to wait for two hours in the July sun for another. The train woman had given me extra tickets and frowned at me, as if I had planned this. Fortunately, there was nowhere to be, so I stayed and waited in that strange, mini-rotary, outside of nowhere, confused, but happy to have free tickets.

The other night I went to meet an author in Newtonville, MA. I drove the two hours, and waited another for the women to show up. Short, and regular. She was just a person, there was no woman behind the curtain making magic happen with each page turn, she was ordinary. I drove home, confused and blanking. I had driven miles and miles to meet someone who had something to say to me, or so I thought, she was supposed to give me an answer or two, and say, "call me sometime." But the glossy pictures of her from her book, and the made up show of her on Oprah was a farce. I pulled off of 95 and started to pump gas at a Shell in the freezing wind. My knuckes turning white gripping the handle, I looked up from the task. The tiny rotary glared at me. It occured to me that the drink tickets I had neglected to use were in my pocket, and I wondered just then if I should have been paying more attention to the situation. Confused, again, HERE in this fucking place, again, a handful of free tickets- again. I sped out of Needham Heights fast and didn't dare look back into that mirror for fear that I would be sucked into it.

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