I don’t have any new ideas about how to find those readers. However, I do have an idea about a different piece of the puzzle. At the moment, there’s no single place to send people where they can browse for authors and titles that might interest them. My suggestion: an online store that caters specifically to Mormon literature, organized to make browsing easy — like a good brick-and-mortar bookstore — with a broad and inclusive enough selection that people could explore with a fair confidence of finding what they’re looking for.

I hasten to admit that I have no idea how this could be done (from a technical perspective) or who would do it. The idea started as an electronic parallel to an art gallery co-op, where the different artists put in shifts at the desk. Maybe this could be done as a cooperative effort among some of the independent LDS publishers, though that could have some disadvantages (see below). Perhaps it would be better to run it simply on a volunteer basis. For now, though, I’d like to talk about what I’d like to see in such an online bookstore from a user/customer perspective.

• I’d like to see as broad a selection as possible within the realm of Mormon literature. Ideally, this would include titles from as many publishers as possible (including self-published) and information about out-of-print books, with a link to Amazon or Sam Weller or somewhere else that might be willing to sell and ship a used book. Even if part of the goal is to help people find the realistic stuff, I think the idea will work better if everything that could be described as Mormon literature is listed in the inventory. While the original idea had to do with providing a space for books not found in standard LDS bookstores, I think that in the interests of offering a complete range — and in order to increase the chances of success — it should also include titles from Deseret Book, Covenant, etc., on an equal footing.
• Accurate, standardized information about each book, including all the regular stuff (publishing house, pages, binding, ISBN, etc.), plus some kind of rating system or description (e.g., violence, sex, language — for those to whom that’s important), genre(s), topic(s), award(s), links to published reviews in places list AML and AMV, links to author’publisher webpages/website, and whatever other information might be easy to collect and useful to help readers figure out if the book might interest them (setting? timeframe?). There should also be an indication of the Mormon connection (Mormon characters? Mormon themes?) and stance (e.g., pro, anti, neutral), though the latter would have to be done cautiously. It strikes me that authors and publishers would have a strong motivation to do much of this work themselves, if a consistent framework could be set up.
• A top-level organization by genre (like a brick-and-mortar bookstore), but with options to list and access book titles/descriptions flexible in many other ways as well (e.g., by topic). It should be possible to see lists such as the Whitney Award winners and finalists, AML award winners, and possibly top-20 lists (in general or by genre) by noted Mormon critics (e.g., Richard Cracroft) or others. Favorite books by well-known Mormons without particular literary credentials might be worth considering too, for sheer market appeal (e.g., Gladys Knight). And it should be possible to see (a) new releases, and (b) new additions to the site since a date specified by the user.
• Something that might be nice (if it’s not too difficult to do) would be to make the website organization and appearance customizable by the user. For instance, if you’d rather see books that only match specific criteria, that should be possible.
• There should be a way for readers to rate and share their opinions about books. Possible this would need to be moderated to reduce the possibility of turning it into a way of promoting one’s own work or sabotaging that of others. Ideally, there would also be some kind of “if-you-liked-this-then-look-at-this” setup.
• I don’t know but am guessing to trying to actually sell books from the site might be a pain. Links to places like the publisher’s site or Amazon.com would suffice. Maybe it could be set up like the AMV deal, where the links to Amazon bring some small amount back to the coffers? It might never pay enough to make the site a paying proposition, but at least could help pay for server space.

So there it is. Anyone want to take a crack? I’d even be willing to serve my shift adding and coding books, if someone actually gets it started…

Among other things, concrete poetry uses the shape and layout of the poem (the typographic arrangement of letters and words) as an element of the poem. In concrete poetry the shape of the poem also conveys meaning.

Knowing all this, I was very pleased to come across an 1835 example of concrete poetry in the Latter-day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate.

To be honest, I don’t know if this item has been considered poetry by academics (that is, by the few who have looked through old LDS periodicals), or even if it was considered poetry at the time. Most of the shape poetry from before the 1950s that I’ve seen involved entire stanzas of content, instead of a single phrase as this one does. I suspect most readers looked on this work as just a light-hearted way of expressing religious feeling.

Unfortunately, the poems author is, at least to me, something of a mystery. In the periodical, credit is simply given to “P.” I’m tempted to assign credit to Parley P. Pratt (who was writing poetry at this time) or W. W. Phelps, who had edited the Messenger and Advocate’s predecessor (The Evening and the Morning Star), but I really have no basis for doing that. Perhaps some reader knows who the author is.

In any case, I got a kick out of seeing concrete poetry in an early LDS periodical. Now if we can only get it to show up in a more recent one!!

Here’s the poem I found:

GOD IS LOVE

                E
              EVE
            EVOVE
          EVOLOVE
        EVOLSLOVE
      EVOLSISLOVE
    EVOLSIDISLOVE
  EVOLSIDODISLOVE
EVOLSIDOGODISLOVE
  EVOLSIDODISLOVE
    EVOLSIDISLOVE
      EVOLSISLOVE
        EVOLSLOVE
          EVOLOVE
            EVOVE
              EVE
                E

1. We received a ton of submissions early on and we wanted to acknowledge that support. We’re currently at about 25 submissions.

2. It gave the two of us a chance to see how we work together and what we have in mind and what some of the parameters are for this anthology. I’m pleased to report that the two of us are tracking quite well. There will, for sure, be some disagreements in the future as we fight to get our favorites in, but I think the two of us are realizing more and more that (and this is not just ego) we are uniquely suited for this project in terms of our editing skills, reading background and interests, networks of writer friends, etc.

3. This gives us a chance to put some tent poles in the ground as we conceptualize the scope and tone of the anthology. That doesn’t mean that these four stories represent the extremes we’re looking for — or even the middle. They are, however, stories that both of us felt are very much in the spirit of the anthology. I think the good news here is that there is going to be some range and a variety of registers: the dominant operative words are fun and well-crafted (as opposed to, say, literary or action-packed or grim or whatever — although there’s room for all those descriptors too).

Now before I list the first four admits, I want to be clear that this doesn’t mean that the stories are perfect. Nor does it mean that they are necessarily better than every other story we received. Nor are we holding them up as models. Nor does it mean if you have written something similar that these stories bump yours out. These are just the four stories that Theric and I agreed we should admit early out of what we have received so far.

They are:

• The novella Let the Mountains Tremble for Adoniha has Fallen by Steven L. Peck — an ambitious, character-driven (but with plenty of action) story about Mormons on Mars who have set up a feudal-style society and are about to be reconnected with the Earth they left behind several generations ago.
• The short story “Charity Never Faileth” by Jaleta Clegg — in this story, preparation for an enrichment meeting dinner gets out of hand with hilarious (and messy and monstrous) results.
• The short story “Other Duties” by Nathan Shumate — packed with action and humor, this story features an agent bishop with a “special” assignment.
• The short story “First Estate” by Kate Woodbury — one of Kate’s signature lyrical Old Testament story retellings, but this time in a space alien setting.

Congratulations to our four early admits. Thank you to all our submitters so far — many/several of you will still be in the anthology, for sure, but won’t hear definitive answers until after the October 1 submission deadline. And happy writing to all those still working on something. And a kick in the pants for all those who are thinking about it, but who haven’t started yet — you have a little over a month. It’s time to get writing.

Wading through Segullah’s archives some time ago, I found a poem that really caught me off guard: “Spindrift” by Marie Brian. The thing that struck me first about “Spindrift” is its (Emily) Dickinsonian style: seemingly random, mid-sentence capitalizations, the hyphens, the brevity. The tone, however, is considerably more hopeful, more reverent as the poet’s mind reaches through the sea spray, contemplating redemption, contemplating God.

The opening image, punctuated as it is by alliteration, is especially striking, setting the stage for the rest of the poem:

Harpooning—the Undoubtable
Shot from your sea-swept eyes,
Frothing mouths—
Bobbing, billowing
On the world’s flood tide (lines 1-5).

I take this Undoubtable stare of the sea to be the gaze of God shooting, harpoon-like, from the windswept waves. This “spindrift” (6) cuts to the marrow with its chilling mist, its clarifying ambiguity. Divine paradox this, that the “good news” (6) often comes to us most clearly, often catches us with its barb, in the moments when we’re wading (faithfully, perhaps) into the darkness of the unknown. I think of Lehi wandering through the mist of darkness before an angel parted the black veil and led him to the Tree of Life. I think of Boyd K. Packer’s commentary on “the leap of faith”: “the moment when you have gone to the edge of the light and stepped into the darkness to discover that the way is lighted ahead for just a footstep or two.” I think of the piercing insights that sometimes come through the disorder of sleep.

While these piercings may at times wound us, they also, I think, mark us (as we come unto Christ) as the fruits of His wounded body, leaving their imprint on the soul, a place where the “tissue thickens, binds / Fast-barnacled hooks / Of scarring Divine” (18-20) that tells us we’re God’s, that labels us heirs of His Being, of His Place. Maybe such Divine scars are part of what it means to have His image engraved upon our countenances.

Just maybe.

In addition to “Spindrift,” Brian has at least two other poems online: “Pangaea Lost” and “Orisons.”

Happy reading.

For this review, I’m going to break it in to four parts: the set up; what works; what doesn’t work; and the novel as Mormon literature. Each of those is going to be written from a slightly different point of view as I negotiate between my identities as a fan of genre fiction but with a bias towards genre work that has strong literary elements (the good ones — not the precious/precocious literary stuff); a writer and editor of fiction; a cheerleader for Mormon fiction; and a Mormon literary critic.

The Premise and Setting

Adopted by hippie parents, Autumn Rain lives in Portland, where she runs her late father’s antiques shop. She has also recently been reunited with her twin sister (also adopted — and apparently the main character in a previous Nunes novel) and has a crush on Jake, the tall dreadlocked African American dude who she sold her father’s herbal remedies store to. Autumn also has discovered (post the trauma of her father’s death in a bridge collapse) that she has a paranormal power: she receives impressions and memories from physical objects (assuming that they have been imbued with strong emotions [love, anger, terror, etc.]). She used these powers to solve a previous case, and the word gets out so one day a community college instructor turned private investigator named Ethan McConnell shows up with a pair of worried parents. It turns out that their daughter has semi-recently joined a commune that may or may not be a dangerous cult — the same commune that Ethan’s sister had joined almost a year previously. Autumn gets sucked in to the investigation, eventually going undercover with Jake and with Ethan’s help.

What Works

The setting: Portland and Oregon is the perfect place for a hippie chick with paranormal powers, and Nunes weaves in some good details and locations.

The powers: there’s always room to be a little tighter as well as push the limits more (especially towards the end of the novel), but on the whole, the type of power and how it works and especially the situations where it is useful or not — and the effects it’s use can have on Autumn — is very well done. Very much in the magic-with-rules-that’s-use-can-be-both-negative-and-positive vein that Orson Scott Card has preached and Brandon Sanderson has perfected.

The sisters: Autumn and her sister Tawnia (who is pregnant) are vibrant, interesting characters. When they are on screen, especially together, the novel really sparkles.

The plot twists: there are several. None of them are earth-shattering, but they work, and they are genuine twists that don’t come across as cheap or out-of-nowhere.

What Doesn’t Work

The overwriting: Nunes spells so much out, repeating information that we already guessed or knew or expressing feelings and thoughts that are already clear from what has been said or gestured. It really threw me out of the narrative; it’s quite grating. But nothing a good editor could have fixed. And it isn’t as bad in the latter part of the book.

The action scenes: Now some of these actually work quite well and Nunes is to be credited for not making anyone who gets involved in a fight or a piece of action superhuman. People get hurt. People do the wrong thing and although they show pluck and endurance and push beyond their comfort zones, they don’t show skills that are way beyond. But at times the blocking seems a off and at the end there’s too much going here and there. Tighten this up (and deal with the overwriting) and you have a much stronger novel. And to be fair, the blocking is much crisper than in many novels, where things tend to go hazy in the fight/action scenes.

The love triangle: It’s hard for me to judge this because I am so not the target audience here, but both Jake and Keefe needed added dimensions here. In fact, the two male leads are the weakest part of the story in terms of characterization. Jake, especially, needs to be more awesome. And the heat could have been turned up a bit. And Autumn is just a little too coy and conflicted.

Imprints as Mormon literature

Here at AMV, we follow the Association for Mormon Letters definition that anything by, for or about Mormons counts as Mormon literature. Imprints falls into that peculiar category of novels that don’t feature Mormonism but are written mainly for a Mormon audience e.g. “clean fiction.” Yes, it’s published by Shadow Mountain, which is ostensibly Deseret Book’s national market-oriented imprint, and it’s conceivable that the title will find non-LDS readers, but unlike Shadow Mountain’s YA/children’s fantasy series, this really seems to be for the female LDS audience. So any discussion of it in relation to Mormon literature is likely to turn to what is gained vs. what is lost in creating the clean, non-Mormon-themed-but-for-an-LDS-audience novel. And so I do have the same complaint with it that I did with Lemon Tart (although I think Lemon Tart is the better crafted novel): “…it sometimes creates reading moments where the fact that it’s a non-LDS-themed-book-written-by-an-active-LDS becomes a little too present.”

On the other hand, I was going to ding Nunes for something because (and this is perhaps a tiny spoiler) any novel featuring Portland and hippies and communes is going to have account for a particular herb, and it looked like it was never going to come up — but in the end it did. And it’s true that by making Autumn a hippie, natural foods chick you can avoid the major Word of Wisdom issues. But at the same time, I don’t see why, if you’re going to include, for example, violence (both real and emotional) in the work at a certain level of graphic-ness, you can’t, say, the moderate consumption of alcohol. Or the use of black or green tea. Although I have to admit that I didn’t mind the lack of swearing. And Nunes did push things a little further than one might expect (but still very, very PG), for example, see her open letter on the AML blog (where I claim in the comments that obsessing over the clean thing isn’t the best idea, but I’m a mercurial personality and what may sound good in the abstract doesn’t hold when it comes to actual reading experience — although I have to say that Imprints provided much less “oh, come on” moments than I would have expected c.f. the herb mentioned above).

Of course (and this again is reflecting my own bias), how cool would it be if Autumn was a hippie LDS chick? Pretty cool, I think. And then trying to situate her powers could be an interesting added dimension (A gift of the Spirit?). And then make Jake a non-Mormon and you have the recipe for some more tense romantic tension between the two.

I do think, though, that this is a work worth exploring if you have an interest in LDS genre literature. It embodies much of the tensions and issues in the genre and shows the improvement there has been in the field while highlighting the work that still needs to be done.

For another perspective, read the Mormon Times review. See also the AML Review.

Title: The Newlyweds (PDF file)

Author: Joshua Foster

Publication Info: Dialogue; vol 41, No. 2 (Summer 2008)

Submitted by: Theric Jepson

Why?: Theric says: “.

Although it seems like the typical set of characters, these poor dumb kids were very appealing to me.”

Participate:

Submit to Short Story Friday

Possible online sources of stories and link to spreadsheet with current submissions

All Short Story Friday posts so far

Note: I thought a post to honor Linda Sillitoe and her encounter with Mormon letters would provide a suitable launching point for the series. She passed away April 7, 2010. Exponent II has published a tribute for Sillitoe in their latest issue.

One of the most striking poems I’ve read recently is Linda Sillitoe’s unrhymed sonnet “Encounter” (link to PDF from Dialogue 35.1 [2002]), which takes as its lyric province the intergenerational relationship between people, places, and possessions. The poet, born of goodly parents (at least it seems so from the pleasant cache of memories stirred in this sensory experience), begins by formally and lyrically binding this relational triad and expanding and deepening the connections between them from there.

The poem’s form serves as both a binding agent and a vessel for these connections and the poet’s experience of them by providing a matrix around which she could embroider and in which she could offer her words, ideas, and emotions and thus keep them from spinning into chaos and sentimentality. It’s a mark of her poetic achievement and the poem’s success that she refrains from an exhibition of unearned emotion (exhibitionism and unearned emotion being marks of sentimentality), something immature poets often slip into when writing in forms and when writing about personal relationships.

And while the purist might complain that from a strictly technical and historical standpoint this isn’t an out-and-out sonnet, I would argue that it is a sonnet in a modern, more subtle variation of the form. I say this for two reasons: one, it’s divided into an octet that sets up a question—”Has she kept everything?”—and a sestet that begins to answer that question, though the answer, in true (post)modern form and in a way reflecting the complexity of human relationships, just breeds more questions. And two, as any traditional sonnet has and as any sonnet, I think, must, in the words of poets Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, it “suggest[s] narrative progress through its sequence structure, while, in single units, it is capable of the essential lyric qualities of being musical, brief, and memorable” (The Making of a Poem 58; Amazon ).

Notice in particular the alliteration at work as binding agent in the first five lines (as through the entire poem): the /n/’s, the sister sounds /b/ and /p/, /d/ and /t/, the /s/’s, the /g/’s, all grouped variously throughout, then combined in the last clause of line five: “I glanced behind me.” I read this mixture as the lyric medicine the poet finds in this cabinet of wonders (even though she claims she was just “searching for a comb”): as she turns toward her past, toward (I presume) her father’s presence in the room, in her life, she finds a “genie”-like granting of the wish that smolders beneath the surface of the poem—that she could remember her father, “[t]wo years” gone, but always a defining presence in her being and in her connection to her mother and to the past, and thus to her present and future.

This desire surfaces—and ripples through subsequent readings of the poem—in the last three lines, the denouement in which the poet wonders about her mother and, beyond that, about the fusion of time and person, place, thing, and sense as this union moves to draw lucid experience, even ecstasy (as suggested by the narcotic-effect the sudden encounter has on the poet: “The room wavered like my knees”), from memory’s cistern and to immerse us in melancholy wonder over the duration, strength, and will of human connection.

Such is an appropriate sentiment to keep in mind, I think, as we strive to “summon” presence and experience from kith and kin past to help and heal us in our present and our future relationships with person, place, and thing.

Since April 2009, as part of my (meager) commitment to raise the profile of Mormon poetry, I’ve been investing off and on in what I’ve called my Mormon Poetry Project, offering short readings of poems by Mormon poets on my personal blog. My ground rules: 1) the poets should be Latter-day Saints (of whatever stripe) and 2) the poems should be accessible online to provide my (meager) audience the chance to read for themselves and talk back with my interpretations, to the end—says the idealist in me—of sparking greater awareness of, interest in, and conversations about poetry by poets who are also Mormon.

Because I think these poets deserve exposure and because the traffic at my blog is a trickle—okay, maybe a slow drip—I’m giving those readings a new beginning (and in most cases, expansion and revisions) here at AMV under the series title “Mormon Poetry Now!” I’ll also be posting additional readings of poems (not included in the original list) and poetry reviews as I see fit. This introductory post will also serve as the new home of the Poets Roll: the list of poets, poems, and reviews I’ve posted so far.

Before I dive in, though, a note about the title: Twenty-five years ago, Dennis Clark, then poetry editor for Sunstone, began a four-part series for the magazine called “Mormon Poetry Now!” In his column published in four installments between June 1985 and August 1989 (1985, 1986, 1987, 1989), he set out, according to his purpose stated in the series opener, to survey “the state of the art of Mormon poetry,” to examine “the best of what Mormon poets [were] trying to publish” at the time. I’ve deliberately tied myself to these efforts to highlight the new Mormon poetry by stealing Clark’s title for my own and by following his example of close reading (though his readings are likely far more astute than mine promise to be). My hope is that migrating this ongoing project to AMV’s more fertile blogging grounds will reveal something of the varieties of Mormon poetic experience and open the way for our continued harvest of the field.

* * * *

Mormon Poets Roll

Marie Brian: “Spindrift”

Linda Sillitoe: “Encounter”

And in the interest of full disclosure, Peculiar Pages is not only the imprint that will be publishing Monsters & Mormons, but it also asked me to provide a blurb for the anthology. Which I was initially nervous about, but happily did after reading the manuscript. Here it is:

With these 19 plays, the New Play Project ably makes its claim as one of the most ambitious and vibrant going concerns in the world of LDS culture to all of us mission-field Mormons who have only heard rumors and testimonies. Out of the Mount delivers comedy and tragedy and social commentary, allegory, politics and healthy doses of armchair philosophy and theology in plays that mainly focus on (as most good plays do) relationships that unfold via crackling dialogue. Whether it’s Clark Kent and Lois Lane applying for a marriage license or Adam and Eve feeling their way towards some sort of post-fall rapprochement or young couples falling in and out of love, these playwrights are writing for these latter-days, even when there’s nothing particularly LDS about their characters and settings. That said, what I love most about this anthology is that we get—especially with the fantastic concluding trio of “Gaia,” “Prodigal Son” and “Little Happy Secrets”—works that artfully and poignantly explore key aspects of the grand drama that is the Mormon experience.

You can buy Out of the Mount here; but you should also check out Theric’s series of posts on the anthology (including excerpts from some of the plays) over at the Peculiar Pages blog.

The downside, of course, is that it means that almost every read for me is a burst of narrative payoff that then quickly mellows in to mixed success. It also that means that, although I try my best to evaluate stories in relation to their genres and individual goals, as an editor and critic I do have a tendency to want to nudge works in to this preferred nexus of mine of genre, literary and experimental.

So that’s sort of a weird preface to this next part, but I wanted to establish my personal psycho-critical space that informs how I react to the following thoughts from Rick Moody (found in this excellent interview — the whole thing is worth reading or viewing at Big Think):

I think that psychologically, emotionally, there’s a need for what story can do and by that I mean a narrative that begins at point A and goes to point B that really travels somewhere and contains some kind of earthly wisdom in the fact that its transit.  That kind of story I think we’re sort of hardwired to find it valuable in a certain way.  And I’m sure that the proliferation of those stories has to do with the fact that we do find them valuable.

That strikes me as great, the problem comes if the shape and manner of all those stories is identical. If every time we read a story we know exactly where the epiphany of the story is going to happen and what the payoff’s going to be and how we’re gonna feel.  In that circumstance they all become sentimental, or they all become melodramatic. They become degraded in a way.  What I imagine might happen and what would be most exciting to me is if that then suggested new ways of telling stories and a need to try to go further and to develop new story structures rather than relying on the tried-and-true in the same ways.

I find that some of contemporary fiction, as it’s iterated in the slick magazines and so forth, does just what I’m saying. It hits the same moments, the same points, we react in the same ways, the prose feels identical not matter the writer.  And to me that’s tiring, but it also makes possible a lot of experimental approaches to thinking about story and that’s something to be optimistic about.

I completely agree. But rather than focus on the need for experimentation (although we can discuss that too), what this quote got me thinking about was where the payoff works for me even if I can see it coming, even if it is sympathetic or melodramatic.

The answer to this is: where I am sympathetic to the worldview of the main character and feel invest in his or her success. Now sympathy can be built in many ways, and one of the key virtues of narrative art is that it allows us to develop sympathy for people with worldviews or attributes or personalities very different from our own; however, there is an added level of satisfaction when it is a Mormon, or a geek, or a writer, or a cowboy, or a noble-but-flawed hero/heroine, or a (competent) dad or mom, or an artist, or a someone who really likes food, or a fantasy world that is clearly influenced by Mormonism or a setting that is LDS-flavored.

Now, of course, there are all sorts of caveats related to the dangers of didacticism and the joys of foreignness and the need to get out of comfort zones. But I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that I (and probably you) are going to naturally cut a little (not much, but a little) slack to stories that feature characters and settings that we can relate strongly too. And I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. This world is made for making distinctions and expressing preferences.

And so, I suppose, that this an explanation of why I continue to read Mormon literature even when I know it’s going to be a literary short story that’s going to have this tiny epiphany at a particular moment and that in many cases, I’m going to be frustrated because I want more ambition (and humor and experimentation and, hypocritically, more faithfulness) out of them. And why I continue to read LDS genre novels that don’t have the craft and verve of the cream of the national market (although as LDS genre novel apologists claim, they are getting better).

And it’s also a defense of the whole idea of Mormon literature written for Mormons. And it’s pointing out that we shouldn’t take guff for that because, you know, other literatures are just as sympathetic or melodramatic and other critics and readers have their own natural preferences and interests and worldviews.

And, of course, it’s also to sneak in the notion of experimentation and make again the claim that it’s possible that Mormon writers are uniquely positioned to both understand and interrogate the dominant American cultures (and possibly other world cultures) through experiments in narrative art.

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