Magazine Review: Conjunctions: 51 The Death Issue edited by David Shields and Bradford Morrow
Conjunctions is a literary journal published twice a year by Bard College. Each issue contains essays, short fiction, poetry and less classifiable writing on a given subject, with this issue being about death. Literary journals tend to have a connotation of pretentiousness, and death is one of the primal subjects, so I approached this 2008 issue with a bit of trepidation.
The issue starts strong with an essay entitled “The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies” by Sallie Tisdale. It’s a stomach-churning but very informative look at flies, Buddhism, and the Buddha nature of flies. The ending piece is “Andalucia” by H.G. Carrillo, the story of a writer mourning his artist lover, who has died of AIDS.
In between, the most memorable pieces are Joyce Carol Oates’ “Dear Husband”, a chilling suicide note; and “St. Francis Preaches to the Birds” by David Ives, a not-quite-working comedic play about the saint’s encounter with vultures. Several of the pieces caused me to shed a tear. Sadly, as I cannot make head or tail of the appeal of modern poetry, I feel unable to comment on whether any of the poetry was good. Two pieces are illustrated with photographs, the only visual art in the issue.
With forty pieces altogether, this is a thick volume that takes some grit to get through. I understand that the Oates story is in one of her own anthologies, so if noir fiction is your thing, you might want to check that out. The rest is a mixed bag; see if your library system has a copy of this or other issues so you can see if Conjunctions is something you want to subscribe to.
“I am merely departing”–Lucius Seneca.
