The College of Arts & Sciences of the University of
Missouri publishes The Missouri Review
once a quarter. The magazine may
be purchased for ten dollars an issue, or thirty dollars for a year’s subscription,
or a subscription may be obtained by entering one of the magazine’s literary
contests (a subscription is included with the contest fee). The magazine is 200 pages in length and
printed on high quality paper in trade paperback format. The magazine offers mainstream short
stories, interviews, essays, art reviews, book reviews, and poetry.
The theme of the Winter 2016 Edition is “upstarts.” Editor Speer Morgan provides an
interesting and illuminating forward to the issue that explains what an “upstart”
is in the context of the various and sundry individual pieces and does a good
job of pulling the theme and the disparate literary pieces together.
In K. C. Fredericks’ short story “The Tongues of Angel”,
a Polish priest in 1940s Detroit must deal with an “upstart” African American
from Louisiana who--with hat in one hand and baptismal certificate and money in
the other--wants to join his all-white Catholic congregation. In Alix Ohlin’s short story “Money,
Geography, Youth”, an eighteen-year-old girl has to come to terms with her
father and her “upstart” former best friend who has become her father’s live-in
lover.
My favorite essay is Brandon R. Schrand’s “Through the
Glass Clearly”. Here we learn that
that ordering a martini in the wrong place--such as a backwoods cowboy
roadhouse--can brand you as an “upstart”, as in “who the @#$% do you think you
are ordering THAT in HERE?” The
theme aside, the essay is a fascinating account of the history of this iconic
cocktail as well as a primer on the various and hotly debated terms that accompany
its history and that of its cousins the Gibson (substitute a cocktail onion for
the olive or twist), the Charles Dickens (no olive or twist), or the ultra dry
Winston Churchill (made by glancing at the vermouth bottle or turning towards
France and then filling the glass entirely with Gordon’s gin). As for me, I am dying to visit one of
Kansas City’s upscale watering holes to try the author’s recommendation for the
perfect martini: Gordon’s gin and Noilly Prat vermouth in a four to one
ratio, a (lemon) twist, and three drops of orange bitters, vigorously shaken
James Bond style (not stirred).
BTW, James insists on putting Vodka as well as gin in his martinis--a
real faux pas among true aficionados
according to Schrand.
Three lucky and talented poets enjoy their own separate
sections in the magazine. I
particularly and surprisingly enjoyed Heather Derr-Smith’s work, poems that deal
with “upstart” girl speakers struggling with issues of sex, gender, gender
roles, and transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. Her poems are raw, honest, shocking,
violent, tender, and thought provoking--head spinning stuff yet not difficult
to identify with and to understand.
The art reviews cover several “outside” or “upstart”
artists whose works have only a small following or are on the cusp of being
discovered. These artists are/were
untrained and in many cases uneducated, and some are/were even mentally
ill. None of them belongs/belonged
to any movement or school of art; all of them have their own individual and
unique forms of artistic expression.
I found it inspiring and uplifting that even people from such
unfortunate circumstances are/were capable of creating beautiful and starkly
original works of art.
Any aspiring writers out there should not overlook the
book reviews. Amy Day Wilkinson
reviews several “upstart” books that make “art of the quotidian” with
fascinating results. I have heard
of epistolary novels, but had never heard of a novel constructed from
homeowners’ association committee meeting notes, nor had I ever heard of a
novel made up of letters of recommendation. With the apparent success of the books reviewed, we may be
seeing more like them soon.
