Today, I was reading the latest issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review when I realized that its very diverse collection of literary artifacts represents the large fragmentary nature of litery styles in contemporary writing. Their have always been a wide range of literary styles being published at any point in history, but I’m talking about a new ultra-fragmented group of styles, a net size never thrown before. The poems and prose selected by the editors at HFR exemplify this hyper-mode art. Everything from Sean Lovelace’s micro-anecdotes, which remind us so much of social network status updates, to slam beats preceeding realist fiction. Not to mention the large section of translations.

This heavy fragmentation has the opposite effect from what I believe the editors of HFR have in mind. While this diversity would be seen by some as a paradise for the the novice and experienced reader, both writer and critic alike, this disseminated reading experience leaves many gaps for readers, gaps I think can be filled, as we see in larger works, by allusion and correllation between art, ultimatley leading readers to previously unknown meaning. This meaning makes the book more valuable and memorable.

Obviously, though, this type of literary experience is hard to pull off in literary journals, which is why, I believe we some journals take “themed submissions.” Publishing a single volume of related work gets us closer to the completeness of longer literary works. Does this mean publishing a literary journal is also a literary art form akin to writing a book of poems? If so, what type of narrative are we looking to discover? How to we create these allusions? Is the editor the new artist?

I’d like to think editors have that aurora. And now, as I look back through some of the literary journals I’ve collected over the years, the ones that stand out most are those with an over-arching theme, or some type of correlation (however slight) between literary works. I think back to The Paris Review number 176, where the last paragraph of the T.C. Boyle story “Balto” begins with this sentence: “She lifted her chin then to look at the judge and heard the words coming out of her mouth as if they’d be planted there, telling the truth, the hurtful truth, the truth no one would have guessed because she was almost thirteen now, almost a teenager, and she let them know it.” The story ends soon after with Angelle, the main character, shockingly bringing the details of a crime to life. The journal proceeds with a photo exposé on Kibera, a slum outside Nairobi. Immediately, as I experience the art, I know that I am to understand “the hurtful truth” of this place, even the truth I don’t expect. I’m drawn to think of justice, fairness, and truth for Kibera. The photos may be great enough to bring me to all those emotions without the help of T.C. Boyle’s story, but the story no doubt reinforces the emotions at hand, lending to the discovery of greater understanding and meaning in both the story and the photos. These two pieces of work could not have been more perfectly ordered.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much from my literary journal reading. Maybe I’m not being patient enough with every poem, story, and essay. But often, as if in a habit, I turn a page in a journal and expect the new content to somehow connect to the content of the previous page. Even two words help. Should we expect journals to work more like books instead of “Best-of” collections? Should editors care about order in journal publishing? Can a true “literary journal art” ever be achieved?

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