Thoughts on The Fifth of July

The Fifth of July by Nat Akin was published in Ecotone Journal in Fall 2007. The narrator tells about the afternoon after his grandmother's funeral. The scene starts with the grandfather picking corn in a field with his son helping him. The action then moves to shucking the corn in the carport with two great-aunts, the grandfather and father, and the narrator.

The father is clearly emotional, but trying to cover it up by being stoic. His actions all say that he deeply misses his newly-departed mother, and doesn't understand how the grandfather can calmly shuck corn after burying his wife. The grandfather is just as stoic, but in a much calmer way. He does have an outburst, but it's directed towards his sisters, and it doesn't seem to be a reaction towards his wife's death. The grandfather is very calm and emotionless about losing his wife, and that bothers the son.

At the end of the piece, the narrator - who is clearly a younger person - asks their father what happens when corn isn't harvested and is left in the field. The father replies, with all the weight he had been carrying that day, that "It'll just get very hard."

I understand the point the narrator was trying to make. Farmers, especially older ones, like the grandfather written about here - who I can't help but imagine looks like my grandfather - tend not to get worked up about things, even death. Yes, he'll be torn up inside and grieving, but they'll keep that inside, and not let anyone see. I can easily imagine a scenario just like this happening if one of my grandparents or great aunts and uncles passes away. The younger father, who doesn't understand the farmer mentality (probably left home to work in the city) doesn't get why his dad isn't reacting the way he's expecting, and that bothers him. But really, the grandfather's reaction is nearly spot on.

The only problem I had with the story, which made it really hard to concentrate on, is the whole picking corn thing. It's early July, they're harvesting corn, and they mention that its a late harvest. Corn doesn't grow that fast. Yes, it does on big commercial farms in warmer climates, with specially modified corn, but this this is an old couple's farm, probably just a small garden plot. If the story had taken place in late summer, I would have bought it. But ignoring that crucial detail ruined the story for me, especially when the rest of the piece could very well have been a snapshot of an occasion I will have to go through in the future.

The Wee Free Men

We were asked to come up with a jacket blurb for our favorite book. It was hard for me, because I came up with something really good, but then realized that what I had was almost word-for-word what was actually on the back of the book. So I had to start over.

"When they were kicked out of Fairyland for drunkenness, rebelliousness, and causing general discontent, the Nac Mac Feegle – the Wee Free Men – found themselves in heaven. A beautiful land with things to fight, steal, and cause mischief in.

To them, its heaven. To Tiffany Aching and the rest of the world, it’s The Chalk, the uplands where sheep graze and the weather and hills used to belong to Granny Aching. But Granny is gone now, and the hills are unprotected. When something slips through a crack in the world and steals Tiffany’s little brother, she knows she cannot simply lie down and take that. Armed with a frying pan and an army of angry blue men, Tiffany makes her way to Fairyland to get her brother back. But it’s not sunshine and happiness there, and getting out again may be harder than she thinks."

Phantoms

The first full-length prose piece in the Pushcart Prize collection is Phantoms by Steven Millhauser.
Let me start off by saying I LOVED this story. I actually started reading it before I realized it was assigned because it looked interesting, and I wasn't disappointed. This was right up my alley in term of fiction I like to read.
The way the story was divided into little chunks, talking about explanations for the phenomena or people's reactions, mostly sat fine with me, but its not my preferred way of reading something - I prefer linear when it comes to fiction. Thus, the case studies were my favorite parts to read, to learn about the people's different reactions to what's happening.
Our narrator is obviously someone who grew up in the town, and is now an adult with adult concerns about what's happening in the town. They're personally seems mostly unphased by the phantoms, but that just may be due to the way they're writing.
The mystery of the phantoms is never solved, and they're not explained by any rational or scientific means. They're just there. I love unanswered questions of that deal with fantasy elements. Just throw something randomly mystical into modern day with no explanation and that's something I'd read.
I'm sure the author wrote this as a metaphor for unanswerable things we encounter in modern life, like death or taxes or how headphones always become tangled, but I loved it as straight up fiction and I liked it that way.

Horse Latitudes

This is my response to reading the short poem Horse Latitudes by Kathleen Flenniken from the collection of Pushcart Prizes.

The speaker or narrator is isn't identified, but they speak with a very direct tone - very scientific - but at the same time very touching.

The occasion for this piece is very obvious. The scene described is an actual floating island of trash in the Pacific called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. All the garbage that ends up in the ocean ends up there due to currents and wind patterns. And then it stays there because of the same currents. All the garbage eventually breaks down because of the salt water and corrosive chemicals, but not only does it take a very long time, they break down into tiny particles that end up being eaten by fish, and then by larger predators like whales, dolphins, and us. And its all due to us.

The poem makes it clear that its a problem, and a problem that we created. Even if we deny blame, or say its not an issue, deep down we all know its true. The imagery the author invokes flows smoothly and lets our imagination really take over. Even if we can't see it, our mind lets us know its there.

A floating patch of garbage isn't the usual topic of a poem, but it is useful and in a way beautiful. But its beautiful like an oil spill is beautiful: it may look pretty, but its obviously very bad.

I liked this poem, and not just because the great big floating patch of trash is something that I'm aware of and rather interested in. I genuinely liked it for the words and imagery, and that usually doesn't happen with me and poetry. Also, the only thing I didn't get was the title.