Final Fourteen

 kw: story reviews, anthologies, literature, fiction, poetry

In the past couple of days, I've finished the last fourteen pieces in 2024 Pushcart Prize XLVIII: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson and others. There were two (of six) bits of verse I'm sorry I read, and four others that were "OK". One was clearly well-written prose broken into a "poem" in lines of nearly equal visible length; otherwise unremarkable. Another is worth a short remark:

"Blue" by Erin Wilson is short, and very sad (gut-punch sad), and I dare not say more because it's too easy to spoil.

Three of the prose pieces are worth mentioning:

• "Dear Damage" by Ashley Marie Farmer – Apparently a true story, of an attempted (and failed) murder-suicide brought on by unimaginable pain. Where's a Kevorkian when you need one? Though I am a Christian, I understand, and sympathize with, the need to determinedly end one's own life in certain circumstances.
• "Dreaming of Water With Tiger Salamanders" – This is also nonfiction. Most of it is an essay compounded of equal parts pandemic panic and climate panic, in a setting of "development" of land that ought not be developed. The author (or narrator) is the token biologist who must accompany a development crew, by California law. The two panics are overhyped. On the other hand, I am in favor of strong laws forbidding "development" of arable land (with a Capital penalty) and forbidding destruction of habitat for vulnerable species (slightly-less-than-Capital).
• "Black Land Matters: Climate Solutions in Black Agrarianism" by Leah Penniman – An excellent essay on the efficacy of traditional soil enrichment. The historical flow as I have observed it is sadly almost predictable: in recent years it has been determined that the Amazon rainforest is not a "jungle" but a now-neglected (and much abused) garden, which includes huge areas enriched by biochar and river-bottom muck to make it more fertile. It is only now becoming clear that significant parts of the African continent have a similar history of cultivation. I learned of the impressive usefulness of biochar when I edited a PhD dissertation for a friend who did research with biochar. This essay focuses on many traditional practices, and on their continuation by American Blacks, where they have been permitted to own land. A formative experience in my own young life was a visit to Malabar Farm in Ohio, where conservation tillage was "rediscovered" a millennium after the fact, as it happens.

There were several other stories that were good reading, but rather thin on ideas. The four noted above have strong ideas, and I am an idea guy. I read, not just for escape, but to see what people are thinking, to glean good ideas.

I've finished the Pushcart volume. At 462 pages, it took me a while. Mostly, it was well worth it.