New Bat City

The latest issue of Bat City Review is in stores. Edited by graduate students from the UT Austin program, the magazine features beautiful artwork and high-quality fiction. But the reason I bought it, and the reason I recommend it, is the outstanding quality of the poetry.

Larissa Szporluk

Larissa Szporluk is a poet whose work I find consistently engaging. She does not reinvent the poem, she simply writes it: loopy, unmerciful sentences that do not spare us the world’s complications. But there is a logic and order to her work, a tether, a cohesion that I find refreshing—it is an emotional center, a presence: what we used to call “voice” before that term became so un-hip. Here is Szporluk’s poem from Bat City Review:
     Animal-Man
The bulls are loose in heaven
and boy your eye go dizzy
down in that earth cave
black fuzz in your nose
kangaroo on your stick
you peck through the canopy
bulls are on the prowl now
sweet mucus broth
flickers in the bush steal girl
bag-carrying girl
river beckons grabs necklace
sister tall aquatic bird
beats the world double
gouge the mountain scratch the
bitch bulls are fuming
tossing through the lavender
turn them into women
satan moses chimp
you grin from ear-to-ear
emotion is the sausage
of that long ordeal
               —Larissa Szporluk
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Betsy Wheeler has three poems in the magazine. One of them stylistically echoes Christopher Smart, dangerously negotiating through love as explorer and explored, bold and sexy and inventive:
     How Very Lewis and Clark of Me
But for I am a slinky little voyager.
But for I am built like a keelboat: with critical eyes, a transcontinental gaze.
But for men chase my fame, want my fame in their king-size.
But for my long ears clouded by white curls.
But for my expedition.
But for baying around slackwater and liftlocks.
But for I reconnoiter the hill peak.
But for the creaking of love trees.
But for I find you I will lay down my arms.
I will lay down my arms and be.
               —Betsy Wheeler
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Among the other poets featured in the issue: Mary Jo Bang, Maurice Manning, Joshua A. Ware, Denise Duhamel, Ron Mohring, Andrea Scarpino and Matthew Zapruder. Hats off to the editors for putting together this eclectic, exciting journal.