The Heartland Review

The Heartland Review for Spring 2005 arrived in my mailbox about a week ago. In addition to the first, second, and third place winners, chosen by Davis McCombs, there is also an excellent set of runners up, poems from the featured readers at the Morrison Gallery Poetry Series, some intriguing black and white art, and a couple of fine short stories.

Nature plays strongly in this issue, as it does in any collection of Kentucky poets – and these are mostly Kentucky poets with a few from neighboring states. Outstanding among these are “The Candle” by Davis McCombs and Leatha Kendrick’s “The Offering:”

All morning their chainsaws
converse with the trees along the power lines
behind my house. The trees answer
in resigned sighs, the whoosh of branches
slipping down to earth like sharp
exhalations, the oof of a gut-punched innocent
bystander…

Some nostalgia, some travel. But there is a little suite of poems with classical referrents that intrigues me. Well actually it begins with a short story, “The Flaming Toes of Icarus” by Darla K. Beasley. But I admit to being partial to the poems. Anna-Mariá Cruz’s “De Anima” is a sort of poetic précis of Aristotle

Democritus claims the soul is made of fire…
Diogenes said the soul is made of air…
Each of the elements has found its partisan
except earth, Aristotle tells us.

Woods Nash’s “Complete” follows Aristotle to Macedonia to instruct Alexander –

And beside evening’s only candle, he discussed
Odysseus with an eager, future king.

and back again to the Lyceum –

— that grove in northern Athens
of robust roots and the fruit of observation,
where life teemed complete…

Jane Gentry’s marvelously titled “Diana, of a Certain Age, Takes a Bath” shows us the aging virgin huntress:

My body is drifting out of its familiar shape
like a great, slow cloud in August.

The Review has put out its call for submissions to the Fall 2005 issue, postmark deadline August 10. Fiction, poetry, and b&w artwork to:

The Heartland Review
C/O Mick Kennedy, Editor
ECTC
600 College Street Road
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

For more information call 270-769-2371, ext 68407 or e-mail Mick Kennedy.