Near the beginning of the new millennium came images of giants collapsing and human bodies leaping flashed on the television, as the public watched, unsettled and almost disbelieving. The country’s next move became imperative. Carolina Quarterly‘s 2001 Winter Issue arrived in mailboxes in the wake of national trauma, and many pieces in this issue reveal what a burden the search for hope could be and explore the extent to which hope is attainable.

Daniel Wallace’s “Maurice Quimby: A Life,” a short story about an enigmatic novelist, launches the collection. Vividly described as an obtrusively odd individual and an unappreciated (not underappreciated) author, Quimby remains an outsider in his community and in the literary world. The narrator, having been Quimby’s only friend, speaks with compassion, not pity, as he weaves the story of Quimby’s resignation to his sad life. Yet, this portrayal seems incomplete until Wallace’s narrator shows how Quimby’s fiction reflects aspects of the fictional author’s life. The tale becomes not as much about the eponymous character or the narrator as it is about what kind of person constitutes a writer.  As the narrator’s empathy increases through the story, he opens the possibility for Quimby’s voice to garner an audience, who will better understand the pathos behind Quimby’s “impenetrable prose style.” Wallace’s short story speaks to the post-9/11 world through the shred of hope it uncovers for Quimby, suggesting that no one remains perpetually isolated.

The single-mother protagonist in Kristi Gedeon’s “Letting Down” has found hope, yet the poetic prose piece questions the value of hope when it produces mere contentment. The woman nurses her baby, whom she has brought to her significant other’s home. Gedeon disorients the reader, as she unconventionally but appropriately merges the two spheres of dating and motherhood. The woman’s acceptance of one almost-satisfying relationship with her boyfriend, in consideration of her relationship with her child, elicits concern, more so than sympathy, from the story’s readers. The notion of settling for something less than happiness doesn’t sit well with any reader, despite a promise of much-desired security.

Amber Flora Thomas surprises her readers by juxtaposing the nearly aborted pursuit of hope with the whimsicality of ladybugs in her poem, “October Ladybugs.” Thomas connects the invasion of ladybugs in a gynecologist’s office to an infestation of a medical kind that plagues the speaker. The poem both amuses and disturbs early on with the image of the “uterus dappled/ With the heart-shaped crawlers.” Thomas asserts the speaker’s ability to regain hope when she writes about how the frail ladybugs, seemingly doomed to plummet to their deaths, can open their wings and quickly save themselves. It is up Thomas’s speaker to choose. “October Ladybugs” reminds its readers that the ability to “recover equilibrium” still exists even if all seems doomed.

On the heels of 9/11 arrived a unifying and uplifting belief in the nation’s ability to mend. This issue of Carolina Quarterly mirrors the dysphoria and the proclivity to search for security and hope through human bonds and nonhuman connections.  The pieces that have been mentioned are only glimpses into the human resilience that the rest of the fiction collection portrays, complicates, and ultimately affirms.

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Photo by Jock Lauterer, courtesy of the Carrboro Citizen

When the news of Doris Betts’ death reached us in late April, we here in the CQ office didn’t have time to fully process the loss, with finals looming and the press deadline for issue 62.1 upon us. In the intervening weeks, we’ve had time to reflect upon her legacy, her importance to the literary world at large, and to The Carolina Quarterly specifically.

Throughout its history, Betts has been a constant presence in the pages of the Quarterly. From book reviews, to interviews, to stories, she has been both the author and subject of much of the writing in our pages. She published numerous short stories with us – the first in 1954 and the last in our inaugural online issue, released in the summer of 2011. In 2002, we even dedicated an entire issue to honoring her work. Generations of CQ editors came to know her as a contributor, professor, and mentor. She will be sorely missed.

Below are samples of some of Betts’ work that has graced our pages over the decades:

• “Birds of a Feather” from issue 6.2 (Winter 1954)
• “August Tree” from issue 8.1 (Fall 1955)
• “The End of Summer” from issue 10.2 (Spring 1958)
• “The Bald Pigeon” from issue 21.1 (Winter 1969)
• “Beasts of the Southern Wild” from issue 25.2 (Spring 1973)
• “The Story of E” from issue 31.3 (Fall 1979)
• “Doris Betts: Making a Difference in Many Lives” an interview with Mark Scandling from issue 32.2 (Spring/Summer 1980)
• “A Conversation with Doris Betts” an interview with Marti Greene from issue 52.2 (Spring 2000)
• “Seeing is Believing” from CQOnline, August 2011

The Carolina Quarterly

Vibrant natural images and arresting, original character explorations fill the Spring 2000 Issue of the Carolina Quarterly. Even over a wide breadth of topics—from poems actually about nature to essays about competive eating—this edition manifests the refreshing bloom Spring brings into our lives from cover to cover.

Jeffrey Beam’s poem “The Clouds: Great Smokies” embodies this naturalistic slant, presenting an extended image of clouds condensing on the mountains. His use of enjambment creates boundless, organic connectivity between images that mirrors a similar unrestrained quality in clouds. Beam also personifies his clouds, giving the reader something more to engage with than just a single extended image: the clouds “come down/to sit/for their supper.” The final lines shift the focus of the poem from the clouds themselves to their influence on us—the clouds become “A welcome,/sinister/necklace/for men/and dogs.” This perplexing image ends the poem on a thought-provoking note, suggesting these natural formations are both comforting and disturbing.

The short memoir piece “Bozo” is another of this issue’s standouts. It is unconcerned with nature—except for the nature of eating. The outrageous titular character is a world champion eater and a generally outrageous personality. The extreme detail with which Detnan explains just how much one must eat to be a world champion is enough to make a reader a bit queasy (but in a good way). It’s terrifying to most to think about eating thirty pounds of meat loaf in one sitting. And the lovely understatements from Bozo and the people that know him serve to underscore just how ridiculous and unique this man is. The fact that he is a wholesale liquor salesman who can drink anyone under the table after eating all the food on the table only adds to the legend of Bozo. A line that showcases this hilariously ironic reserve comes from Bozo himself, who says, “[If] I drink two fifths of gin in twenty minutes today, tomorrow I’m liable to wake up feeling kind of fuzzy.”  Detnan’s details and cleverly muted style portray a simple man who believes in living life to the fullest, literally.

Randy Blasing’s “Cast Iron Blimp” is another of this issue’s gems. Blasing explores the weight of paternal expectations, expectations that are as heavy as a lead zeppelin. The author transitions expertly from the image of an iron blimp in a collectors store to memories of his father’s equally weighty disdain as he watches his son pursue a career in writing. It’s a twist that takes the reader by surprise; a simple meditation on a precise image becomes an emotional descent into the past.

“The Uncle’s Girlfriend” by UNC’s own Daniel Wallace, the head of the Creative Writing Department, is a compelling family story. Wallace uses specific details to turn a generic small town setting into a community with its own quirky personality. His details serve to develop character and to create and enhance the setting.  His story is a quiet piece about a boy getting to know his new uncle while learning—and seeing—much more than he bargained for. The reader finds himself pulled into the shoes of the sparsely described protagonist and watching as his Uncle becomes a stranger to his own family. But, just as Ray learns, we find that family is “not like a can of soup.  A family don’t have an expiration date on it.”

Some of the pieces in this issue of the Carolina Quarterly display nature blossoming in the springtime; other pieces show characters blossoming into quirky, outrageous, memorable protagonists. And just as the first March glimpse of a blooming Carolina dogwood can astound, these characters, these images, these poems, and these stories are sure to amaze, showing us new sides of life and, hopefully, new sides of ourselves.

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What would you like to see change in our cover design or internal layout? Are there fonts you find particularly appealing, or that we should avoid (all comic sans, all the time)? What journals do you most admire for their design?

Let us know what you think in the comments and we’ll take your ideas to our brilliant and dedicated designer, Philip McFee.

The Carolina Quarterly

The winners are as follows:

$50 Grand Prize Winner:
Liana Roux – “Thursday Morning Mass”

Honorable Mentions:
Maria Isabelle Carlos – “Straightjacket”
Jeffery Beam – “The Man Who Ate Butterflies”
Joshua Orol – “Winter’s Vacation”
Cary Simpson – “He Wasn’t Very Tall”
Ted Gellar-Goad – “A Fragment Attributed to Sappho”

Each Chapel Hill Transit bus will feature two poems throughout the month of April. Liana’s poem will appear on all 98 CHT buses, while the Honorable Mentions will be randomly distributed amongst the buses. The posters go out on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for them.

Thanks to everyone who submitted poems, to Michael Chitwood for judging, and to Peyton Riley and Lee Norton for assistance with the poster design. Immense thanks to Assistant Editor Bhumi Dalia for conceiving of, publicizing, and successfully implementing the Bards on the Bus contest. Thanks also to Assistant Transit Director Brian Litchfield of Chapel Hill Transit for helping us to get poetry onto the buses.

You can take a look at the posters here:

The Carolina Quarterly

In honor of National Poetry Month, The Carolina Quarterly is launching a campaign to recognize the poetic talents in Orange County, North Carolina, during the month of April.

Send us your most creative ballads, haikus, sestinas, sonnets, villanelles, ghazals, prose poems, or free verse compositions by March 26th for consideration. Poems must be no longer than 30 lines. We will accept up to 4 poems per person.

Up to ten of the best pieces will be featured on Chapel Hill Transit buses throughout the month of April. One grand prize winner will receive $50. The winner and all honorable mentions will get a one-year subscription to The Carolina Quarterly.

To submit, please email your poems in a single attachement to carolina.quarterly@gmail.com. Please write “Bards on the Bus” in the subject line.

The contest is free and open to all students at UNC-Chapel Hill and residents of Orange County, North Carolina.

Contest judge: Michael Chitwood

Michael Chitwood is a free-lance writer and a lecturer at the University of North Carolina. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Field, The Georgia Review and numerous other journals. Ohio Review Books has published two books of his poetry – Salt Works (1992) and Whet (1995). His third book, The Weave Room, was published by The University of Chicago Press in the Phoenix Poets series (1998). His collection of essays, Hitting Below the Bible Belt, was published by Down Home Press in 1998. Gospel Road Going, a collection of poems about his native Appalachia, was published in 2002 and was awarded the 2003 Roanoke-Chowan Prize for Poetry. In 2006, he published a collection of essays and short stories called Finishing Touches. His collection of poetry From Whence was released in March 2007 from Louisiana State University Press. Tupelo Press published his book Spill in October of 2007. Spill was named as a finalist for ForeWard magazine’s poetry book of the year.

The Carolina Quarterly

February’s winner, selected at random by our intrepid interns, is Jim Tilley of Bedford Corners, New York. Jim’s subscription will begin with issue 62.1, due out in April of 2012.

Congratulations to Jim! And remember to submit using Tell It Slant for your chance to win!

The Carolina Quarterly

Since 2010, each issue of The Carolina Quarterly has contained a unique tag line, appearing on the title page at the front and subscription form at the back of the journal. Now we want your help to come up with the next one.

Recent tag lines include:
Punctilious Whimsy Since 1948
Obdurate Effervescence Since 1948
Habitually Nascent Since 1948
Prurient Scripturience Since 1948
Comfortably Eclectic Since 1948

And the winner of our last tag line contest:
Quizzical Syzygy Since 1948, provided by Dyson Shultz

Guidelines: Tag lines must be 22 characters or less, and ideally two words, in keeping with precedent. The tag line should make sense as a descriptor of The Carolina Quarterly and should indicate something we’ve been/been doing “Since 1948.” Submit an entry by posting it in the comments section below. Contest closes at 12:01am on March 20th, 2012. The winner will be selected by The Carolina Quarterly editorial staff and receive a one year subscription, beginning with issue 62.1. The winner will be contacted via e-mail, so please use a valid e-mail address when posting your submission.

The Carolina Quarterly

And this week the fine folks over at Tell it Slant will be unveiling a new endeavor: Journal of the Month. We’re very happy to be participating in this project. Stop by the table or check out their website for more information.

Also at AWP, NewPages will roll out their new webstore. This is a great way to buy single issues of a number of your favorite journals.

Hope to see you in Chicago!

The Carolina Quarterly

January’s winner, selected at random by our intrepid interns, is the poetically named Pepper Trail of Ashland, Oregon. Pepper’s subscription will begin with issue 62.1, due out in April of 2012.

Congratulations to Pepper! And remember to submit using Tell It Slant for your chance to win!

The Carolina Quarterly