Prairie Schooner

Reviews in brief from the staff of Prairie Schooner and associates.

Vol. 4 Issue 4. October 7, 2015. Ed. Paul Hanson Clark.

One of the new members of UNL's Creative Writing Faculty is having quite the month. In addition to getting settled into teaching classes in Lincoln, Chigozie Obioma was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his book The Fishermen. I emailed Obioma a few questions about his book, literary journals, and how he's adjusting to life in Nebraska. Enjoy!

Can you tell us about your book?

September 29, 2009, is a date that rocked the world. In Samoa, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake sparked a tsunami that produced waves as high as forty-six feet. In Lincoln, Nebraska, meanwhile, it was a calm and sunny seventy degrees. One year later, a poem called Well, Millstone, Cistern, Cliff by Steve Lautermilch appeared in Prairie Schooner, depicting a storm after a drought, another time of disaster. –Kara Cosentino

for Paul Cezanne

The cistern has run dry. Now the stone well,
shaped rock and unshaped, collects sound, and what
is beyond sound, the crackle of wrinkled stems
curling to flame. Watercolor scratched,
scraped to bare stock—trees, saplings, twigs.
Roots and brush, windfall limbs and fallen trunks.

Prairie Schooner will not publish work by Yi-Fen Chou, or any other known pseudonym used by the poet Michael Derrick Hudson. The editors at Prairie Schooner were not aware that "Yi-Fen Chou" was a pseudonym for Michael Derrick Hudson when we published his work under the name Yi-Fen Chou, but once Prairie Schooner became aware of the actual identity of the poet a few months ago, Prairie Schooner confirmed the facts with Michael Derrick Hudson and has taken the position that the circumstances and rationale guiding Hudson's use of a pseudonym would not warrant our publication of his future work under such a pseudonym. In principle, Prairie Schooner has no objections to the use of pseudonyms, but we require disclosure of their use to the editor before publication. For the record, Prairie Schooner first published work by "Yi-Fen Chou” in 2009.