Originally posted April 14, 2007
In Greek mythology, wood nymphs: Dryads, Meliai, and their many variations, though a divinity, died when the tree they inhabit died. Daphne, a nymph, was transformed into a Laurel tree in an attempt to escape Apollo’s unwanted advances. Trees often appear in folklore as anthropomorphic: speaking, bleeding, and having desires. It may simply be that they resemble us with arm-like appendages, knotty eyes, and leaves instead of hair. When the mortal, Erysichthon, began to chop a tree down, the Hamadryad that lived in the tree cried out. When Demeter found out about the crime, she punished Erysichthon for killing the Hamadryad in her sacred oak grove.
I found a cool Web site depicting photographs of the human form posed artistically with a series of imposing trees. It’s called The Tree Spirit Project at: http://jackphoto.com/images/tree/Mission.html. The humans are not the focus of the images – the trees are. I found it interesting that seeing people and trees together like this, the similarities become more obvious; the humans are more, for lack of a better word, “tree-like.” We usually think of trees as having human characteristics, not the other way around – reminding us that we are nature too.
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted April 12, 2007
A few weeks ago, I sent FM to a site that selectively lists and reviews various sorts of indie publications (which I won’t name, since I’m about to say nasty things about it, and it is on the whole a good resource). Now, had the editors declined to link to FM because they thought it sucked, I would have disagreed, but at least understood. However, the reason they gave for turning it down was because FM isn’t formatted like a traditional print journal (despite the fact that this was for a section of Web journals).
As I see it, content should be adapted differently to suit different media. For example, when adapting a book to film, narration might take on a different but equally effective expression through an actor’s body language (one good example is Roger Michell’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”). Likewise, the logic behind FM’s format (which I went into in more detail in a January post) is rooted in the medium.
The publishing industry is still largely geared toward print. Though certainly more people are realizing the potential of online publishing, resistance to Web-adapted formats seems to me much like the early film industry’s tendency to format movies as if they were stage plays.
While the Web isn’t exactly new, there’s still plenty of room to experiment with its possibilities, especially in the literary realm. Some journals, for example, use the medium to blend music, poetry and art – a feat beyond the capabilities of the average piece of paper. I say experiment away – the gatekeepers of industry tradition will catch up eventually.
– Sari
Originally posted April 11, 2007
Trees appear in myths and legends around the world, often suggesting a point of connection between mere mortals and the divine. In the Western tradition, we are familiar with wood nymphs, primarily the story of Daphne and Apollo, however, an African tale tells a similar story about a woman turned into a tree. In Celtic myths, you’ll find the Holly King. In Buddhism, Buddha became enlightened under a Bhodi tree. India has many myths surrounding trees, originating in a deep veneration for trees and sacred forests. One of the five trees in Indra’s paradise grants abundance. The iconic image of a serpent guarding a tree appears in Sumerian art. Cherry blossoms in Japanese folktales are a significant reminder of the transient quality of life. The ash tree in Norse sagas draws knowledge from a magic spring. I found a Web site listing folktales and myths concerning trees from all over the globe: Africa, China, Europe and more. Just go to: http://www.spiritoftrees.org/folktales/featured_tales.html
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted April 5, 2007
According to Joseph Campbell, there are three phases to the hero’s journey in all great mythological stories: Separation, Initiation and Return. Looking at the novel I’ve recently started, I can see that the three phases are in place – I did this subconsciously. My character receives a call (literally), goes on the road where she goes through several rites of passage, and then returns home a stronger woman. What if my character didn’t come home or never left home in the first place – would I have a story? I’ve read that there has to be trouble for a story to happen. I suppose my character could get the call and let the machine pick it up – just stay home wondering what would have happened had she gone on the journey; watch American Idol and eat Sara Lee cheesecake. Not much of a story, I admit.
Years ago, I was working on a story about a rabid dog (I know, I know). I was trying to figure out which of my characters should shoot the dog, when I was introduced to “The Writer’s Journey,” by Christopher Vogler, based on Campbell’s philosophy. From Vogler’s list of archetypes, I could spot my hero, mentor, trickster, etc. According to Vogler, it was the hero who should face death as initiation – how could I have missed it? When I sent the story to an editor, she said it was cliché (imagine!). I’ve realized since then, that my hero did not have to “shoot the dog” to go through an initiation. Often an inner conflict is a more dramatically satisfying rite of passage than a spectacular one.
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted March 25, 2007
I was delighted when Sari asked me to take on the role of fiction editor. I hope that my background will add to the texture of Fickle Muses. Although I have a basic knowledge of classic mythology, my interests lie most profoundly in third world legend and storytelling (that includes the Southwest.) As a child in Costa Rica and Guatemala, I heard tales with both indigenous and African origination. I read The Arabian Nights, Robin Hood, Zorro, Bible stories and Grimm’s fairy tales with equal relish. I’ve studied Native American writing, Southern, African American and 18th Century Gothic and “Oriental” novels, as well as post-colonial fictions from India, Korea, Japan, New Zealand and the Caribbean. In my fiction, I lean toward the mythic with a hint of magic realism and a propensity toward symbolism. As far as submissions go, what I will look for is good story telling. I want to be swept away by voice and character into another world, whether contemporary, historical or fantastic. As a grad student, I taught three semesters of creative writing. I gained more from those classes than from all of the workshops I’ve attended combined. I know that reading your submissions and deciding which stories should be published will be an extension of this learning process for me and I’m honored to be trusted in that capacity.
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted March 15, 2007
The submissions process here at Fickle Muses is an experiment.
Before starting FM, I was on staff at a few magazines that selected work through committees. The process was, in a sense, objective – while our tastes might not always agree, we could generally agree on how skillfully a piece was written, how adept its technique.
But something is lost in this objectivity. For me, the most important thing writing can do is evoke feeling and thought – not exactly the best measures for impartial deliberation. In those cases where one or two committee members felt strongly about accepting a piece that others rejected because it needed a bit of polish, I think we may have lost something truly valuable, even if I happened to be one of the naysayers.
So in starting Fickle Muses, I decided on an intentionally subjective selection process. Though objective quality of writing is still a factor, I’m more apt to accept a moving piece with a few loose threads than a highly skilled piece that doesn’t touch me.
(In other words, a rejection from FM is as likely to mean the submission doesn’t suit my tastes as my standards. Good work, I hope, will find a good home with the right editor.)
Back to the experiment: If an editor creates a magazine that s/he wants to read, will other readers enjoy it too? The conclusion, dear reader, is up to you.
– Sari
Originally posted March 4, 2007
It’s funny how, as wide spread as the printed word is, it’s often the oral traditions that persist most strongly. I’ve been going through my periodic rereading of the Tanakh. It’s been a few years since I read it beginning to end, so it’s not all quite fresh in my mind. For example, I had forgotten that the reason given for the confounding of speech is “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach” (Genesis 11.6). No, I remembered the Sunday school version, that language was fractured because men were building the tower of Babel to reach heaven and G-d.
The version of the story I learned in childhood suggested that men were making a direct challenge to G-d, believing that they reached for his seat of power to be nearer to him, but in effect attempting to usurp him. It doesn’t contradict the version in Genesis, but it is a matter of interpretation.
In rereading the original (or at any rate, the earliest version available), the tower seems to me a decidedly earth-bound endeavor. The reason men give for building it is “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world” (Genesis 11.4). (There’s a bit of irony for you.) It sounds to me that though the top of the tower is meant to be in the sky, its purpose is earthly – to act as a beacon which men can find and return to from all corners of the earth. In that interpretation, the confounding of speech seems more like petulant jealousy than defense of the heavenly throne.
Of course, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with interpretations that stray from the earliest versions of stories – if I did, I should hardly publish a magazine of them. Interpretation can be a way of creating dialogue between past and present, of pursuing new layers of truth. But when interpretation becomes a basis for condemnation, there comes the problem.
I am thinking of the story of Tamar and Judah’s sons, commonly interpreted as a condemnation of masturbation. Here’s what actually happens, in the biblical version:
After the eldest son, to whom Tamar was first married, died, “Judah said to Onan, ‘Join with your brother’s wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother.’ But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste [literally, ‘spoil on the ground’] whenever he joined with his brother’s wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. What he did was displeasing to the Lord, and He took his life also.” (Genesis 38.8-10)
It should be fairly obvious that the transgression here has nothing to do with masturbation – Onan’s misdeed is his failure to do his duty as a brother.
Not that it’s any better when literal, rather than interpretive readings are used to justify condemning others, but we might at least be honest with ourselves about the sources of modern Western repression, no?
– Sari
Originally posted February 15, 2007
Getting published takes a great deal of perseverance, talent, and plain old good luck. You’ve heard it before – submitting requires a thick skin.
For my part, I have two remedies for the rejection blues – a Wall of Rejection next to my computer, papered with notes of all colors, shapes, and sizes, and a healthy dose of sarcasm, which the well-intentioned insipidity of the standardized rejection letter provides excellent fodder for. Here’s a sample of the latter (you can guess which parts came from actual rejection slips):
Dear_____,
We regret that we are unable to publish your work at this time. We were just on the point of accepting it when an entire battle fleet of Martians burst into our office, pointed their ray guns at our heads, and said: “If you value your lives, the lives of your families, and the survival of the human species, REJECT THAT SUBMISSION!”
Your interest in independent publishing is important to our journal. Subscribe now at a discounted rate offered as a thank-you to our submitters, and help us meet our goal of hiring a private army to rid the publishing industry of the threat of Martian censorship once and for all!
Sincerely,
The Editors
– Sari
Originally posted February 11, 2007
Myths are full of battles between gods – the Olympians against the Titans, the younger Norse gods against the Giants. It is clear in such myths of generational battles that on both sides, the gods are gods.
In other myths, the Christians demonize Euro-pagan gods; the gods (deva) of Hinduism are the demons (daeva) of Zoroastrianism and the Zoroastrian gods (ahura) are Hindu demons (asura). Put simply: Demons are somebody else’s gods.
Of course, in those parts of the modern world dominated by monotheism, we no longer call other people’s gods demons – no, we call them figments. The logic that one god is plausible, but many are primitive foolishness is rather beyond my powers of reasoning. That I made a covenant with my god which precludes the worship of other gods doesn’t mean I have to insult other people or their gods by claiming they don’t exist.
– Sari
Originally posted February 4, 2007
Here’s a good book of poems to check out:
“Friday and the Year that Followed” by Juan Morales
It’s not strictly mythical, but does have some mythic elements. My favorites are the poems tracing Juan’s family stories – like his mother’s family’s experience of living through the 1949 earthquake in Ecuador and his father’s war stories.
Get more info and order from Bedbug Press.
Read an interview with Juan Morales in Mirage Magazine
– Sari
Originally published January 26, 2007
When I was mulling over what to call this myth magazine a couple years ago, my search was centered around one question: What kind of name would express mythic arts without also expressing a limitation to one mythic tradition?
This led to a series of ridiculously long, dull titles (“Journal of Poetry and Fiction on Myth and Legend,” among the worst). For a while I was stumped, until one day “Fickle Muses” popped into my head. Of course, it completely violates the second condition of the question, coming as it does from the Greek/Roman traditions. But as modern myth has made the muses more the gods of art than of ancient Greece, I thought I could get away with it.
At first, I just thought Fickle Muses sounded neat, but since then I’ve given the title more thought. Aside from the obvious association for artists, the term has an interesting relevance to mythic arts. Even the ancient texts within themselves are full of contradictions, and every generation has new twists to contribute to the old tales – religiously sanctioned or not. The resulting quagmire transforms victims to heroes, tyrannical regimes to prophesied saviors, gods to demons.
Perhaps the muses are presenting us with paths as diverse as the people who follow them. Then again, maybe they’re just messing with us.
– Sari
Originally published January 21, 2007
When I write with biblical myth, I usually prefer to focus on brief asides, events and characters mentioned almost in passing – it leaves more room for invention.
I read one such poem in Albuquerque a few years ago:
Birth of Dan: Bilhah’s Story
“Consort with Bilhah, that she may bear
on my knees and that through her
I too may have children.”
– Rachel to Jacob, Genesis 30.3
Breath. Rachel’s breasts holding
my back, her legs close
around mine. Long, slow pulls
of air. Single syllables escape
my lips while my belly stretches to release
Rachel’s son. We move together
closer than sex. The pain isn’t one
I can find words for. It is not like spasm,
not like a blow. It is not like.
What I can tell is Rachel’s hands
gripping my elbows. She loved me first,
so I followed her, and bear her child
far from home in this land Jacob calls
promised. She loves me still, though she
was bartered to Jacob and barters
for him. What is he? Only seed.
Rachel is wind. I know her.
She may betray me
easy as her husband. Now we rake
together, fierce as entropy.
First published in The American Poetry Journal
I later learned that one member of the audience had responded to the poem by saying that she didn’t think the poet knew how irreverent the poem was. It was an interesting comment – not because she thought the poem irreverent, but because she saw something else in it that made her question whether the irreverence was intentional.
Since childhood, the fallibility of biblical heroes has been a strong part of their appeal to me – Moses throwing temper tantrums, Jacob tricking his family out of their property and blessings. If our highest role models can be so indecent and undignified, I thought, surely I can be pious without being perfect?
My sense of piety is a far cry from the view that to be pious is to follow the letter of religious law. But there is a kind of delight in knowing that faith can speak to faith, even for those who find it in an utterly different form.
– Sari
Originally posted January 14, 2007
I read once (I cannot recall where) that the ideal size of a magazine is 48 pages – the length of a comfortable evening’s read.
The online medium presents different needs. A Web journal is not the sort of thing one is likely to curl up with in the comfy chair – at least, not for desktop users like myself. At home, the Internet is something I squeeze in over a couple cups of coffee before work. Though for a longer journal, I can break it up and read a poem or story a day, I thought it would be simpler and truer to the medium to use a shorter format.
The other issue is frequency. A primarily subscription-based print journal will simply arrive when the new issue comes out, with no need for the reader to remember the publishing schedule. A free Web-based journal with no subscription requirement, on the other hand, must come out often enough not to be forgotten – I’d say anything less than monthly risks losing readers from sheer absence of mind.
– Sari
introducing…
Originally posted January 7, 2007
I first had the idea for Fickle Muses about a year and a half ago. I wanted to start a literary journal, but given the abundance of general literary zines, I wanted to fill a niche specific to my interests – thence the emphasis on myth.
I love both writing with myth and reading others’ creations. Some of my favorite writers in the genre are Mary Renault and J.R.R. Tolkien in fiction and Louise Glück and Anne Carson in poetry.
When I launched Fickle Muses, I hadn’t heard of any other journals focused on mythic creative writing. Since then I’ve come across the Journal for Mythic Arts. However, as they take submissions by solicitation only, I hope we serve sufficiently distinct purposes.
Though I began Fickle Muses as a matter of personal interest, I think mythic poetry and fiction can serve broader social purposes as well.
Living in the U.S.A., I’ve seen a narrowing in conceptions of religion over the last couple of decades. While the country remains religiously diverse, it is increasingly viewed as a Christian nation. Moreover, the popular conception of what it means to be religious has narrowed, emphasizing judgment over compassion.
While Fickle Muses is not a religious journal, in re-examining myths – stories born from religious traditions – in contemporary contexts, we explore how those traditions shape the world we live in.
I hope that Fickle Muses will give a sense of the plurality of traditions shaping the modern world and the complexities within each tradition. And, of course, share some funny, titillating, gut-wrenching, entertaining stories.
– Sari
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.