Originally posted June 3, 2007
I’m realizing that I prefer myth incorporated contemporarily in fiction to fiction set in a mythological or historical setting. I read and accept all submissions with an open mind and attempt to have a balanced array of work on Fickle Muses. However, after reading the wide range of fiction that has come to me, I find myself undeniably drawn to a certain style. That doesn’t mean possible contributors should be wary of submitting fantasy or stories in historic settings. Some of my most beloved authors are J.R.R. Tolkien, George McDonald, and even C.S. Lewis, but what they did was fresh at the time they wrote it. Making the old Greek and Roman myths original is difficult, and perhaps easier to make new when set in present day. In my opinion, too many writers keep trying to reinvent Tolkien. We all borrow from other authors – we can’t help it – we build on what came before. For example, Lewis was inspired by McDonald’s other world in “Lilith,” accessed through a mirror in the attic, and used that idea when creating his magic wardrobe into Narnia (I can’t believe I just said Narnia on our Web site – sorry Sari).
What I would really love to see is more fiction that evokes less known mythologies. Joy Harjo wrote a story based on the Native American cosmology of the woman who fell from the sky. Ursula K. Le Guinn made the werewolf myth brand spanking new in “The Wife’s Tale,” and drew from Taoist principles in “The Earthsea Quartet.” Robert Olen Butler weaves Vietnamese myth and European fairy tale into his collection of short stories: “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.” Ana Castillo, in her novel, “So Far From God,” incorporates La Lorona and other Southwestern folkloric myth into her dysfunctional family saga.
So many of the old myths (Greek and Roman), while well loved, have been overused. Therefore, the challenge before us is to create a new mythically cognizant style, or genre as Sari refers to it – something that looks back at the classics, while, if set historically, plays with anachronism rather than attempting to imitate a certain time and place. Of course, this is only my opinion and will most likely stir many of you on to write the opposite – just to show me. And if you do (show me) my work here will be done.
– Leslie Fox
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 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 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 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
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.