Stoked Volume I Online Journal
Stoked Volume I (Tyler Gobble, Ed., May 2011, Online Only)
When Stoked Volume I was brought to my attention, my first thought was, “check out all the celebrities.” The writers featured in this debut have made significant contributions to the literary scene, within the scene and behind the scenes, so I went into reading Stoked with very high hopes.
When I read, the first thing I look for is the uniqueness of narrative delivery. In this short anthology, each writer expressed an appealing contemporary style. Daniel Bailey’s poem No Moment Following retained rhythmic charm in broken prose. J.A. Tyler had an earthy voice in Variations of a Brother War, and he takes the reader through a three-part series of innocence lost, or maybe the lack thereof. Sarah Carson’s lightning quick piece The Problem left me desperately wanting more of her protagonist’s sharp (and neurotic) wit.
Missed Connections: St. Francis by Brian Oliu seemed like a lover’s letter, passionate yet riddled with dissonance. Amber Sparks’ prose in Some of Our More Useful Planets read like an informative science lesson christened with articulate grace. She unveiled sad truths that most of us compress deep within the hollows of our denial banks. “…Maybe you’ll know what we mean if we say we’d like a planet to build us a skyscraper and not a forest so we can get some productivity in place.”
Matt Bell opened the chapbook with a visually delicious short, treads and all, titled El Camino Education. His first few phrases had me thinking a chainsaw by way of Texas was going to leap from the bushes and send me plummeting into a graphic display of gore, but I found myself instead learning a tender lesson alongside the protagonist. One of my favorite lines was: “The El Camino hurled back onto the highway leaving a wake of personal debris behind us.”
Roxane Gay outlined her piece How the Girl in Class Shed Her Skin with a brilliant opening line, “Sasha is a child of war.” Her subject bounced from an atrocious childhood to the distant yet polite notion of foster care to hobbies of interest from cooking to self-damaging relationships. She wrote in short sentences that packed a tight punch: “She takes a lover, a married man with a fetish for superfluity,” and succeeded at crafting a story with true symmetry.
Ryan Ridge’s American Basements rattled off a series of fascinating facts about notable people and their experiences in none other than American Basements. There are random details interjected, fragmented thoughts, all of which may have been researched and/or written under the influence.
Mike Young was hardly shy to point out the funny-because-its-true aspects of society in his story What’s the Strangest Thing You Ever Felt? What’s the Strongest Thing You Ever Felt? “One endless flood for advocacy, a whole bunch of data panhandling for outrage.”
The neat thing about the contributions was that they all surprise-attacked with considerable amounts of energy. They were succinct but incredibly potent in content and delivery. My only beef with Stoked Volume I was that I wanted so much more. Don’t give me a single lapping of scotch and close my tab. I suppose that says a lot about this compilation, since I’ll be first in line to read the next release, and all others thereafter. I don’t believe I’ve ever thanked writers for a wonderful reading experience, but I’m hardly too shy to start now.
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Get more near-daily offerings from Stoked contributors here at the official Stoked Press blog.
Read Stoked Volume I now online.