Literary Journal Research Project

The Manhattan Review Spring 1988
Editor: Philip Fried
Publisher: St. Andrews Press/ made possible by Mollie Fried
St. Andrews College
Laurinburg, North Carolina 28352
Photography & Cover Editor: Lynn Saville
Composition: New Art/ SST
Published: Annually

The Manhattan Review, at least this version from spring 1988 has published just poetry, with an interview with Thomas Kinsella at the beginning of the Review.

Submission Guidelines:
For this journal there weren’t many submission guidelines. For this volume 4, number 2 the selection of poems were all representative of the most recent period of Polish poetry. All the poetry written was therefore written in then, the last decade prior to 1988, and there was a special emphasis on the years following the imposition of martial law in Poland.

Journal’s Aesthetics:
This journal is hard to decipher what the aesthetics are. In most of the poems they are short and simple. They normally have references to God or religion, and always go into depth on a simple object. They use the simplest thing such as a heart on a hand, or a grain of sand to explain into depth.

One Piece that I think exemplifies the Journal:
Tattooed Hand
(“My heart came in my hand,” says Khephera)

The man with a heart tattooed on his hand
Sleeps. His hand is strong but retreats
In a lifelong loop of fears, a long life loss,
Lines of life, gifts of manhood, acclaims
And judgements, he wakes, the sad evening
Like a rough sponge pressed into his eyes, the lost
Heart carved on his hand for all to see,
The strength of his lost cause.
The lines are strong and deep,
Blue and crimson scored into the flesh,
A pain and a cabaret.
He is made of longing,
The heart hangs him on its peg,
All his discoveries are less than he wishes,
His hand raids his own flesh,
He stares at the tattoo heart
And for the thousandth time it tears his own heart out.
One Piece that I’m glad I Found:
Thief
He will steal it, whatever you possess.
Whatever you value, what bears your name,
Everything you call, ‘mine’ he will steal.
Everything you have is frail and will be stolen from you.
Not just watch or bracelet, ring or coat,
Bright objects, soft splendours, gifts, necessities,
But the joy that bends you easily and makes you feel safe,
Your love of what you see each different morning
Through your window, the ordinary seen as heavenly.
Your child’s power, your lover’s touch, will be stolen
From under your nose. He will steal everything.
He will take everything from you. You will never see him.
You will never hear him. You will never smell him.
But he will destroy you.
No surveillance is close enough, no guard clever enough,
No lock secure enough, no luck good enough;
The thief is there and gone before you have sense
Of breath to cry out.
He has robbed you before, a hundred times.
You have never seen him but you know him.
You know his vermin smell without smelling him,
You know his smile of learning without seeing it,
You feel his shadow like deprival weather, grey, oppressive.
You know he watches from far away or from just round the corner
As you re-gather your little hoard of riches, your modest share
Of the world, he watches as you build your shelter of life,
Your hands raw from working day and night, a house
Built out of bricks that must be guessed at, groped for,
Loved, wept into being; and then upon those walls
You and your people raise a roof of joy and pain, and you live
In your house with all your ordinary treasures,
Your pots and pans, your weaned child, your cat and caged bird,
Your soft bestiary hours of love,
Your books opening on fiery pages, your nights full
With dreams of a road leading to the red horses of Egypt,
Of the forest like a perfumed pampered room wet with solitude.
You forget the thief. You forget his vanity,
His sips and spoonfuls of greed. But he watches you,
Sly in the vaults of his wealth.
Shameless, sleepless, he watches you.
Grinning, he admires your sense of safety.
He loves all that you love.
Then, in disguise, with empty pockets, his fingers dirty
And bare, rings of white skin in place of gold bands,
He comes like a pauper on a dark patchwork morning
When summer is turning round and robs you blind.
He takes everything.
He is the thief in whose gossamer trap you have been floating
All these years. He comes and takes everything.
Your house is empty and means nothing, the roof falls in
And the walls of love dissolve, made of ice;
The windows no longer watch out over heaven, the bare wooden
Floors show their scars again and ache for the forest.
He takes everything you have, this thief, but gives you one gift.
Each morning you open your eyes jealous as hunger, you walk
Serpent-necked and dwarf-legged in the thief’s distorting mirrors,
You go nakedly through the skyless moonless gardens and pagodas
Of envy that he gives you, the thief’s gift, your seeding wilderness.

Autumn

Above the world looking down,
Watching the people as they go by.

Never alone,
Never any cares,
Just going where the wind blows.

People come from afar
To see my colors,
And hear the beautiful music
I make with the wind.

Oh, how carefree it would be
to be a leaf.

Other Possible ending:
And the many friends that I’m constantly with

Occasionally angry with my biggest friend
I can’t help to notice
The many ways he twists
And turns.

This makes him angry,
And he shoves a twig
Up my bum.

Then I blow away,
Down the road
To see life from a different view
I’m now looking up.

Mary Jane

If you want to know how I got caught, I’m going to have to start at the beginning of my junior year in high school. That was the year that I thought I found my true love, the one that would be there for me no matter what I did. It seemed as though we just always wanted to be together. After school everyday we spent the night linking hands. After a year of this we didn’t think that this was enough time together so we decided to even skip school to be with each other, at least three days a week I was absent from school and not a day went by where I didn’t skip a class. We were both sad and we knew we were both there for each other, to take care of each other.
I always dreamed of having a lovely house on Cape Cod, maybe a little bit on the bigger side, but a house none the less. I couldn’t wait soon enough for this to happen so I decided to mosey around town and find a summer house where I knew no one would live in the winter. After several weeks of observing I found my house, on a little island overlooking the ocean in Hyannis Port.
We decided that this was going to be our house; this was where we were going to spend our days. Even though I know it was wrong, we had more fun times in that house than all of high school. Some days we’d be alone and have hours where we could bond and prove to one another just how much we loved each other. We just couldn’t get enough of one another. But we knew we couldn’t totally withdraw from the world around us. Not only would our friends not approve of that, our families wouldn’t either.
We made a pact that we wouldn’t become that couple that we were both against. You know the couples that I’m talking about, the kind where they constantly have to be touching each other showing their affection in public. The kind where they can’t even spend a minute apart from one another, they just hang out with each other. The ones that have lost all their friends just to prove their commitment to their relationship.
So we decided that since we had a new house, we’d invite our friends to come over and hang out with us. We could all be one big happy family and no one would be a third wheel. We decided that we were going to be the happening couple that everyone would want to hang out with. I guess we just got so caught up in being in the scene that we became the scene. We forgot that we weren’t living our life; we were living someone else’s. It just got out of hand. We skipped our whole senior year, we can’t even remember it.
Our scene became one for the group; I tried so hard to not make other people the third wheel that I became the third wheel. The one that I loved so much, other people learned to love so much too. I should’ve known I wasn’t good enough for her, I knew she was out of my league.
One day we had a huge blowout in the car ride to our house. We didn’t even notice that anyone was following us. When we got to our house we just kept going at it. That’s when we found out a cop was following us. Turns out the cops had been following my love all over. When he saw how much we loved each other he caught me and arrested me for possession of Marijuana. That was when I find out even the ones you love screw you over. My lovely Mary Jane and I had to separate for good.