Volume 11, Issue 2 (1998) Chota: A Midwestern Review

Dear Reader,

Traditionally, this magazine gets published once every semester by a small gang of literary studs. This year, I wanted to change all of that—gather up a staff of hundreds and put out a democratic literary pocket mag two or three times a semester. And not only that, I wanted to include some photography, maybe even some cool-ass literary journalism pieces. But it didn't go down that way.

In the end, it was just me and Kenney Marlatt, sitting in the office at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday, throwing together a very haphazard and three-months-late wad of Chota. Advisers were cursing, journalists were laughing, writers and poets were mewing.

If I were going to be a real punk about it, I'd blame it all on jazz. You really can blame anything on jazz these days. With a warped, vernacular notion of jazz in your pocket, a semester's worth of lethargy and failure becomes this issue of A Midwestern Review: an improvisation, a lack of order, a concept with its own considerations of time, space, and money. An odd-beautiful new creation. But I'll be the first to concede: this is no Miles Davis Bitches Brew sort of thing.

I don’t think we’ll ever quite understand what went on last semester, but this magazine’s lack of existence was my fault—and I certainly do apologize. I know there’s a whole gang of you folks on this campus who score the passing of the seasons by the magazine’s appearance. Didn’t mean to jack your reality like that.

Now that it’s finally here, though, it deserves a look-through. There are some interesting thoughts stirring in certain minds on this campus, and some of these things make it onto paper and deserve to be treated as literature. In this issue, there’s a smorgasbord of fine writings “for your own contemplation & joy.” Some pieces will shoot you in a comfortable vein—there are love poems and remembrances here.

My preference, however, is for the pieces that delve into the darker regions—the ones that find a counter-reality embedded within reality. Check out Alison Pilgrim’s poem "Mother and Paul", about her mother’s New York cab ride with the gloomier, base element of a Hollywood legend. Or Johnny Lengacher’s "Retribution", a poem in which his great-grandmother’s funeral becomes the setting where two aspects of pseudo-Amish southern Indiana culture—hellfire religion and burning incestuous lust—mingle meditatively.

As far as prose goes, Jeffrey S. Martin’s "Me and the Grapefruit" will definitely put the zap on your head. I suggest you read this maddening tale (written in one intense afternoon) both first and last. You might try Sarahbeth Scantlin’s "Highway Music" for a breath of calmer reality in between.

How could such complex creations be conjured on the humble, homogenous, hallowed grounds of DPU? I haven’t a clue. But dark or light, it’s all good and worth reading. And now that it’s (finally) done—you can do just that.Go on & read it. You know you want to.