Polluto, Issue 1, January 2008

The subtitle of Polluto is “The Anti-Pop Culture Journal,” a usefully polarizing description. In the Editor’s Letter at the beginning of the issue, Adam Lowe states: “So Polluto looks at, utilises and eschews the popular in equal measures. But always with a wry, postmodern smile.” In other words, this publication is deliberately counterculture, which approach is meant to manifest in the poetry and fiction published within. Since this is the first issue, it’s the one to set expectations for future content.

First we have “Animal, Mineral or Vegetable” by Dave Migman. This is the tale of Maureen, a mentally unstable woman who has a troubled relationship with her abusive boyfriend and treats her dog like a human child. Much is made of Maureen’s mental instability, her weight, her inertia, and her mistreatment of Baby. While it’s a strong portrait of an “outsider” character, there’s nothing really counterculture about setting up such a character as an object of pity and scorn. I kept waiting for another twist, but the culmination of the story only underscores Maureen’s unsavory nature.

The story’s format, too, seemed to fall short of the publication’s goals. Dialogue is italicized, no quotation marks used, and riddled with ellipses. Ellipses are also abundant in the rest of the narrative. The syntax of the story is rough, and there are several typos and missing words, such as “loose her balance” and “Maureen huffed as pushed her arm.” Unusual formatting choices can enhance the message of a story, but misspellings and missing words tend only to convey an amateur quality.

“Werewolf of Sappho” by Deb Hoag is a more successful piece. While there are still a few typos, the “outsider” character is presented as both strong and healthy. Our viewpoint character, Kate, is a waitress, and Fay is an intriguing new customer. Fay takes her burgers very, very rare, leaves huge tips, and flirts unabashedly. Kate, dealing daily with the monstrous Danny, succumbs to the flirtation, but of course things aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem.

My main complaint about this piece is that we are given both Kate and Fay’s viewpoints, yet information is withheld that I feel should have naturally come out with each viewpoint. Still, I was engaged by both characters and the twists of their stories, and felt “Werewolf of Sappho” was much more successful than “Animal, Mineral or Vegetable” at examining its material from a countercultural viewpoint.

“Werewolf of Sappho” is followed by the poem “Love’s Lullaby” by Billy Cryer. Awkwardly rhymed, there’s really nothing to this poem that makes it stand out, and certainly nothing to its theme that enhances the publication’s assertion of “anti-pop culture.”

What follows the poem is a novella, “Mr Gum, the Creative Writing Tutor” by Rhys Hughes. Its five section headers are plays on literary and pop culture references, with the first being “Oh, Whistle While You Work, and I’ll Come To You, My Dwarf.” The sections themselves also interact with literary and pop culture sources thus referenced in the framework of the viewpoint character taking classes on Creative Writing from Mr Gum. The first section addresses the long-standing advice to “show” and not “tell” when relating a story, and Mr Gum makes his point by passing on a story he says a friend of his told him. The story is riddled with clichés, bad grammar, pornographic language, a throwaway female character, and dropped narrative threads. Of course, it’s revealed that Mr Gum himself lived the story, and though he never does manage to explain how it illustrates the importance of “showing” over “telling,” he does find its resolution after relating it.

In fact, each section features Mr Gum quoting common writing advice, then telling a story to reinforce his lesson, usually by breaking the rules of the advice in the course of the story. Mr Gum, it’s clear, can’t write, though he thinks himself an excellent writer. He’s also sex-obsessed, so several of his stories are extremely bawdy, riddled with sex and violence in a way that certainly seems more about feeding those aspects of pop culture than interrogating them. “Mr Gum, the Creative Writing Tutor” is self-consciously meta, again riddled with typos and missing words, and feels very strained, like an overly-long joke, the punchline to which isn’t funny.

“To Die With Dignity” by Steve Redwood isn’t meant as a joke, and the overwrought narration makes that clear in the beginning. About a near-future Netherlands in which it’s become standard practice to euthanize the sick and old, the story begins with two siblings smuggling their aged father out of the country, headed for the “safety” of Spain. After only a few paragraphs, though, the author uses the reminiscence of the POV character as an excuse for extended exposition on how the Netherlands became so oppressive. The style of the exposition is much more flippant than the style of the framing story around it, which makes it read less like reminiscence and more like an op ed in the newspaper. Even the euthanizing of the narrator’s mother is described with a kind of morbid gaiety that might work for gallows humor, if the tone were consistent throughout the story. While there’s a predictable plot twist toward the end, the whole work reads as disjointed, an impression not helped by the bulk of Polluto’s artwork being distributed in the middle of this story, a virtual “gallery” that slices the story in half. It’s a layout choice that makes the whole publication feel unbalanced and unwieldy.

The art itself is a mixed bag, though of course heavily weighted toward what might be termed “edgy” or “disturbing,” if relying on some kind of shock factor weren’t such a mainstream choice. Not only in the printed word does Polluto fall short of its stated goal of “anti-pop culture.”

After “To Die With Dignity” comes “Finding Sonoria” by Jeff VanderMeer. Crake, a stamp collector, hires the private detective, Bolger, to find a country for him, a country that might not exist but from which he has a stamp. As Bolger attempts to do so, both men grow obsessed. Though this begins with Bolger cast in the role of hard-boiled PI gone to seed and Crake in the role of his slightly crooked employer, both characters quickly gain depth, and the story itself is both surprising and logical. While again, there are a few typos and missing words, the prose of “Finding Sonoria” is engaging and well-paced. The contrast between the main characters is drawn with a deft hand, their self-delusions layered and often contradictory. Like “Werewolf of Sappho,” “Finding Sonoria” successfully engages pop cultures’ tropes and takes them unexpected, yet satisfying, places.

The short-short “Evil Badness” by Emma Stringfellow follows up VanderMeer’s piece. It begins: “I now understood why Wyle E. Coyote always let Road Runner go free.” Considering that Wile E. Coyote never “let” Road Runner do anything, this did not instill confidence. The plotline is essentially that a supervillain reflects on his life and changes his approach. Unfortunately, there’s not much more to the story than that. The author doesn’t make good use of the flash fiction length, and the result reads more like a summary than an actual story. Worse, it pulls the classic “twist ending” so common in amateurish flash fiction, turning the entire story into one extended joke. Again, it’s not a funny one.

After “Evil Badness” comes a series of poems. “UP too heer” by Dave Migman is short and obtuse, and while ambiguity in a poem can make it powerful, too much ambiguity can render it meaningless. “UP too heer” crosses that line.

R. C. Edrington treats us to “A Selection of Poems.” “2 Habits” features, predictably, a drug habit compared to a relationship, but there’s some strong imagery here and a driving rhythm. “Withdrawal” isn’t quite as successful with the same material—the imagery less coherent and the rhythm weaker. “Edie” is marred by the fact that the poem’s title is on one page and the body of the poem on another. In it, the tragically hip young heroin-addicted characters inhabit New York, but all the name- and brand-dropping isn’t a substitute for a strong sense of place, which this poem distinctly lacks. It also lacks a sense of character, beyond the way Edie looks. “for Riki” has similar problems, and compounds them with a stereotypical portrait of a self-sacrificing girlfriend to the point-of-view sad sack addict.

“Man of War Part 1″ by Jonathan Oxtoby gives no indication, other than the title, that it may be a serialization. A soldier on a battlefield seems to experience moments of the life of the man he’s just killed. The prose is very pedestrian, and the repetition of words and phrases, perhaps meant to create a specific effect, does nothing so much as slow down the narrative. Considering how little happens, and the lack of striking details over which to linger, the slow pace is not an advantage. There are no surprises and certainly no challenges to the mainstream. If this is the beginning of a longer story, it’s not one that builds anticipation.

Jess Freeborn’s “A Deck of Cards” reads less like a story and more like a personal essay on the current religious and political atmosphere in the United States. In fact, there’s nothing to indicate this isn’t just a rant about the evils of organized religion, specifically Christianity, which the essay, if it is one, treats as one vast monolithic religion. The best thing to be said about “A Deck of Cards” is that it’s short.

Following “A Deck of Cards” is “the first of [Polluto’s] columns from international super-spy ‘Lucifuge.’” The column begins with Lucifuge’s drug-fueled plans to end U. S. politics and liberate the world by murdering the current President. Lucifuge shares this plan with a compatriot while having sex with a male prostitute, and like “Mr Gum,” the order of the day is once again sex and violence. Since neither of these things is shocking or counterculture anymore, this reader felt nothing so much as bored by the repetition. Nor did the image of a topless young woman heading the next column add interest. The woman is presumably Micci Oaten, whose column, “No More Heroes,” addresses the music industry and the question of art. Of course, the first paragraph contains the assertion that such artists as Blondie and Adam & the Ants “created individuality,” which is a good indication of what exactly constitutes “art,” according to Oaten. The column contains the usual assertions about corporations taking over the airwaves and brainwashing the masses with pre-packaged faux musicians. While it is both passionate and articulate, an excellent example of its type, the type is not original, and no new solutions to the column’s stated problem are proposed.

Returning to fiction, “Singer” by Adam Lowe starts off with the intriguing premise of a character that is half-human woman, half-Singer sewing machine. Called Marléne by her creator, a young orphan named Gris who ends up going off to fight in World War I, this character embarks on a strange annual journey with her pet, “a neutered hyena who had the eyes of a child,” whom she calls the Marquis. Marléne dons a skirt and mask for these journeys, hiding her nature, but when she returns home, she has many suitors who come to her precisely because of that nature, paying to be stitched by her needle.

Years pass like this, until Marléne visits a carnival, and a mechanical fortune teller gives her reason to believe Gris will be returning to her. She prepares and waits, building new companions in the interim, and finally sets off to find her lost love with the Marquis, an oboe, and a rifle.

“Singer” is exactly the sort of story for which one suspects Polluto is aiming. Lyrically written, its haunting images maintain a precarious balance between the grotesque and the exquisite, with a strong neo-Victorian Gothic flavor. A beautiful nightmare, “Singer” is entirely too short, and yet exactly the right length for the story it tells.

The follow-up to “Singer” is another grouping of poetry, this time by several poets. “Lady Luck” by Billy Cryer contains some strong and unusual images, though the central conceit, the anthropomorphizing of “luck,” isn’t given any new twists. “Hookskin speaks” by Dave Migman involves some slant rhyming and an almost Beat poetry rhythm, both of which strengthen the off-kilter, menacing subject of the poem. Like “Singer,” “Hookskin speaks” is both grotesque and compelling, a genuine challenge to complacency that doesn’t devolve into that state itself, as many of the pieces in Polluto do, relying too heavily on subject matter or aesthetic for an “anti-pop culture” qualification. Unfortunately, “Lapse” by Kate Strong is one such piece, though it’s still a lovely poem that strongly evokes a moment in time.

Another such piece is “Without a Net: The Poetry Reading” by R. C. Edrington. As with Edrington’s poetry, the protagonist is a heroin addict full of hipper-than-thou pathos and a disdain for anyone not similarly addicted. If not for the sense the author shares such beliefs, the characterization could be read ironically, a critical commentary on the mainstream obsession with drug addicts as de facto artists. There’s an attempt made in the tone to be self-aware and self-mocking, but the mocking of the non-addicts comes across as more genuinely heartfelt.

Following this are two poems by Billy Cryer. “The Graves of Elysium” references Greek mythology and is full of straightforward rhyme. It would work well for those who enjoy the poetry of such Romantics as Shelley and Byron. At least until the last stanza, which ends with a jarringly modern line of dialogue that might appeal to those who aren’t so fond of the Romantics, provided they can make themselves read the lead-up. Not a terribly successful experiment in juxtaposition. Cryer also authored the next piece, “Rhapsody on a Full Moon,” which describes inspiration as a carnal visit from the Muse. Neither the imagery nor the format of this piece are terribly compelling, and of course the narrative is a common one.

Wrapping up the issue is the very short story, “Is that all there is?” by Patti Plinko. The conceit of this story, in fact, is that it can’t be written down. So while we get a rather incoherent beginning of a tale in which the protagonist huddles on the floor in a circus tent, waiting for a specific performer, the moment the protagonist begins to enjoy another performer, the story ends. “For you have to find this one yourself my friends,” Plinko writes. If only that weren’t such an apt summary for so many of the pieces in this issue of Polluto. While the publication’s stated mission is an intriguing one, it’s not quite successful at this point.