Anthology That Sings | Neal E. Lambert and Richard H. Cracroft, eds., 22 Young Mormon Writers

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These five short stories and twenty-four poems are marked by talent, self-consciousness and unevenness. The stories are more consistently accomplished than the poetry, with one exception I will discuss later. 

I began at the beginning with “I Just Don’t Think That It’s Such a Big Deal Any More” by Ann Doty, a story whose lithe prose caught me by surprise— there was a writer. Then I went to the end, to Kent A. Farnsworth s, “A Season and a Time,” selected by the publisher as the best-written piece to have “a deep understanding of the message of Jesus Christ.” It is beautifully crafted in setting and tone, specifically a Mormon story for its realistic, sensitive telling of a missionary’s experience. 

Three of the stories are about death. In many of the poems, too, there is self-conscious reaching toward serious themes of universal value. This does not lessen their legitimacy, but the price is the dazed, groping quality of a youth’s response to death. What Peggy Wiseman’s story, “Of Age,” lacks in maturity, it makes up for in wry, sympathy-swelling understatement of an experience indigenous to youth—the gaining of independent judgment. 

Disillusionment is another youthful theme—the frustration of doubt and a certain mournfulness that the trust of childhood has gone: 

I wish 
to heaven 
he had taken 
the queen’s mad money 
and sailed right 
off the edge . . . 

Susan Chock’s “For Mary Frances … ” suffers in citation, for its effect depends on a progressively pounding rhythm: 

There is a spirit here but I have lost it . . . 
            . . . Now with cautious eyes I must 
discern it and dissect it, though I held it once 
within my hand, the sand 
unquestioning and warm. 

(“Prodigal” by Ann Doty gains in citation; it still has poignancy, but it needs editing and the metaphor has been used before.) 

These are honest poems. Sometimes too honest, as Jed A. Bryan’s ballad, “Sheep Crossing,” in which two stanzas detail the collision of a train with a flock of sheep. (It would have made a fine short story—and an exercise in understatement.) Sometimes just right, as Cathy Gileadi’s pregnant sonnet, with its awkward, cautious probings that raise more than the obvious wonderment. Sometimes only superficially honest, the writer barely taps his feelings and perceptions or strangles them in preachiness. The first stanza of Clifton Holt Jolley’s “Mamo” does not suffer from this; blatantly preachy, the tone has definite artistic purpose—irritating and unjust though it may seem to any feminist. (What his poem does suffer from is splayed metaphor.) 

I did not expect so many experiments with traditional rhyming. With one or two excellent exceptions, less restrictive verse proves more successful partly because it encourages precision. Take Giles H. Florence, Jr.’s regal tribute, “Nearly Blanched”: 

North America’s Southwest, nearly blanched, boasts 
A solitary land and a reserved nation—a landscape 
Whose face at incandescent 
day reflects the hue and hewn 
of its natives who have for centuries lived 
Among and on the holy mesolithic totems . . . 

Later it is more vivid, but what first attracted me was the music; only once or twice does his ear fail, as in this line: “The sun-baked red rock rose-/ tinted natural Rushmores … ” (I do not like the final intrusion of a supernatural symbol. The symbol is a provocative but small piece of irony and it destroys a beautiful piece whose meaning already encompasses the irony and much more.) 

Here is a predictable rhythm which ruins some marvelous word-pictures about an unpredictable father: 

He gave us all it took to get along, 
Including bowls of laughter with the soup 
And closets full of teasing till we cried. 

Put some surprise in that monotonous phrasing and “The Provider” by Bonnie Howe is an unsentimental, very moving portrait of a father. At least three other poems have the same problem—rhythm working against the intent of the poem—and in others the rhythm does not help. I still cannot decide if Linda Sillitoe has overdone the cumbersomeness of her “Still-life Study” of a plodding ancestor; the more I read the poem the less trouble I have with it. 

There are poems that tickle the intellect—”The Gift” by Don M. Sharp., Jr., a picture poem, an epic in an apple—and “To Compose a Poem” by Stephen O. Taylor, with its almost-perfect ambiguity. Then there is Kris Cassity’s “Every Man’s Prayer”; senses and idea come together here, the images stringing like rosary beads into lines that chant toward a flash of impact with . . . something. “Blessed Jesus, Great and Good, save my wretched soul. Amen.” (Never able to let a good “Amen” rest, I’ve begun to consider those images more closely and wonder if they aren’t more symbolic than sensuous and if this doesn’t limit the power of the poem. Maybe not.) 

Other pieces are flatly unfinished. “Released,” the fifth short story, is an unsatisfying attempt to get at the feelings of a bishop being released after a nervous breakdown—unsatisfying because the conflict has intriguing possiities but we are given only a surface glimpse and resolution of it. This is probably a case of writing about foreign experience, also writing about thoughts rather than feelings or motives. “The Mustard Seed” by Bela Petsco is a more ambitious character study with evidence of real intent and some fine moments. But its point of view is confused; the problem might have been solved by either assigning the bishop knowledge short of omniscience to narrow the focus, or adopting an outside observer whose omniscience is plausible. 

A frequent weakness is insufficient trust in the reader—or perhaps in the author himself. Note the tacked-on moral of “Fitzgerald, My Comfort” by Peggy Wiseman, which belabors an already labored point: 

Fitzgerald, whose few public ruffles 
Were polite and quite bloodless— 
Fitzgerald, my comfort— 
Fitzgerald 
More bitter for what he witheld. 

Three of Jan Lalli’s “Poems Too Short for Titles” suffer not from redundancy but pre-dundancy; she means to be writing proverbs. Some are appealing anyway, but ingenuity is no substitute for obedience, without which a poet limits her depth as well as her skill. Her fourth poem, “And he said he’d,” proves that all but one or two elements of poetry can be ignored and the effect still be poetry—sort of. In fewer words than I need to analyze it, she draws images and drama out of imageless slang: 

And he said he’d 
kinda like to take 
me out 
and I said 
for a date 
and he said 
he guessed so 
and then 
I said 
all right . . . 

One rule working here is rhythm, visual as well as spoken, which quickly brings this little monologue to a close: 

and we went 
out 
and 
came back 
very quickly. 

Some of the straying from poetic motives can be blamed on the editors, who take pains to say: 

But above all the young writer must, in the face of all difficulties, remain true to the best that is in him, knowing all along that, at bottom, the feelings that stir in his heart stir in the hearts of all men. To concentrate on his own bruises, to be content with simple self-exposure as another failing human may touch our sympathy but not our spirit. To concentrate on his own heart, to work at self-expression as a struggling son of God may move us not only to hope, but to try. Pity is a good thing, but courage is better. 

The advice is fine, but I wonder if it shouldn’t be given elsewhere, perhaps at church or in a Nobel acceptance speech. Otherwise it will prove another of the difficulties for young writers.

Self-exposure is not simple. It is agonizing, artistically and personally, and it requires courage. If the self-searching is honest, increasing insight and control will follow, and that is about as affirmative an affirmation as could possibly be made about life and human nature. So far our unique Mormon insight into ourselves and eternity is more doctrinal than real. To impose on ourselves a voice that doesn’t yet jingle in our bones will make us self conscious and slightly dishonest, as it has some of the writers in this book. 

But 22 Young Mormon Writers is a pleasure-full volume that sings. It includes ingenuous pieces done with care and sensitivity, which are foil to a number of works that shine with sustained artistry. What these authors lack in substance they’ll learn from their reading and observing. They need competent editors, alert readers, and chances to make mistakes. May there be more volumes like this one.

22 Young Mormon Writers. By Neal E. Lambert and Richard H. Cracroft, editors; Provo, Utah: Communications Workshop, 1975