News from Dappled Things President, Bernardo Aparicio:

Dear Friends,

Like a cool summer breeze, the SS. Peter & Paul 2010 edition of Dappled Things has arrived, clearing the air with it a fresh selection of prose, poetry, and art. Among the offerings in this edition, you will find two essays by Eleanor Bourg Donlon on the subject of evil in English literature that study its manifestations from the profound to the popular. In the first of these, “Cinemanemia, or Revenge of the Bloodsucked,” Miss Donlon considers that all important question: why don’t they make vampyres like they used to?

The real problem with so many of these [new vampyre] films is actually they are both too serious and yet not serious enough. In the midst of taking themselves so damned seriously (the profanity is apt when speaking of the nosferatu), they become seriously unrealistic. (Says Abbot: “I know there’s no such person as Dracula. You know there’s no such person as Dracula.” “But,” quips Costello in response: “does Dracula know it?”) They are so desperate to invest the metaphysically denuded world with some sort of meaning that they end up dressing in modified Lugosi garb and speaking in husky, tremulous tones. This is symptomatic of a pervasive problem: as we have completely lost the sense of the sacramental nature of reality, we attempt to convey the preternatural through fantasy and costume. The more conspicuous the spectacle and more gaudy the display, the clearer it is that we are dull to its true presence. On the one hand we superficially embrace the supernatural under the guise of the fantastical; on the other, we completely reject the metaphysical backdrop proper to any such foray into vampyrism. And—pace drooling Edward Cullen fans—it is the latter which truly makes such nonsensical nightmares resonate with viewers.

But it is not just the essays that are great; let me tell you about the fiction. In Suit, Gabriel Olearnik’s first prose submission to Dappled Things, he treats us to an unusual love story graced by the masterful use of the language and the startling imagery that frequent readers already know so well from his poetry.  Then Caroline Paddock challenges readers with a love story of another sort, what you might call a metaphysical one, in her excellent Professore Takes His Cure:

Peter breathed when Luca told him to breathe and bit the thermometer when Luca told him to. He noticed with annoyance that even when performing his medical duties Luca swaggered as if he had not been discharged from the Navy—as if he were still in whites with a sword swinging from his side. That swagger was one of the things Peter disliked about the village’s only doctor. The other thing he disliked was the way Luca pursued Nina: lazily, as if because Luca and Nina were the only young people to have lived abroad and returned to the village they would have to marry no matter how little effort Luca put into courtship. Peter grimaced with the thermometer under his tongue. Wasn’t it true that they would inevitably marry? No, no, he told himself. Nina wasn’t a normal woman—Nina was special. She wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t understand what Peter called her “angelic qualities.” But what interest did Peter, at sixty-one, have in the affair?

Also, be sure not to miss this issues feature piece, Born Again Virgin, a new story by Andrew McNabb, author of the much-discussed short fiction collection The Body of This. Then there is Flesh by Steven Stafford and February 29th by Bernadette Morgan, but you will have to subscribe to our print edition to enjoy those as well (and at only $19.99 a year, isn’t it about time you treated yourself?).

Lovers of poetry will find much to rejoice about as well. Ricardo Quinones, the renowned scholar and critic, shares with us “SoCal: A Sorting of the Ways,” his first published poem. Online readers can also enjoy Taylor Graham’s “Salisbury Plain,” and Monica Magnam’s “Operation Pedro Pan,” but only print subscribers can read our entire selection for this issue, which includes new poems by Gabriel Olearnik.

And if visual art is what you crave, you will relish Whitney Wolf’s beautiful oil paintings, including his haunting “The Return.”

We hope you will enjoy our selections for this edition, and that you will consider subscribing to our print version, which is sure to enrich your mind and soul.

Sincerely in Christ,

Bernardo Aparicio
President, Dappled Things