{"id":221,"date":"2017-03-31T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T16:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/?p=221"},"modified":"2017-03-31T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T16:11:54","slug":"a-bfs-review-mystery-my-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/2017\/03\/31\/a-bfs-review-mystery-my-country\/","title":{"rendered":"A BFS Review: Mystery My Country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-223\" src=\"http:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/03\/Mystery-My-Country-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"Mystery My Country Cover Page\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/03\/Mystery-My-Country-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/03\/Mystery-My-Country.jpg 323w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>I&#8217;ve been remiss this past week and forgotten to post about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.splitrockreview.org\/current-issue\/\">Issue 8 of <em>Split Rock Review<\/em><\/a> going live!\u00a0A colleague of mine, Crystal Gibbins, started up\u00a0<em>Split Rock\u00a0<\/em>about four years ago, and it&#8217;s been a great privilege to serve on the editorial staff since 2015. As with many other web-only literary magazines, most of our pieces are on the shorter side (fiction can be at most 2500 words), but we generally have a great mix of poetry, non-fiction, and fiction to check out. In Issue 8, we even have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.splitrockreview.org\/hwangclark\">short graphic narrative\/novel<\/a> this time around!<\/p>\n<p>As I have with a few other issues, I reviewed a book. This time it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.splitrockreview.org\/gilbertredman-1\">Robert Vivian&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Mystery My Country<\/em><\/a>, and wow&#8230; words are just so hard to describe this collection of short essays. I&#8217;ll let the review speak for me, but reading these essays is something akin to jumping into a frozen lake.\u00a0I\u2019m still not sure how sitting in a sauna until you\u2019re almost uncomfortably hot can make it possible for you to run out through the snow and jump into a large hole cut in the ice without once feeling the burn of the cold, but I know it\u2019s possible. It\u2019s a rush and a relief, all at the same time\u2014and that&#8217;s the closest metaphor I can find for the joy Vivian&#8217;s work creates in its reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been remiss this past week and forgotten to post about Issue 8 of Split Rock Review going live!\u00a0A colleague of mine, Crystal Gibbins, started up\u00a0Split Rock\u00a0about four years ago, and it&#8217;s been a great privilege to serve on the editorial staff since 2015. As with many other web-only literary magazines, most of our pieces [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[95,94,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-book-reviews","7":"category-recommended-reads","8":"tag-dervish-essay","9":"tag-prose-poem","10":"tag-robert-vivian","11":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gilbertredman.com\/bigfrickingswede\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}