THANK YOU FOR SUBMITTING!

Today is the deadline for R2 submissions. If you have extenuating circumstances and did not submit by 5PM, let me know (annwang@rice.edu). If you can get into the building, you may slip your submission under the English department door. (I will not be picking up the submissions until early tomorrow morning). If you are abroad, you can as others have e-mail me your submission, and I will prepare it for you.

Thanks to all of you for your interest. We will contact you next semester after judging.

Best,
AnnW, Editor-in-Chief

alarming patella

those are my two favorite words, currently, in that order.

"my," he said to her, eyeing the scalloped hem of her skirt. "you have alarming patellas."

-annw.

My favorite word

I was thinking about the blog the other day as I was walking and how I didn't have a favorite word to share.

Days later, I was walking in roughly the same area and I caught myself thinking about a particular word and how much I liked it.

Soon after that second thought I had a third: Why don't I combine my first two thoughts and post that word on R2's blog? I carried on with a renewed spring in my step.

The word is 'interlude'

Who doesn't enjoy a nice interlude?

They're refreshing -- a nice change-of-pace.

The word itself is easy on the eyes, sexy (enter-lewd, but in a classy, romantic way), and a pleasure to say. It's everything I want in a word.

My favorite letter is X.

I know it's not required, but I'm going that eXtra mile.

Summary: interlude, X

A poem for Danielle

Danielle - we are so,
so, so
sad you have the flu
it must be terribly fun for you
sitting all wrapped up in the chair
we know it's just a good excuse to
consume your normal daily intake of four novels.
What a novel idea to procure the flu.
Drink scotch (with tea... or not).
Make sure to embrace naps (a lot).
Although we're sure you're not actually sick
(At least not mentally :))
But be sure to laugh as though
You just heard one of Prof. Derrick's odd remarks
Since laughter is a curing thing.
Also, you're sexy when you're phlegmy.

Love,
R2

R2 Annual Open Mic Night

We had a great group come out for our annual Open Mic Night in the pub last wednesday. Several staffers and a lot of other great readers gave us a sampling of their work. We also had a silly writing contest, and the group that won gave us a marvelous story about a speeding car, urine, and gender-neutral genitalia. Hooray! Some great UH and St. Thomas writers came out to give us support. The only complaint I heard was that there were too few people at the event, and WAY too few people up at the mic. Next year, don't be shy. R2 loves you, and you love R2.
Danielle
Fiction Editor

Marsha Recknagel and Sasha West Reading

Please excuse the overdueness.

On November 7, our very own Marsha Recknagel and Sasha West provided us with a fantastic reading. Sasha started things off with a selection of short poems, and managed to impress the room with an especially complicated poem written from the point of view of a thoroughbred horse. She ended her reading with a longer poem, "The Immaculate Conception of Loneliness," which maintained an impressive sense of momentum through numerous pages and kept the audience's attention, sometimes a hard thing to do with lengthy poetry being read out loud to college student attention spans.

Marsha Recknagel read a small selection from a current work that really impressed everyone. As always, her general manner behind the microphone was disarming and warm and really led into and complimented her work. We were all a little sad she took out the risque details, but it was still a memorable piece.

Alix Ohlin @ Lecture Series

Ariel & Audubon, the title of Alix Ohlin's third night's lecture (October 25, 2007) was a fascinating look at the connection between birds and human emotion, as expressed throught various art forms.
Along with aesthetic appreciation of birds, Ohlin explored the inevitable dark side of human interaction with these winged creatures. One of her most memorable anecdotes was of the passenger pigeon, once the most populous pigeon in the world, yet literally hunted to death.
Her lecture brought together literary questions and pressing social concerns, and flawlessly combined her talent for storytelling with her passion for the environment.

- Mariame A, Fiction

St. Thomas's Shadwell Wake FRIDAY!

Want to read gloriously bad poetry?
Come celebrate the death of the worst poet ever!

Shadwell Wake
Friday, November 16, 2007 at 8:00pm - 12:00 am

English Department, University of St. Thomas
3800 Montrose
Houston, TX

Email for Info:
AlairaKasimer@gmail.com

Shadwell wake is a thirty year long tradition at UST. It is FREE, open to the public, and 21+ bring I.D.!

There is a bad poetry contest, you can dress in your best funeral clothes, and there will be live music (Sideshow Tramps and MORE!), snacks, and socializing! Bring anyone you want!

Support University of St. Thomas writers!

OPEN MIC NIGHT IS TONIGHT

COME TO OPEN MIC NIGHT! EAT FREE FOOD! MEET UH AND ST. THOMAS WRITERS! READ! LISTEN!

7PM WILLY's PUB

Breakfast at Rachel's! and fav word

This Sunday come to the Parthenon ( my beloved house's name) for brunch at 10:30 . Bring 3$ or food! ( Better yet email me to let me know if you are coming and what you can bring res2@)
And favorite word:
Annwang, because it mysteriously appears at the end of all the emails in my inbox...i kid i kid
is.....facetious!......ok ok i kid again
is.....saturated.........well this would be but it is too much associated with fat
is.....serendipity.......but again, maybe not because it is too cliche
is.....salubrious, because I just learned it, but again, not really, basically I dont have a word.... they are all equally fantastic, and I think this brings me to my final 'favorite' word: egalitarian :)

<3 Rachel

My Favorite Word... and Wacky Prizes!

So, as arguably the ~*~WacKi7sT~*~ person on the r2 staff, I have been given the honor and privilege of choosing the gifts for Wednesday's Open Mic Night in Pub. While I haven't gotten them yet, I'm writing the blog to assure anyone who might have been apprehensive that they will indeed be awesome.

And: my favorite word, right at this very second, is "chifferobe." I'll use it in a sentence.

My roommate two days ago: "Alex, what happened to the chifferobe in our common room?"
Me: [insert three To Kill a Mockingbird jokes here].

Much love,

Alexander Crompton

Danielle DuBois - fiction editor

My favorite word is "disarming." Like, "The serial killer's love for carnage contrasted with his warm, disarming smile."
Aw.
I've been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens lately. Hopefully that explains why that sentence popped into my head...
xo,
D

AND THE COVER ART WINNER IS...

david rosales!

congratulations, david! we look forward to working with you!

best,
r2 staff.

the cover art debate begins

to all cover art candidates:

thank you for your submissions! we will let you know by next week.

best,
the r2 staff

booze and books both start with the same three letters. coincidence? probably.

R2 Staff (and especially Fiction Minions):

Don't forget: 9 PM, Next Friday (November 2nd) there will be an informal soirée at my abode.
All of you are welcome.
BYOB. Also BYO-Swimsuit if jumping into unheated pools in November is your thing. Alex Crompton is game.
Get to know other staffers! Sit on my couches! Dance around the living room with me!
email me for me info: dndubois@rice.edu
xo,
D

R2 staff writes.... one sentence at a time.

It was a frozen and miserable afternoon in Houston. I woke up and discovered I was a bunny, and thought, "Wow, that is so Kafka."
I didn't have many options I lit up a cigarette with difficulty and sighed.
Clearly, my name is Alex Altman, because smoking cigarettes angstily is what I do.
But, anyway, why would you care too much about that?
The only things that matter are good cheese and a fleece penguin blankie.
With these things he settled down and prepared for a long night of
talking about whether she should go off the Pill or not.
She thought it best to consult her father, who was something of an expert.
He knew all about the lethal effects of the peppered moth, and would be able to distinguish the pattern unique to the species-- hopefully in time for her to return her book to the library.
Unfortunately, he was ensconced in the throes of amnesia from the tragic rock quarry incident and all of his previous acquired moth-knowledge was forgotten.
Walking through the midst of the moths, he had a shimmer of remembrance from one of the Indiana Jones movies. Concentrate! Concentrate! he told himself as he resolutely grabbed through the fluttering bodies and pulled the lever.
However, it was all futile because in the grand scheme of things anything we do is meaningless but then the grand scheme is meaningless in our lives.

Jo Hsu-- Editor At Large, Fiction

More than just a line...

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,what do writers do?’
But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.
Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

- Cristina O'Keefe "Lit (or: To the Scientist I Am Not Speaking to Anymore)"

COVER ART CONTEST DEADLINE sat oct 27, 5PM. WIN ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS

R2: The Rice Review, Rice's premier undergraduate literary magazine, is looking for any kind of 2D art (paintings, digital images, drawings, photography, collage, etc.) for our annual cover art contest. The winner will receive $100 and have his/her art printed on the cover of R2's Spring 2008 issue after working on refining the magazine skin with the staff's cover art editor.

All submissions due by "e"-mail (r2mag@rice.edu) no later than Oct 27. Undergraduate submissions only.

Please send high resolution image files with a native size of at least 8" x 8". Examples of past covers can be found in the English Dept. Office, 2nd floor Herring Hall or online at r2mag.rice.edu. Any questions may be directed to Ann Wang at annwang@rice.edu. Good luck!

*P.S. All fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction submissions are due by December 3rd. Turn hard copies into the English Department Office.*

Lauren Fitte - Provider of Fun / Editor Helper

Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other.

Kundera, The Incredible Lightness of Being, p. 124

Alexander Crompton (assoc. editor)

Here is a quote from Laurie Anderson, who isn't a writer as much as a performance artist (definitely worth looking into). This is from a piece called "Language is a Virus."


"So I was talking to a friend, and I said, 'I wanted you, and I needed you, but I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you,'

And he said, 'Hey! Are you talking to me? Or are you just practicing for one of those performances of yours?'"



Also, as per Ann's request, I'm including one of my famous haikus.

R2 is but a
conglomeration of texts.
Geese converge on loaves.

Alex (Smith) -- Associate Editor

“But he was chiefly celebrated among the populace of our community for having imported into our thankful midst a young woman of sporting morality: an inconscionable aesthete by the name of Marita who had been drummed out of high-rolling society in Phoenix City, Alabama after her health card had been punched so many times it disappeared into thin air.”

-Gamble Rogers “Charlie’s Place”

Megan Scarborough, *Poetry* Editor

"[Women must have the liberty] to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future and the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

And of course I'm no one to tamper with a great writer's work, but I'd say you can just replace "women" with writers. It's a true enough statement for everyone who wants to write, and I'm sure she realized that; she only meant to point out that women, arguably, have to (or, had to, depending on your view of the feminine situation) struggle a bit more for it.

Also, on a more personal note, study abroad is the perfect opportunity to travel and idle and let the line of your thoughts dip deep into an entirely new stream. Do it if you haven't already.

more from (d)ann

"Her face was the kind of thing one sees in the classical wing of a museum: beauty as a force of history."
-Steve Almond, "Run Away, My Pale Love," My Life in Heavy Metal

Jennifer Luo - non-fiction at large.

I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
- [I, being born a woman and distressed] Edna St.Vincent Millay

Fiction Editor@Large Mariame

On a lighter note:

"I was very reluctant to hiring you."
&
"There are always another girl that would be so happy to be standing in your shoes."

- Mandy, from The Fashionista Diaries
(okay, okay... I heard those sentences)

Emily Coleman - Managing Editor

"I'm not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it's drenched in sunlight and it's weightless and I know it's not cheap."

- House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski, page 20.

Vanessa Johnson -- Social Chair

"Who are you, sir, that dares deny my prayers?"

--the character Florinda in Aphra Behn's The Rover

Alex Altman - Poetry Editor at Large

It’s in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about,
it’s when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats;
and the words we find are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have.

- Stephen Dunn, from the poem "Those of Us Who Think We Know"

could someone on staff please start spelling their name with a silent d at the beginning? please?

Hello, my little chickadees -

Amazing book-excerpt of the day -
"Love falling buttered side down, fate falling arse up! Why doesn't anyone know when everything is over?" -Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (p. 165 if you're rockin' the New Dimensions edition) (which you should be, because it's an amazing book)

Staffers -
Come be my friend. I want to know all of you.

xo, your friendly neighborhood fiction editor,
Danielle

cherry series round 1: NADINE MEYER / STEVE GEHRKE

When: Monday, October 8th, 2007. That's right. You missed it.
Where: Brazos Bookstore on Bissonnet
What: Reading by two superb poets

My worthless opinion:

This is first reading I've been to since last semester. I had forgotten how much I miss readings. I love hearing people oo and ah softly when a pretty line is delivered.

It was a nice pairing of readers (not only because they are married). To make some very elementary comparisons, both of them wrote about the body, about poets, about death, about art and artists, about themselves, and about historical figures and events. I would say they embody the idea of the poet as art critic, historian, and lyricist.

Nadine Meyer went first and read from The Anatomy Theater, a fascinating collection that primarily revolves around images from anatomy lab. I found many of the images gorgeous and revolting at the same time. I especially liked the pieces she read that combined agricultural and physiological metaphors. Some really moving lines, especially in the last piece she read. I have vague (and only vague because of my bum brain) memories about "hand of memory" and "vial of melancholy."

Steve Gehrke had a great "stage presence," a humorous modesty. He shared some of his new projects with us; and no, Steve, I did not know that Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression, or that Eugene O'Neil ripped up his house with a machete! I admired how personal some of his poetry could be. I especially like the charged, clipped rhythm of the first piece (the one about Eugene O'Neil) and the second-to-last piece (excerpt from "Empty Chair"). I wish I could quote you some lines, but alas I was too poor to purchase the books. Or I'm a cheapskate.

At any rate, it was loads of fun, and I hope you all come to the next reading (November 7th), which will feature our very own Sasha West and Marsha Recknagel, two of the nicest women I have ever worked with, and, might I say, both excellent writers.

To the end,
annwang

Photograph "borrowed" from: http://middlewesterner.typepad.com/middlewesterner/2005/08/pardon_the_prou.html

Welcome to The Rice Review

Hello, this is "annwang," this year's "editor-in-chief." I am currently also the "webmaster" "ex tempore." I am taking a class called "Introduction to Web Design," and my semester project will be to "revamp" the current R2 website (http://r2mag.rice.edu). Currently, r2mag.rice.edu is de-funked, yet we keep putting the url on all of our publicity materials, as some sort of cruel joke, I suppose.

I had already planned to build a blog into the new website so that R2 staff could communicate their thoughts on readings, announce events, discuss what they're reading, etc. The blog will also be public in order to destroy the myth of elitism that seems to surround R2. I thought we might go ahead and start the blog while everyone waits for the new R2 site with their panties in a bundle.

Oh, in case you didn't know, R2 is Rice's undergraduate literary magazine. It is run by students who love to write, love to read good writing, love to share good writing, and love to talk about writing and reading. We publish good writing by other people who love to do all the things we just listed, and then we try to suck these writers into our staff. It's really a very vicious cycle. Some staffers have of course mustered enough resolve to eject themselves from this cycle, and have gone on to graduate school to do some even better writing.

Another thing I love about this magazine is that we publicize readings by renowned authors, both from Rice and beyond the hedges. The past two years, our lucky staffers have also gotten to interview some really big-shot people like Jennifer Egan and Thomas Sayers Ellis. We also get to interact with famous writer-folk through the Campbell Series (this year featuring Alex Ohlin!) and the Cherry Series (Steve Almond coming in February!...I think I will ask him to sign my bra), both of which we publicize and promote. Stay tuned for a complete schedule of readings.

If you're interested in joining our staff, it's not too late. E-mail annwang@rice.edu with inquiries. This is my fourth year on staff, and I have no regrets. Well. Those are strong words. Let's just say I have very few.

If you'd like to win 100 smackaroons, please submit a cover art entry to r2mag@rice.edu. E-mail annwang@rice.edu. Deadline: October 27th.

If you'd like to test the literary waters and have a good time with Rice's (and UH's and St. Thomas's) writerly folk, come to our Open Mic Night on November 14. This is not that sort of thing where everyone wears berets, smokes stuff, and snaps to invisible music. Unless you want it to be like that (we are full service, and we can so make that happen. maybe except for the smoking stuff). E-mail annwang@rice.edu with inquiries.

If you'd like to make even bigger BANK (we're talking big $$$ here), submit your fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to the English Department by December 3rd. E-mail annwang@rice.edu with inquiries.

Well, that's all for post no.1. I will post again in approximately 5 minutes about the first Cherry Series reading.

Let's hope this is the start of something beautiful?

To the end,
annwang