Kris Christensen, Editor of Rock & Sling
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with Kris Christensen, one of the founding editors of the new literary magazine Rock & Sling: A Journal of Literature, Art, & Faith.
Christensen holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing and served on the staff of the literary journal Willow Springs. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including The Sycamore Review, Puerto del Sol, Permafrost, Pontoon: An Anthology of Washington State Poets, Hubbub, The Iowa Review, Passages North, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Many Mountains Moving. She has received an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship in Literature for her poetry and an Artist Trust GAP Award to support her work on a novel set in Eastern Washington's Kettle River Mountains. Christensen also writes creative nonfiction. Formerly an instructor at the Corbin Art Center in Spokane, Washington, she currently teaches creative writing to groups and individuals in private settings.
Rock & Sling is a handsomely designed twice-yearly publication that showcases visual art and literature "with broad or explicit associations to Christian faith or its history." In its premier issue (Fall 2004), the editors announced that one of their missions was to explore the intersection of Christianity and postmodernism. The journal offers the Virginia Brendemuehl Prize for Poetry, a $1,000 award with a July 15 deadline. This contest requests that you not submit your work to other venues while it is being considered.
Q: Tell me about Rock & Sling's editors – Susan Cowger, Laurie Klein and yourself. What particular spiritual and aesthetic perspectives do each of you bring, and how do they combine into an editorial vision for the journal?
A: Laurie considers herself a spiritual hybrid: strong evangelical roots with a charismatic strain grafted in. For three decades, she's devoted much of her creative and daily life to church endeavors as a musician, speaker, actress, and director. She even did a stint of missionary work in Thailand. Aesthetically, she's also a hybrid who embraces contemporary poetics but retains a definite fondness for the Romantics. Her own work shows her natural gift and training as a storyteller and a deep love of metaphor. Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Brian Doyle, Annie Dillard and Bret Lott are among the writers she admires.
Susan sees her faith as broader than mainstream Christianity, but she's still grounded in its traditions. As an artist, she mourns the loss of art as a means of communication in the church. Her work as a visual artist has influenced her poetry and prose, which are highly imagistic, condensed, and impressionistic. She takes ordinary natural and manmade objects — wood, wire, stone, and the occasional broken violin or parking meter — and combines them into sculptures. Susan uses images in her poetry in much the same way. She looks for solid design, edginess and juxtaposition. For Susan, art should engage the intellect and the imagination while commenting in some way about the Creator. Susan's all-time favorite writer is Thomas Lynch. She also likes Donald Hall, Jack Gilbert, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda and Christopher Howell.
I'm the wild card of the bunch. Having received a severe Bible thumping in my teens from well-meaning Christians, I don't have much use for structured forms of religion or spirituality. My current faith is quite eclectic, based in metaphor, not doctrine, and I find Christianity's metaphors to be the most powerful and useful in my life. In literature, I've enjoyed the surrealists and Dadaists, and a number of dead white guys, William Blake especially. Closest to my heart are the Spanish-language poets — Neruda, of course, but also Antonio Machado, Gabriela Mistral and Nicanor Parra. Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is a close second, followed by Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, and Michael Ondaatje. My poetry and prose reflect my general eclecticism. I've experimented with surrealism, but lately, I like the power of narrative, memory and image, especially when I can get all three working together. In prose, I love to combine scientific or historical elements with the personal.
So, in terms of faith and aesthetics, the three of us often create a continuum. Laurie's experience writing for more mainstream markets helps keep us more accessible to a broader and more conservative readership. I keep us open to the seekers and those wounded by or curious about Christianity. Susan and I are very receptive to more experimental works by writers like James Grabill. Because we represent a wide range of spiritual experiences and aesthetic tastes, I think we're keeping the journal as wide open as we can.
Q: Please elaborate on how you and the other editors would define "postmodernism" in the various genres (poetry, fiction, essays, artwork) that Rock & Sling publishes.
A: First, let me clarify that we're not specifically looking for "postmodernism," if that could even be defined. Postmodernism is a slippery term, too slippery to serve as a watchword for us. We also wouldn't want to limit ourselves that way. At best, the term provides a way to talk about some of the trends in contemporary literature. At the same time, it's true that many of the works we accept have what could be called "postmodern elements": fragmentation, the rejection of master narratives, irony, and lack of resolution. In poetry, we require good craftsmanship: strong image, skillful metaphor, a unique voice, attention to the sounds of words, the acknowledgement that free verse poems have rhythm. We have a soft spot for poems that some would call experimental, especially if they are highly imagistic. We receive very little suitable fiction; most of it is too predictable, or has too tidy an ending, or has the presence of a chapel as its only connection to Christianity. We like fiction that represents postmodern life's complications and lack of clear resolutions. We tend to prefer intrapersonal drama (explorations of a character's personal experience of faith) to interpersonal conflicts (such as fictional squabbles among church members). Most of the creative nonfiction we receive is exceedingly self-involved with little or no reference to the larger world. This isn't the Dr. Phil show. Inject something bigger than yourself, and the personal essay, even if based in memoir, will be much more meaningful. In all genres, we find that irony is often overused or used with such a bitter spirit that it sucks the life out of the prose or poem. We wish we could find more intelligent humor, including sarcasm and irony used with a lighter hand.
When we evaluate a piece of art or writing for Rock & Sling, we typically ask three questions:
- Is it exceptional? (Does the author or artist show evidence of having served an apprenticeship? Does he or she show a sense of form and craft? Does the work accomplish what it sets out to do?)
- Is it fresh? (How many times have we read/seen this before? Is this another Judas poem? Another small-town-preacher-faces-church-matriarch story? If it covers familiar territory, does it do so in a new way?)
- Does it brush up against Christianity?
This last question is interpreted quite loosely at times. If we receive a strong submission that shows the mind of a seeker or draws on the images of Christianity in a secular context, it still may be a good fit for us. Most rejections are due to the quality of the work, not its subject.
Q: Postmodernism doesn't have a good reputation in the traditionalist circles where most outspoken Christian intellectuals are found. Can this movement's mistrust of master narratives ever sit comfortably with a robust commitment to a particular faith? Is there anything that postmodernism and Christianity have in common, other than the belief that the rational individualism celebrated by the Enlightenment has not lived up to its utopian promises?
A: Well, first of all, we're not trying to be the poster child for postmodernism. The editors' statement in our first issue was intended only to place ourselves firmly in the literary (as opposed to inspirational or evangelical) arena. We wanted to declare our openness to postmodernism as opposed to older models that have little relevance for contemporary people, Christian or not. It also seems important to mention here that pure postmodernism has never played out in real life. It's a concept, a cluster of ideas and assumptions. The kind of postmodernism Christians often react against has never existed outside of a theorist's mind.
Based on our content, we're not assuming that conservative Christian intellectuals will engage with us. Those who resist the realities of contemporary life will most likely stay where they are. That's fine with us. We're merely trying to broaden the conversation, provide a place where a wider spectrum of believers and seekers can explore Christianity using art and literature as the language. We can't hope to hold the atheists and the evangelists in the same room. Rock & Sling was born of our frustration regarding the lack of such a forum. We wanted a place for high-quality literature and art where God was not a dirty word. We wanted to publish Christian-related writing and art that could exceed a PG rating.
I'm struggling a little with your question because it seems to propose that to accept postmodernism a Christian would have to reject master narratives entirely. That assumes very pure forms of postmodernism and Christianity, both of which rarely, if ever, exist "outside of the lab." More and more Christians are comfortable with understanding the value of their master narratives as metaphor, metaphors that may not work for others. Because they are so vocal, fundamentalist Christians tend to define Christianity, but there are plenty of people who consider themselves Christians who differ in their understanding of the faith. For example, a growing number of Christians aren't willing to declare that Buddhists go to hell. Similarly, postmodernism is an idea, a way of describing what is happening to us. No matter what postmodern theorists would prefer, humans are creatures who crave narratives. My master narrative may not be your master narrative, but both of us depend on archetypal figures and shared stories to understand our existences. Take a look at Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction. Even the most postmodern of works often draw on narrative templates that are represented in many different times and cultures: the visitor (The Immaculate Conception), the journey (The Exodus), the return (The Prodigal Son). These are ancient stories constantly reinvented in one culture or another, one religion or another.
As for what postmodernism and Christians have in common, it's a little tricky to compare an –ism with an identifiable group of people. A lot of people self-identify as Christians. You just don't hear people saying, "I'm a postmodernist." In that way, Christianity and postmodernism are very different in how they operate in the world. But, Christian or not, we all live in a postmodern age. In his essay, "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words", Wallace Stevens described the pressure of reality: "I am thinking of life in a state of violence, not physically violent, as yet for us in America, but physically violent for millions of our friends and for still more millions of our enemies and spiritually violent, it may be said for everyone alive." [Emphasis mine.] This was written in 1942. In 2005, we could easily add physical violence in America back into the mix. We've been forever changed, and united, by all we've witnessed in the 20th century: the fallout from the industrial revolution, environmental catastrophes, the Holocaust, Vietnam, the World Trade Center towers crumbling. As individuals and as a society, humankind is simply not the same as we were when the Romantics were writing pretty pastorals. We're harder, more skeptical, more fearful. Though these effects may be somewhat tempered by their faith, most Christians are a lot more postmodern than they think. Christianity has always adapted to historical events and shifting social conditions. Why wouldn't that be the case now?
Q: What are some of the main ideas that postmodern artists can learn from people of faith, and vice versa? What new kinds of art and literature do you hope to generate from this interplay of worldviews?
A: I think postmodern artists can learn the value of master narratives. These narratives didn't evolve in a vacuum. They have some very important things to teach us about ourselves, some important wisdoms that refuse to fall apart in the face of postmodern life. These are pure metaphor, full of powerful meaning about the human experience, with much to teach the artists who employ them. Conversely, postmodern artists can teach people of faith to face reality. Wallace Stevens again: "...the pressure of reality is, I think, the determining factor in the artistic character of an era and, as well, the determining factor in the artistic character of an individual." Art isn't meaningful if it doesn't engage reality. By rejecting postmodernism, some Christian artists and writers proscribe a central human experience of our times. Often, this work oozes a sort of nostalgia for the Romantic era. Rock & Sling isn't interested in writing to the past. Nor do we want writing that provides mere anesthesia, a kind of self-medication or escape from the realities of contemporary life. There's enough of that kind of work out there already.
By injecting the spiritual into contemporary works, I think we'll see a kind of resurrection, a way out of the dead end that pure postmodernism, and all the other –isms, have become. The beautiful thing for us has been discovering that we're not alone in wanting something more. People want to talk about matters of spirit without denying where we are as a human race. We are receiving wonderful work that straddles the divide, work that fully engages with the despair, cruelty, and fragmentation of contemporary life, but refuses to abandon hope. Not blind hope, or naïve hope, but a hope like the kind that often emerges after surviving a personal tragedy — hope that's tough, rarified, and consciously chosen. I'd like to think this is the next step, that this is what comes after postmodernism: the return of hope.
Q: In elite literary publications, one rarely encounters creative work that approaches faith from the perspective of the orthodox believer rather than the outsider, seeker or skeptic. Meanwhile, the Christian media subculture often seems afraid of art that explores darker emotions or moral ambiguities. By contrast, throughout most of Western history, the greatest literary and artistic achievements were in the service of a religious tradition. In your opinion, how did the current gap come to be?
A: To answer your question adequately would require a book, but I can sketch one way of examining this gap. One factor is, of course, postmodernism, which swept through intellectual circles in the early 20th century. It didn't completely strip art and literature of its religious or spiritual elements — think of T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and even Theodore Roethke with his rich, organic spirituality. But it did make the structures of religion highly suspect. This aversion or suspicion runs astoundingly deep in academic and literary communities. A fellow poet, who is also an experienced editor, recently warned us against using the word spiritual in connection with Rock & Sling. The word has become so freighted, not only with Christian connotations but with New Age baggage, that many serious poets who are actively writing of their inner lives eschew that label. At the same time that they are teaching Gerard Manley Hopkins or Flannery O'Connor, some writers succumb to a quite simple and human fear: what will people think? What will my colleagues think if I write or publish work that acknowledges there could be a higher power? Irony and cynicism are viewed — wrongly, I think — as evidence of intelligence. Academic poets and writers, who largely control the elite literary journals, are human like the rest of us. They don't want to risk looking foolish.
On the Christian side of the equation, I think media is the operative word here. Keep in mind the goal of many — especially fundamentalist — Christian organizations: evangelism. Many people don't realize that Christian evangelism comes in waves and that it didn't exist in its current form until the eighteenth century. More recently, the influence of fundamentalism in many religions — not just Christianity — has burgeoned. The result: a desire to win converts. And the most efficient way to win converts is more akin to advertising than to educating or even inspiring. Advertising delivers a message (Cleano soap gets you cleaner), then requests an action (Buy Cleano soap). Current evangelism is also based on delivering a message (God's plan for salvation), then requesting an action (Repent and be saved). Complicate the message with doubt, tension, or questioning (elements of good art and literature), and you lose the sale or the soul. So the media, with its ability to deliver uncomplicated messages in a convincing way, makes a much better vehicle for evangelism than do serious art and literature. Because taking a deep look at dark or difficult subject matter muddies the simplicity of the salvation message, some Christians reject such explorations as wrong. So, the current emphasis on salvation and evangelism makes literature and art of little value to the church. Visual art's early role as a way to educate illiterate devotees in the stories and ideas of the Bible has become largely obsolete. With little power to convert, art has been demoted to a largely decorative role in the church.
So you have the elite, often academic, writers and artists on one side afraid of looking stupid. You have Christian writers and artists afraid of looking un-Christian — or humanistic, secular, evil. The two sides demonize each other — and I use that word very purposefully — and the gap gets wider. Personally, we've each taken some heat over Rock & Sling. Susan and Laurie have had Christian friends challenge their involvement in Rock & Sling, going so far as to say they are "working against God" because we are not evangelizing. I've had friends assume that my interest in Christianity means I've checked my intellect at the door. I don't think this gap can be closed by the entrenched parties. It will require a third group, a new contingent of artists and patrons, to reunite art and faith.
Q: Tell me about the Brendemuehl Prize's judging procedure. Are manuscripts read anonymously? If you use screeners, what are their credentials, and what criteria do you give them for weeding out manuscripts? What percentage of entries will be forwarded to the finalist judge?
A: Manuscripts are not read anonymously. We have turned down regular submissions by people whose names we've recognized — some big names, in fact — and are confident the contest will be judged solely on merit. We will be using screeners who not only must be poets themselves, but must have editorial experience. Screeners will have read the first two issues of Rock & Sling to familiarize themselves with our vision, and they'll be given the three criteria mentioned above. Prior to the full screening, the editors will read some of the manuscripts and compare and share responses with the screeners. This process will be similar to a "norming session" used by English composition graders to help ensure comparable evaluation. Rather than operate on a strict percentage, the screeners will forward any entry they think is worthy of the prize to the final judge. We receive a surprising number of submissions and contest entries that suggest the author didn't read our vision statement and guidelines. The primary job of the screeners is to identify manuscripts that are clearly unsuitable for Rock & Sling's contest. From the screeners' selections, several finalists and the winning entry will be chosen.
Q: Name some authors and artists who exemplify the type of work you'd like to see in Rock & Sling.
Christopher Howell. His work isn't specifically Christian, but it often uses metaphors and images that connect with Christianity. It is deeply engaged with the inner life. His recent work maintains an exquisite tension between world-weariness and hope that is both contemporaneous and eternal. In the works of Donald Hall, Thomas Lynch, and Brian Doyle, faith is present in varying degrees, but they write without a spiritual agenda. Faith is present in the work because it is present in the author, not because of an intent to write something spiritual. It percolates up through the poem or story like any other aspect of human experience. The key is subtlety: to let the poem, or prose, or art, do its work. If you set out to write about God, you'll likely end up with advertising, not art. If a writer or artist strives for mastery of craft and scrupulous honesty, God's presence in the work will take care of itself.
Q: How do you plan to spread the word about your new magazine? Do you plan to reach beyond the traditional small fan base for literary journals, e.g. to the much larger market for spiritual-themed media? If so, what are your suggestions for generating "crossover appeal" for a type of sophisticated writing that may be unfamiliar or disturbing to the average consumer?
A: Over the last year, as our editorial vision has become clearer to us, it has also become obvious that we aren't targeting the average consumer of Christian media. We don't see a way to make that happen without departing from our commitment to literature and art. While we do include a few very accessible poems in every issue, it's not realistic for us to attempt to "convert" readers who are content with mainstream Christian offerings. But we have been surprised by who is listening both inside and outside the sketchy boundaries of "the Church." We've discovered a surprisingly large group of readers that are not being served. Smart, savvy, and spiritually hungry, they are bored by the mainstream Christian media. They want something that is more intellectually and spiritually challenging. So far, word-of-mouth and our website have done a surprisingly good job of growing our subscriber base. We've done some advertising and have found Poets & Writers provides the best return. Our next step, now that we have a better sense of our target audience, is to market more directly to pastors within specific denominations that have been open to what we are doing, as well as to academic programs based in church-affiliated universities.
Q: Any other comments you'd like to share with potential contestants and readers?
A: The best advice I've ever received about submitting work is this: Read the journal. If you like what they publish, the chances are higher the editors will like what you're writing. Contest entrants and contributors should order a sample copy or read the excerpts on our website. (We'll be updating the website shortly to include selections from our June 2005 issue.) If you don't like what we publish, don't waste your time submitting to us. If you like what you see, give us a try. We are always eager for new voices. I should also note that, except in the cases of more unusual forms like ghazals, villanelles, and sestinas, we rarely accept formal verse. When we do, the use of rhyme and meter is so subtle it takes a very attentive reader to recognize the form.
To readers I'd like to extend the same invitation. Visit our website. Read our excerpts. If you are looking for quality literature and art that embraces both doubt and celebration, remains unencumbered by dogma, and doesn't proscribe the spirit, we might be your kind of journal.
Summer 2005
