Farrago’s Wainscot

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Farrago’s Wainscot #9

By Rochita Loenen-Ruiz ⋅ January 18, 2009

There are seven stories and four poems in issue #9 of Farrago’s Wainscot. This issue is untitled, but a closer reading of the stories and poems reveals loss as a common thread.
I like how the image accompanying this issue serves to project a mood of bleakness, the almost oppressing darkness that overshadows the white, or [...]

Farrago’s Wainscot, Part 8: Animalia

By Rochita Loenen-Ruiz ⋅ November 11, 2008

Part 8: Animalia of Farrago’s Wainscot contains six stories, one novella, three poems, and an experimental wordform. Because I love to explore new things, I chose to read “Geographical Curiosities” by A. Ross Eckler first. Eckler’s experimental wordform is interesting and engaging. It also put me in the mood to read the rest of [...]

Farrago’s Wainscot, Part 7: Echoes

By Z. S. Adani ⋅ July 28, 2008

Farrago’s Wainscot offers six loosely themed stories, told in a variety of literary styles, of which two are very weird and left me with questions.
“An Apotheosis” by Forrest Aguirre gives voice to Laurence, a grief-stricken warrior disciple of Rocco Bonetti. Laurence recounts the murder of his maestro during an unfair duel with the two [...]

Distillations: Tell Me a Story

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ June 19, 2008

A poem with a plot seems like a violation of some kind of natural law. The condensed design of poetry conveys the entirety of a moment at once. How can a poem build a narrative arc like that of fiction? The answer lies in the history of poetry itself. At one time, poetry’s mission was [...]

Farrago’s Wainscot, Part VI: Obscura

By Chris Butler ⋅ April 25, 2008

Farrago’s Wainscot clearly wants readers to believe that it is a radical, experimental e-zine. Part VI: Obscura explores themes of estrangement from society, with some interesting, multilayered storytelling, but on the evidence of the six stories presented, it would be a mistake to assume that this e-zine is in any way inaccessible or too [...]

Farrago’s Wainscot, Issue 5

By Damien G Walter ⋅ January 19, 2008

Farrago’s Wainscot presents itself as a quarterly journal of experimentation, decay, and the problems with form and “as evidence of new ideas about artistic meaning.” Reviews of Farrago’s Wainscot have at least twice referenced the term “interstitial,” and the magazine left previous Fix reviewer, K. Tempest Bradford, feeling like an anime character with huge question [...]

Distillations: Assonance

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ January 16, 2008

This month we continue our exploration of poetry techniques with assonance, defined as the repetition of vowel sounds. Last month, I referred to assonance as “alliteration’s crafty cousin.” The reason for this is that assonance is much less visually obvious. Although the English language is quite free with the correspondence of spelling to sound, this [...]

Distillations: An Introduction

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ October 13, 2007

Welcome to Distillations, a monthly review of Speculative Poetry. The field of Speculative Poetry embraces every subgenre of science fiction and fantasy imaginable in every existing poetry form, plus some made up fresh for the occasion. What it doesn’t include is a lot of words. That means that every letter, every piece of punctuation, [...]

Farrago’s Wainscot IV

By K. Tempest Bradford ⋅ October 11, 2007

Issue 4 of Farrago’s Wainscot contains five stories. Two are reprints, one’s an excerpt, and two are original. As Farrago’s is “an exhibition of the weirds,” one expects unconventionality to rule. But some of the stories left me feeling like an anime character with huge question marks hovering above my head.

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