Intoxicating brew
Flash fiction and prose poems that use liquor as a metaphor.
October 08th, 2024
Apart from being a creative writer and editor, Barbara Black is a classically trained vocalist, singing in the Pacific Opera Chorus.
In her new collection of short stories, Barbara Black draws inspiration from various liquors, using them as a lens to explore stories and emotions, intertwining flavors with narrative to evoke deeper meanings.
Review by Heidi Greco
For readers who may be unfamiliar with flash fiction—or, for that matter, prose poems—Little Fortified Stories (Caitlin $23), by Barbara Black, could provide an interesting starting point. Black, who lives in Victoria, has won an array of prizes for her short literary pieces, from Geist magazine’s Literary Postcard Story Contest and several Federation of BC Writers’ competitions, to acknowledgement as a winner or finalist in challenges as far away as the United Kingdom.
The first half of the collection, called Distillations, expands on the book’s title, with some particular liquor often serving as accompaniment to the small fiction beneath it. As a kind of introduction, Black offers an explanation for using this odd conceit, recalling an occasion in Lisbon where she’s sampling that nation’s best-known spirit, port, with the sole intent of tasting. “But as the wines wet my tongue and their flavours blossom in my mouth, I discover that each small glass contains more than the origin of a unique taste and aroma. It contains a story. A little story, its words fortified…from a very particular Portuguese spirit.”
And port isn’t the only inspiration for these tiny stories (nearly all less than a single page); Black also calls on the powers of gin, bourbon, tequila, scotch, rum and whiskey. I admit to having had some fun searching out the specific liquors which may have led to each piece, and discovering that their prices ranged from the modest thirty-some dollar bottles to those well over $100. I’ll also confess I couldn’t always see the connection between the particular spirit and its story. But one of the pieces that offered a clear link was a fiction prompted by Two Drifters Signature Rum. Called “The Hazards of Flight,” it’s the first of two stories that seem to be in the voice of Icarus’s mother.
“Your paper wings crackled in the air…The sky allowed your suspension for a few moments. But then your wings faltered, even as you were thrilling with the weightless substance of you. As you fell, you saw yourself reflected in a lake below, a slim shadow plummeting into sky—but a sky whose surface could be broken. You survived as far as your cunning and craft could carry you. You with your candle wax dreams and wood-frame wings. But the land reasserted its laws.”
That piece is one that stands solidly in my mind as a clear example of flash fiction in that it has a recognizable narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and end. Many others in the book are pieces I can only call prose poems—and that is not to disparage them in any way. One of my reasons for claiming this is based on quotes interspersed throughout the book from writers considered founders or masters of that form. Consider this bon mot from Charles Baudelaire: “The beautiful is always bizarre.” Indeed, that is often the case in the tradition of prose poems. Many are what can be considered surreal, as they’re often dreamlike, unhinged from reality. A number of Black’s micro-fictions manifest this, particularly those in the section called Ancestral Fabrications. As an example, here, in its entirety, is “Sister Eugénie’s Wonderful Glass Eye”:
“With one unfloating eternal eye she moves in midnight, ghostly as a jellyfish, down rows of ransomed moony faces, ranks of the motherless, lost stars in darkness.
As she passes, the girl in Crib Nine invents the bathysphere, orphans herself in the metal ball and sealed from the tide of night sighs drops by cord the fathoms down to be with her, Sister Eugénie, monocular among aquatic angels.”
This particular piece is one for which Black has created a word/picture collage. A number of these fanciful creations appear throughout the book (she’s even created one for her About the Author page). The only disappointing aspect of these is the fact that they’re reproduced in black and white, though had they been in colour, the book certainly would have cost more.
The section called Visual Provocations offers ekphrastic writings inspired by specific works of art, some of which can be seen online. Kim Dingle’s Cloud inspires one of the longest stories (nearly two and a half pages), about a mysterious child named Bunnykins, a kind of snow-daughter. And if this sounds strange, please don’t worry. Over seven pages of notes appear at the back of the book. These offer background or reference information that often clears up a reader’s puzzlement. But again, I find myself citing yet another of those poets who are quoted occasionally throughout the book—in this instance, words from the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who may well have been familiar with the rich taste of a dark port: “The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own.”
Scents and sights linger after reading this collection. I can’t help but think Barbara Black may have invented an altogether new form with these pieces, one I’d choose to call “reveries” for their often dream-like qualities.
I’m willing to bet you won’t find another book as intriguingly original any time soon.
9781773861401
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Heidi Greco lives in Surrey on territory of the Semiahmoo Nation where she occasionally drinks gin and tonic with a sliver of lime.
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