Three poems by Jack Boettcher appeared in Issue Eight; here are his thoughts on his favorite piece from the same collection:
“The ‘Italo Calvino People’ of Elaine Chiew’s story are smarter than I am, and, like me, they’re really into Italo Calvino, and that makes me somewhat envious. But then I think about what happens to Italo Calvino People. I have always been interested in prodigies. Obviously, many people are interested in prodigies; as individuals, prodigies — or Italo Calvino People — confound expectations and deliver a little believable awe. But what makes Elaine Chiew’s story so remarkable is that it expands this obsession to a societal level. The outcome is somewhat more sinister, but the tone of the piece isn’t that dark — it’s like, well, the restrained horrors of the Italian Folktales that Calvino edited early in his career. I rarely use the word gimmick as a pejorative, and I think the story has a great gimmick going. Most of all, it reminds me that maybe it’s not the worst thing that my parents didn’t blast Pimsleur language tapes at me neonatally so that I could become the world’s greatest polyglot, as I’d always sort of hoped. Because a world full of polyglots sounds utopian, but you never know.”