The Pushcart Prize 1999: Best of the Small Presses (No 23)

The Pushcart Prize looms large in the world of small press. For 23 years, this prize anthology has honored the best fiction, essays, and poetry found outside the commercial mainstream--which is to say, some of the most intriguing and adventurous work published today. "In the small press universe you can actually attempt to tell the truth in an essay, or dream a dream in a poem or story," Bill Henderson writes in his introduction. Why? "No money here at all. And that's freedom." Money or no, the 1998 winners don't disappoint. The 68 selections reprinted here run the gamut from the lush surfaces of Pattiann Rogers's nature poetry to Stephen Dixon's jittery stream-of-consciousness prose. A moving essay by Andre Dubus considers the Hemingway story "In Another Country" and how his reading of it has changed over the years, while Joyce Carol Oates weighs in with "Faithless," a family fiction haunted by past crimes and present lies. The anthology is dedicated to the late poet William Matthews, whose "Grandmother, Dead at 99 Years and 10 Months" seems to allude eerily to his own death: "I raised a glass / to her truant kidney / and to oblivion." Poets like Matthews thrive most in the world of small press, where a small but dedicated readership gives them the space to be their own cantankerous and unexpected selves. Let us raise a glass to William Matthews, and then to the editors of the Pushcart Prize as well, for allowing us to be, occasionally, breathtakingly, surprised.