Thirty First Bird Review

Introduction:  

In Farid ud-Din Attar's twelfth century Persian epic poem "The Conference of Birds", a group of thirty birds journey on a pilgrimage to find their supreme god, the Simorgh. As the birds travel across a lush, exotic, oriental landscape, the creatures: parrot, nightingale, peacock, take up their time by recounting various stories. When the conference, after passing through several transformative stages of spiritual significance, finally comes to the mythical phoenix-like Simorgh, they find nothing but a cool, clear reflective lake. And it is then that Attar reveals the secret of his poem; "si morgh" in Persian is a play on the phrase  "thirty birds." There was no Simorgh - no god - save for the one that they had collectively created. And in that paradox, the collection of feathered animals discovered true holiness.  

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:

Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide

Return and back into your Sun subside

So why then are we the Thirty First Bird Review? Interpret that extra bird anyway you like, maybe its any one of the great authors we have published or hope to publish, on their own mystical quest with the rest of that ancient avian party; maybe the thirty first bird is the reader who has stumbled across this site from a link, or saw a flier, or heard about it from a friend, and who is interested in a different perspective on faith and literature. Or maybe the editor just thought it sounded better.

The Thirty First Bird Review is committed to publishing and bringing to light modern and classic work that seriously looks at the intersections of religion and literature. It is an attempt to create a literary journal that critically looks at these "meaning making" phenomena in human culture. To explicate one of its mottos, religion will be understood as a creative act: as literature; and literature can be seen as a "religion" in itself. This will be a journal that is radically iconoclastic, willing to look at any issue of literature and faith. It takes as its philosophy William Blake's declaration that "All deities reside in the human breast." God, like all of Shakespeare's characters, the pilgrims of Chaucer and the angels of Milton, may be a "fictional" character who "resides in the human breast," but what a character it is! The Thirty First Bird Review will examine the nebulous, ambiguous, and porous borders between faith and knowledge, fiction and reality, and literature and religion.

What will it be?

As this site develops, some submissions will be directly uploaded as content. Other content will be included in what we hope hope will eventually become a bi-annual print journal that will be available in print-on-demand form from the website's online store, as well as several stores in the Pittsburgh area. Thirty Bird Review is interested in both fiction and non-fiction, poetry, short story, excerpts from novels and drama, essay, creative non-fiction, journalism, interview, reviews, literary theory, and an exploration of both the cannonical and the forgotten. Issues of the print journal will be themed, with the first one being "Creation," the second "Horror" and the third "Americana." Thirty First Bird Review will be an imprint of Thirty First Bird Press, which hopes to publish full print-on-demand books, as well as a line of pamphlets containing classic and modern literature. The publication dates of these issues are to be announced.

Who is doing this?

The head editor and founder is Edward Simon, an adjunct instructor of English literature and composition at Point Park University and Duquesne University, both in Pittsburgh. His Masters degree is in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie-Mellon, and he has done a post-graduate certificate in Renaissance Studies from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. He has presented at several academic conferences throughout the United States on subjects pertaining to Renaissance and Medieval literature, as well as Romanticism. His particular area of interest is religious themes in world literature. He has written several volumes of poetry, drama, and prose, which will be published by Thirty First Bird Press, available on the website's store.

Where will this be done?

The website, as well as our print-on-demand store, will make the content of Thirty First Bird Review available to any interested reader. The review is headquartered in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, a large, diverse, creative city filled with literary opportunities, and with its own distinct religious culture - the perfect place for an organization like the Thirty First Bird Review. Eventually we hope to become a valued part of the city's cultural scene, sponsoring parties, readings, and other events. We hope that hardcopies of the review will be available in Pittsburgh's numerous small and college bookstores. In the future it may be possible for Thirty First Bird Review to secure foundation money.

When will this be done?

We are hoping to have the site running regularly by late 2009, and to have a print copy by early 2010, with expansion following. The reading period for web content will be continuous, and the period for our first print issue will run from June 1st to October 1st.

How will this be done?

The internet has provided an incredible resource for creative writers to reach a wider audience. Print-on-demand technology has revolutionized how writers are able to distribute their works. With a combination of these methods we will expose as many readers as possible to the important work that Thirty First Bird Review hopes to publish.

Why is this being done?

This is being done with an understanding that religion is the most important "literature," as it is the literature that men and women have been willing to live, die, and indeed kill for. To paraphrase William Blake again, the Bible, and indeed religion, is "the great code of human culture." The philosophical, theological, and metaphysical questions of faith: is there a separate and real, objective God? Is there an afterlife? What are the properties of God? All of these are secondary to our aesthetic and critical concerns of how literature and religion both work to create human meaning. To that end, we will not sentimentalize religion, but rather take it on its own varied terms throughout human history. Religion has been one of the most unifying forms of human expression, but also one of its most divisive, equally capable of the Sistine Chapel and "Paradise Lost" as the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials. It is for these reasons that faith, whether accepted or rejected, must be taken seriously (but this does not mean pedantically). We have no spiritual axe to grind; this is no missionary publication, other then the conversion of people into committed readers. This is a journal for which there shall be no sacred cows, only the bravery and commitment willing to express human concern wherever it needs to go. This journal shall investigate those deities of the human breast with a concern to their beauty - and ugliness - whether that is shocking to fundamentalists of either the religious or atheistic variety.