Literary Magazine Reviews
Posted April 4, 2007
Antioch
Review
Volume 65 Number1
Winter 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Anna Sidak
Antioch Review celebrates its 65th year of publication
with this fine issue's eclectic collection of essays, fiction,
poetry, book reviews, and et cetera, which includes Editor
Robert S. Fogarty's thoughtful editorial, "Nolan Miller (1907 –
2006)," on the last of the journal's founding editors, and John
Taylor's "Poetry Today." Thomas Washington's "A Quarterly Reader
(and Writer)," laments the absence of editorials in many
quarterlies, as do I. If you enjoy sophisticated spy stories,
you'll love "Tunis and Time" by Peter LaSalle; Stephen Taylor's
"Bloomsbury Nights: Being, Food and Love" will bring you closer,
perhaps (to a dictionary); "Odessa" by Rick DeMarinis will
remind you of those among us who cannot sort things out. The
contents also contain these wonderful evocations: "Reflections,
Observations, Memories" by Richard Stern; Jeffrey Meyers’s
"Samuel Demands the Muse: Johnson's Stamp on Imaginative
Literature,” and just how pervasive a stamp Meyers shows by
examining the work of Hawthorne, Austen, Housman, Woolf, Beckett
(and everyone who has used a dictionary); these lines worth note
from Jacqueline Osherow's 56-verse "Snow in Umbria": "But those
tracts and tracts of black diminished trees, / bore all the
hallmarks of a fire's path. / Is that where Petrarch got I
burn and freeze? / He'd witnessed such a snow or, rather,
its aftermath?" And a memorable understatement from Lawrence
Rosenwald's "Notes on Pacifism": "Some people believe, wrote
William James, that war 'is a sort of sacrament . . . an
absolute good . . . human nature at its highest dynamic . . .
the essential form of the State, and the only function in which
peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently.'
People who hold these beliefs aren't open to pacifism."
[Italics mine.] [http://review.antioch.edu/]
Arkansas
Review
Volume 37 Number 3
December 2006
Triannual
Peter McGehee’s “The Ballad of Hank McCaul” is a story whose
setting begins in a hotel room, moves out to a pool hall, onto
Claredon, a town an hour’s drive away from Little Rock, and then
ends back in the hotel room. It begins with a problem that, by
the end of the story, the narrator solves. Although it’s not as
simple as all that, really, because the underlying conflict is
deep and rooted and thick. The narrator, Sammy, having just
visited the newly dug grave site of his lover, Hank, sums it up
when he glimpses, as he is drinking beer, a sideways view of the
Seventh Wheel’s clientele. “The whole world may change,” the
story goes, “but the town you come from never will.” I am
thankful for the essay “Nobody Smart Stays” by Raymond-Jean
Frontain, which helped me to understand more than the story; it
helped me understand the life of the author. The subject of
Frontain’s essay is more than the subject of one author’s life
and writings, though. It is also the subject of stereotypes and
love and hate and the push and pull of one’s native land. There
are over 200 pages here of stories, poetry, essays, and reviews,
although the paper journal’s slim magazine-style design could
easily fit into the inside the pocket of a notebook. The writing
in Arkansas Review is limited geographically to the
seven-state Delta region, but beyond geography, its scope is
universal. [http://www.clt.astate.edu/arkreview]
Backwards
City Review
Volume 3 Number 1
Spring 2007
Biannual
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomoll Popolis
A lot of litmags call themselves contemporary, but
Backwards City Review is one of the few that truly feels
like a product of the 21st century. It's not just the alt comics
and offbeat fiction, but the awareness that literature and art
can, indeed, be fun. Dorothy Gambrell's Cat and Girl
comic, for instance, presents a waitress (girl) and an
indecisive customer (cat) trying to decide on an order. (What's
“the anthropomorphic platter?” “Beef tongue on a roll.”) The
joke comes to a brilliant head when the cat asks what's on the
villanelle sandwich and the waitress describes it to him – in
villanelle form. Now that's good nerd humor! In poetry, Kathleen
Rooney brings back the rondelet with “X-Country Rondelet,” a
poem about God's creation of the buttes (if not, indeed,
everything else), ending with the lines: “The radio cackles. Who
disputes / that you, I, & radios survive / because the
butte-maker lives / & makes the buttes?” Just a few highlights
of this issue, in brief: Douglas Watson's short story, “Against
Specificity,” about the eternal trouble of “You want Thing A but
are stuck with Thing B”; Rebecca Hall's “Ise,” the story of a
Japanese-American man who finds a moment of compassion for his
hard survivor of a mother; and David Bell's “Cancer Planet,”
which presents a disease-free future in which people pay to get
cancer and treatment, just to see what it feels like.
Admittedly, not everything in this litmag is, perhaps, as clever
as it thinks it is, but the good stuff far outweighs the
mediocre. [http://www.backwardscity.net]
Beloit
Poetry Journal
Volume 57 Number 3
Spring 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomoll Popolis
BPJ publishes some serious poetry, and by that I mean
finely-tuned, well-crafted poems that may require two or three
or twenty readings to reveal themselves to you. There's nothing
“fun” or “hip” here, and I say this not as a value judgment on
“fun” or “hip” or even “serious,” but so that readers new to
this venerated journal know what to expect. I enjoyed Erin
Malone's “The Winter He Is One,” in which a mother shares a
quiet winter moment with her child out by the horse stables,
feeling, finally, as if she has been broken into motherhood.
Mary Molinary's “Watery Shapes” is a short piece about our human
fears (“we all see strangers we all see shapes coming over the
horizon on thin-legged / horses”) that I liked so much, I think
I can get past the rest of her incredibly dry selection. David
Camphouse's clear, passionate voice is the brightest spot here;
his “Jeremiad for Spring” is a foreboding, impeccable poem about
the psychological and environmental aftermath of rural decay in
“the corn-belt // in the age of AIDS, of erosion – / whole
histories gone in a wash / of acid rain and crystal meth.” My
overall enthusiasm for the BPJ is dampened by a messy
prose poem or two, but I'm going to recommend it even so; its
poems are worth considering carefully as some of the best
published today, and you'll get much out of deciding for
yourself how well they stack up. [www.bpj.org]
Borderlands
Texas Poetry Review
Number 27
Fall/Winter 2006
Biannual
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomoll Popolis
There's nothing particularly distinctive about Borderlands,
but it does contain some fine poems, and there's nothing wrong
with that. Many of the poets here take small moments for their
subject matter, suggesting larger introspection, as in a poem by
Eric James Cruz. Here, an early morning run in a beautiful,
pastoral place puts the poet in a meditative state of mind: “It
is good to come here, / this happens to be your life, / this
cradle of dark things, / this place in need of naming.” Another,
completely different trip through nowhere comes from Alexis
Quinlan in “On the Wye,” in which a couple gets lost and has a
bit of a spat as “[ . . . ] a vast wall of bleak / kept
somersaulting at [them]; it was a goddamn / Ted Hughes poem
nailed to the scary green tit / of England.” Jennifer Gresham's
“Funeral Home” finds the narrator, with a dying man named
Harold, fighting a yard full of weeds, both knowing full well
that they can only pull out enough to set up lawn furniture for
a brief while. At night, she swears she can hear the weeds
returning, singing a sorrowful dirge. And there is one poem, “a
white kite flying,” by first-timer Charles Thomas that defies an
easy explanation (or brief quote), but effectively uses rhythm
and repetition to create a sense of mystery, sadness, futility,
and beauty all at once. For these and many more solid poems,
this is a great journal worth exploring. [www.borderlands.org]
College
Literature
Volume 34 Issue 1
Winter 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Miles Newbold Clark
True to its name, this journal’s stated ambition is to provide college instructors with new ways of organizing their material for classroom presentation. Comprised entirely of literary essays, I was often hard-pressed to find evidence of the CL’s pragmatic impetus, which was often sequestered in the endnotes, or tacked on as an afterthought in the concluding paragraph. Cross-pollinatory or not, the essays in College Literature are recommendable on their own merits; Zora Neale Hurston finds her home in a multiplicity of pedagogies, while Russian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin’s prejudice against the poem (too self-assured to be a truly dialogic, and thus vital, enterprise) is called into question. D.H. Lawrence, LeRoi Jones, Brigit Pegeen Kelly also make appearances.
The journal makes repeated forays into deconstructive or poststructuralist analysis; these are, by and large, well-focused affairs. Best, however, is the concluding critical essay, by Eluned Summers-Brenner, in which the dearth of a decidedly unscholastic topic – love – is offered as an antidote for the flagging interest in literature faced by today’s academics. Really, the decline should come as no surprise; literature is (if Bakhtin has anything to say about it) a composite of words for which both a past, and a future, must exist; literary culture, moreover, is conceptualized as an outgrowth of the nation-state. That the decline of academic literary culture came after the 1970’s – specifically, the “post heroic era” ushered in with the American withdraw from Vietnam – should be no surprise. In an era which has seen the collapse of our conceptualizations of both nation-state and university, we must return to a quasi-lyrical point of reference in order to regain the enthusiasm (unscholastic as the idea seems) necessary for literature’s survival at the critical level.
If you sense something suspiciously economic about this idea, something perhaps less brave than Derridean postmodern analysis (which, while perhaps presenting a world based on the same decentralized economic model that aided the downfall of the university, at least arose as a resistance to some of the devices instrumental in that change – most specifically cybernetics, with its misinformed chivalry and horrible restrictions on the scope of human behavior), you’d be, well, right. Still, if the love generation was the heyday of the academic (and I am not prepared to address the irony that this oh-so-political discipline enjoyed its finest hour during a time in which young men fled their nation’s call to arms and flooded the university), well, perhaps it’s due for a return? After all, postmodernism is an international language that, on principle, no one understands; love is an international language that everybody, including postmodernists, speaks on some level. Without addressing the author’s argument at all, I’m prepared, on my own terms, to accept whatever reason he gives for it.
Call me a hippie, but College Literature was, to my
surprise, one of the grooviest things I’ve read recently. [www.wcupa.edu/_ACADEMICS/sch_cas.lit/default.htm]
The
Gettysburg Review
Volume 20 Issue 1
Spring 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Jim Scott
Perhaps the most instantly recognizable literary magazine
being published today, the ever-beautiful The Gettysburg
Review enters its twentieth year with this excellent issue.
The lead story, an excerpt from Scott Blackwood’s We Agreed
To Meet Just Here, welcomes the reader into the vivid world
of The Gettysburg Review, and is heralded in by a
wonderfully honest (and at times grumpy – who wouldn’t take the
attention brought on by the anniversary to scratch a few
itches?) essay by founding and current editor Peter Stitt.
Blackwood excels in his precise and economical characterization,
“If you had lived long on our street, and drunk late at our
parties, you would know that before retiring and moving to
Texas, Odie Dodd had been a government physician in Georgetown,
Guyana. Squawking through the hole in this throat where his
larynx had been before the cancer, Odie would have told how Jim
Jones had asked him to the People’s Temple to vaccinate the
children.” Like Blackwood, Gail R. Henningsmen paints her
characters with a deft brush in “Strokes,” juggling all the
members of a family in town for a second marriage, including the
divorced parents and their significant characters without the
reader ever feeling rushed or confused. The poetry also features
well-drawn characters (especially in John Pleimann’s “Head On”),
even if some are simply a well-defined voice – Bob Hicok’s
carries “Root root root for the home team” to his final
thought-provoking question, “What could be more American than
the stolen base?” The paintings of Michael Allen, which grace
both the cover and eight glossy pages inside, are silent
landscapes, gorgeous in their patience. All of this for a
shockingly low price of six dollars – The Gettysburg Review
may be the best value in literature. [www.gettysburgreview.com]
Glimmer
Train
Issue 62
Spring 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by donna everhart
Dedicated to sisters and to dreams, this issue of Glimmer Train offers its readers, in addition to a dozen stories, an interview with author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award, Michael Cunningham. “What would you say to new writers working on their first stories or novel?” asks Sarah Anne Johnson. His advice: “Have patience. Don’t panic.” Know what type of a writer you are, he seems to say, and be yourself. Writers published in this issue seem to have already passed this test; they know themselves. They create stories which are good because they are allowed to expand on their own terms. Some of the stories, like “The Shadow Man,” are good at building tension. In the very first line, a construction elevator with four men inside is about to drop from its place alongside a tall building. Author Susan Fox uses third person to tell the story through the eyes the men trapped inside the elevator, the shadow man who is the first to the scene, and Marlene Hendrickson who, not long after arriving for her usual work day inside the 40-story building, heard “a sound so loud, so entire, that she thought for a moment that the sound had come from herself.”
Other stories explore stressful emotions through the immediate environment: the family. “People say, Nothing prepares you,” says the narrator in “Terrible Crying Stories.” The central conflict involves an infant who won’t stop crying, even though the doctor can find nothing wrong with him. Parents, Davis and Rebecca struggle to hold onto reality by telling each other terrible crying stories. Weaving back and forth, from past to present, the story explores Davis’s growth as a father, and the development of the couple’s relationship.
The stories in this issue lean toward definite conflicts and logical endings, endings which, on occasion, leave the reader with a strong image, as in Author Nic Brown’s “Trampoline,” where I met and followed behind the main character Manny, trying to discard of a trampoline, under Amelia’s firm orders, and find their dog, Casper, a dog Manny truly despises.
There is also a unique, personal touch throughout the
journal: before each story, a photo of the writer (most often
before they could even write) and a bio. Author and journalist
Siobhan Dowd’s bio, in “Silenced Voices: Elif Shafak,” alerts
readers to the predicament of writers who await trials exploring
certain off-limit topics or using sensitive words or bringing up
ideas which go against the political or social official version.
Shafak was put on trial for “insulting Turkishness,” said Dowd,
for having an Armenian character in her last novel use the word
“genocide” to describe the events in Turkish Armenia in 1915.
All combined, I found in this journal a
sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat reading experience. [www.glimmertrain.org]
Greatest
Uncommon Denominator
Issue 0
Spring 2007
Biannual
Reviewed by Anna Sidak
GUD is a splendid collection of the unexpected, surprising, and unsettling whose greatest common denominator may well be all of the above. From the sci-fi and fantasy with which the magazine abounds, "Moments of Brilliance," by Jason Stoddard – "Illumination: I am a biological machine, designed for this specific task" (1984 and then some!), to "Trying to Make Coffee" by William Doreski, whose attempt results in a cloud of chlorine gas (eerily timely on a day in which the headlines relate this substance as the latest hazard in Iraq), to "The Infinite Monkey Protocol" by Lavie Tidhar, and this wisdom: '"The first law of computer security,' he said, 'is don't buy a computer. [. . .] The second law of computer security' he said, 'is if you ever buy a computer, don't turn it on.'"
"Songs of the Dead," by Sarah Singleton and Chris Butler, is
a surprisingly successful evocation of William Blake's
childhood. John Mantooth's excellent, but appalling, "Chicken"
is too lifelike for comfort. Robert Peake's "Poetry Code" makes
an interesting case for some sort of structural similarity
between computer source code and the poetic impulse. A perhaps
expected caveat regarding the cover of this otherwise
attractively bound and formatted journal: you may want to shelve
it backward – as a miniature of the cover image appears on the
spine – and yes, I know it's a pun, but is it worth it? Looking
forward to the next issue in any event. [www.gudmagazine.com]
Meridian
Issue 18
January 2007
Semiannual
Reviewed by donna everhart
“I want to tell you about the skunk cabbage” is the first
line in “The Book of Spring,” a poem by Sam Taylor. If a writer
can make me want to go out and embrace a skunk cabbage, I
believe that’s some pretty good writing. Published in
Meridian, Taylor’s lines run one after the other to form one
stanza, a page long. Each line I experienced, I thought, this is
it, this is the most powerful line. But no, he saves the best
for last. Josh Rathkamp’s “Loneliness in Arizona with a Baseball
Game Inside It” is a poem with a surprising turn to it. But I
won’t tell you more than that. The poetry selection includes
translations of surrealistic poems written by Agi Mishol. In
addition to several styles of poetry are a handful of short
stories with memorable characters. Kate Milliken’s “Sleight of
Hand” is written in first person. Milliken has an uncanny talent
for weaving past and present, and then ending with the future,
or what the narrator insists and imagines is the future. And the
“Lost Classic,” which Meridian publishes in every issue,
features William Faulkner and the “People-to-People
Partnership.” Several letters written to William Faulkner are
reprinted here, one from the President, who wanted to “organize
American writers to see what we can do to give a true picture of
our country to other people,” and other letters from E.B. White,
Katherine Anne Porter, John Dos Passos, Conrad Aiken, Paul
Green, Lionel Trilling, Robert Penn Warren, Lewis Mumford,
Donald Hall, Allen Tate, Robert Lowell, John Steinbeck, and
Shelby Foote. Book reviews cover The Open Curtain by
Brian Evenson, An Almost Pure Empty Walking, by Tryfon
Tolides, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel,
and Siste Viator by Sarah Manguso. The perfect bound
journal’s smooth cover with its steamy purple image of a
floodplain provides a nice wrap. [www.readmeridian.org]
The
New Quarterly
Issue 101
Winter 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Miles Newbold Clark
A Canadian acquaintance recently bemoaned the state of American small publishing to me: why, even in San Francisco – clearly the New New York of the Lulu.com era – is it impossible to find work in publishing? I had no answer for him. Canadians are indeed a lucky bunch. For a land with such a sparse prospective audience, there is an abundance of funding for the arts. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised to find it more exuberant about its own import. The New Quarterly has devoted an issue to the topic of “The Artist as Activist.”
The nonfiction articles are warming: jazz musician Steve Kirby appears to have singlehandedly rebuilt the musical landscape of Winnipeg. Immigrant children in Toronto express their creativity by cutting hair. Grown men forge into the woods to regain a connection with their spirit-animals, and are taken seriously. Even literary magazine editors get awarded with canoe trips. People of the south, take notice: Canada is fun!
Maybe it has to do with history: the dour scribes of America’s infancy remained engrossed in eradicating the relevance of all artistic licenses with their fire-and-brimstone sermons. Canada got John Galt – a jocular gentleman whose penchant for founding towns was equaled only by his industriousness as an author of popular novels. Two hundred years later, the ramifications of this choice are still with us: when a gaggle of evangelical Christians annex a Nicaraguan school and turn it into a hospital/conversion center, it’s a Canadian (Nicola Ross) who assumes the role of a bemused cultural correspondent.
In Ross’s article, as in several others, it isn’t clear
whether the artist is really an activist. Indeed, Canadians seem
a trifle woozy in warm weather. The fiction certainly prefers
aesthetic shade: Janice Goveas’s “Cough,” a brief sketch
of a woman venturing south in the hopes of helping a band of
hidden Mexican revolutionaries gain asylum, tends to rest on its
descriptive laurels – literally. Ditches become “busy” with
wildflowers; a street vendor is described as: “A white light,
hung on a tree and fuelled by a propane tank, lights the
vendor’s gnarly hands as he quickly folds together meat and
bread to sell to the shadows that sidle up to his stall.” This
occasional hesitation in no way dilutes the potency of the
articles in The New Quarterly, which consistently
justifies any international shipping charges. [www.tnq.ca]
The Paris Review
Volume 48 Number 179
Winter 2006
Quarterly
Reviewed By Jim Scott
There’s a division in literary magazines that’s becoming more
pronounced as time goes on – there are those that treasure new
voices and are a beacon of hope to the unpublished, and then
there are those that serve as a seemingly untouchable golden
palace upon a hill to be envied from afar. Both are viable, and
as journals proliferate, this division was inevitable and
necessary. The Paris Review is one of the most blindingly
golden palaces in all the land, with a statue of George Plimpton
standing watch, perhaps in the uniform of his Paper Lion
days. This golden issue features fiction from T.C. Boyle and
Gish Jen and poetry from omnipresent Dean Young (though what
recent poet has deserved more of a presence?). “Glow Ode”
sparkles with Young’s malleable gifts, especially his effortless
sense of humor, which adds to the impact of such notions as:
“but some things can only be true / if you’re not prepared. I
love those fools / who think they can sit out the hurricane, /
how later they wave from their roofs with their parakeets at the
helicopters.” Jonas Bendiksen’s gorgeous and heartrending photos
of Kiberia, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, serve as a sobering
centerpiece. Bendikson’s camera seems capable of richer, truer
color than real life. But the crown jewel of this issue is two
chapters of an unfinished novel found in the papers of the late
Joseph Heller. “Hagar” and “Ishamel” only hint at what could
have been – the deadpan wit still ferociously intact, here
sinking its teeth into the Bible. Ishmael notes offhandedly
about his father Abraham, “For what good it might do me, he
wanted me to know that I was blessed too, and he had it on good
word that I would have twelve sons and become a great nation,
somewhere else.” Perhaps George Plimpton and Joseph Heller have
formed their own great nation somewhere else, but in this one,
The Paris Review continues to shine for all to see. [www.parisreview.com]
Poet Lore
Volume 101 Number 3/4
Fall/Winter 2006
Biannual
Reviewed by donna everhart
Editor of Poet Lore Rick Cannon describes the sound of
a poem’s beauty as “a steady hum.” I don’t think he could have
described it any better. A consistent vibration sounds through
the pages of this sleek, perfect-bound journal. In “Sometimes It
Rains,” one of three poems by Alberto Ri`os, for example, sounds
rise up from the page like whispers, or like a light, sudden
rain on a warm summer day. Stanzas are composed of couplets, and
each line is composed of hard or soft sounds which seem to
complement each other, as in the fallen leaves that were once
“white and waxy.” The tongue slips over the words. The nose
breathes in the scent of “the hot honeysuckle.” And I found,
after reaching the last word, I wanted to re-experience this
poem. Each of the over 100 poems (avant-garde, free verse,
traditional) give enjoyment and deserve the reader’s complete
attention. Poet Lore is like opening a beautifully
wrapped gift during the holidays. It is exciting when so much
care to craft and language and image is all wrapped up together.
The magazine features the Poet Introducing Poets pages and an
interesting essay by Jean Nordhaus, “Lament for the Makers or
Why Metaphor Can’t Save Your Life,” as well as several reviews
of poetry books by careful and involved readers. [www.writer.org]
The Rambler
Volume 4 Number 2
March/April 2007
Bimonthly
Reviewed by Stephanie Griffore
So this magazine rambles, big deal! We all do, and for this
magazine, it’s a positive quality. What’s original about this
magazine is that a portion of the short stories and poems are
inspired by artwork and photography that can be found on the
magazine’s website. In this issue, it’s the short stories that
stand out. Some of the pieces are thought provoking, like “Short
Letters I’ve Been Meaning to Write” by Dave Korzon. Each short
letter is to someone in the media or a personal acquaintance. He
gives Barack Obama advice on how to quit smoking, and in
another recalls with his wife, “Wasn’t it just the other day we
made desperate-sounding plans to ‘get away’ from this place?”
Other pieces are humorous and relatable, like “Thrill Life with
Child” by Marianne Gingher, an ongoing series about a writer who
is progressing through life with her scissor grinding husband
and newly born son. The portion about her pregnancy is
absolutely hilarious, in which she mentions that “[…] and once I
have a baby tethered to me, my biggest outing will be waddling
off to the grocery store.” But don’t block out the poetry,
because pieces like “Tattooed Taxi Man” by Gretchen Fletcher and
“I used to be a bill collector” by John Dismukes give some of
the longer pieces solid competition. Overall, this issue is
extremely compelling, and the interview with Will Shortz is a
must read. The photography and art, which inspired some of the
authors, also deserve praise, for without them, the written
works may not have been created. [www.ramblermagazine.com]
Rattle
Volume 12 Number 2
Winter 2006
Biannual
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomoll Popolis
I've always enjoyed the poetry magazine Rattle for its
modernity and humor, its willingness to mix the political, the
sublime, and the silly. Each issue, in addition to a selection
of poems, reviews, and interviews, contains a special tribute
section, and this issue's theme is The Greatest Generation. I
loved the plainspoken-ness, the bald, unbeautified statements
made in the poems of these elder writers, who maybe don't have
it all figured out, as Nan Sherman in “Don't Ask Me Any
Questions”: “Where is the wisdom / that arrives with age? /
Another fairytale for the young”; or who maybe do, like Fred Fox
in “Hosanna to Life”: “For years my ego fooled me. / I carried
the world on my shoulders. / I now realize how inane that was /
Living within a self-imposed island.” Peggy Aylsworth's “Beyond
the Headlines” is an acknowledgement of the pain and ugliness
inherent in life, and for which there is often little relief.
The poem culminates in a wonderful moment: “In the midst of
stings & consolations, / I sing through the window at the
dried-out meadow, / stirred by the sudden silver of unpredicted
rain.” There are two “conversations” (interviews) here, with
Jane Hirshfield and with Jack Kornfield, Zen-trained poets who
are introspective and have much to share of other poets, not
just themselves. And because I am prone to the occasional
wondering about the whole point of art anyway, and daresay
others might be too, I can't help but wrap up with a great
answer by Hirshfield: “Art's example reminds us that it is
possible to develop an awakened and courageous and indecorous
soul, in the face of a world that mostly asks us to be obedient
sheep.” [www.RATTLE.com]
Santa Monica Review
Fall 2006
Volume 18 Number 2
Biannual
Reviewed by Anna Sidak
An exceptional collection as is typical of this attractively
presented journal. From Peter LaSalle's delightful "Rimbaud
Walking" – "He [Rimbaud] would be slowed down, because there was
that 'violent snowstorm' approaching, and I could certainly
catch him at long last." – shades of Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, but much shorter, of course, since
the narrator's son is only seven – to the heart-breaking "Life
After Death" by Vicki Forman, this issue of the Santa Monica
Review contains twelve excellent short stories. What
I miss in this publication is an editorial defining the criteria
– other than a shared trait of extraordinary focus – that
resulted in these choices. For example, Colin Dickey's
exploration of an Iraq War veteran's last days in the high
desert near Twentynine Palms, California. The story is told
through the eyes of an elderly widow, who has taken him in as a
boarder, and contains this astonishing line: "[. . .] Faye knows
it is not an accident but the living dead on board, who so
desperately crave the earth and seek it always." Does this
insight give her the right to take things into her own hands? I
can't shake the feeling the ending of this story is not what I
wanted it to be, nor the true ending, but shocking nevertheless.
I'm looking forward to the next issue. [www.smc.edu/sm_review]
Tampa Review
Double Issue 31/32
2007
Biannual
Reviewed by Jim Scott
Tampa Review does not look like a literary magazine.
The size and shape of a children’s storybook, this hardcover
journal elicits the same expectation of entertainment – some
pictures, stories, perhaps a lesson or two. There are plenty of
pictures, in all types of media. Charlee Brodsky photographs
calves and feet, and Jim Daniels describes them in poetry in a
series of four connected works. Daniels opens “Glow” with the
memorable lines, “The scarred knees of the world / imagine their
prayers might be / forgiven.” Marcia Aldrich’s essay “Spoon
Altar” describes collectors of all kinds, winding the essay
around the narrative of Joel, who shot himself just after
sending the narrator and her family boxes containing his stamps.
Joel divested himself of all of his belongings, and the list
makes the heart plunge with each item, “He destroyed his
letters, lesson plans, the poetry he had written as a young man,
his unfinished essays, photographs, his address book.” Aldrich
proves herself a master of the list, a collector herself,
whether or not she acknowledges it. A child would be
disappointed to know the poems don’t rhyme, but along with the
non-fiction, they are Tampa Review’s strong suit. One of
the strongest, Kevin A. Gonzalez’s “Cultural Silence; or, How to
Survive the Last American Colony” contains potent imagery: “You
are a tri-colored bead, Puerto Rico, / In an island necklace:
ocean-blue annexation, Flamboyan red // status quo, &
mountain-green independence.” Gonzalez works on several levels,
something that not all of the poems strive for, but each
contains its own precise observational eye. [www.tampareview.ut.edu]
Tin House
Volume 8 Number 2
Winter 2007
Quarterly
Reviewed by Jim Scott
Tin House continues their run of excellence with this
superb issue – one of their finest. The hot-button piece is
Steve Almond’s collection of responses to the hate mail he
received as a result of quitting his position at Boston College
in protest of Condoleezza Rice being named commencement speaker.
The e-mails are shocking, and Almond’s responses vary from
whip-smart to insightful to hilarious to scathing all the way to
heartbreaking. Almond’s concern for Tom and Katie’s baby in the
face of being compared – no, equated – to bin Laden and Zarqawi
is touching. Almond, like truly great comics, isn’t afraid to go
for the jugular or make himself look bad, as in a particularly
shocking exchange where a doctor (doctor!) accuses Almond of not
liking ‘darkies.’ Almond’s reply: “I do like darkies, especially
the obedient ones who don’t mind being kept as pets. The ones
who are always complaining about slavery and whatever – it gets
tiring.” Almond’s mischievous sense of joy in language is also
evident in a piece by a new writer, Justin Torres, whose “In the
Kitchen” begins with the narrator and his two brothers smashing
tomatoes in an imitation of Gallagher, the type of comedian who
would, in all likelihood, not find Steve Almond funny. Their
mother works late and is constantly confused by time, cooking
meals in the middle of the night and sending the boys to bed in
the middle of the day. Torres injects such life into this short
piece that it’s dispiriting to leave the world he’s created.
Other strong pieces in this issue include short fiction by Ron
Carlson and Jim Shepherd, and Ben George’s wonderful interview
with Rick Bass. [www.tinhouse.com]
TriQuarterly
Number 126
2007
Triquarterly
Reviewed by Jim Scott
The fiction in TriQuarterly ranks among the best
today, but whereas many journals contain excellent fiction of
one variety, TriQuarterly’s strength lies in its
diversity. Jonathan David’s hilarious “The Sub” tells the story
of a horrendous substitute teacher through (mostly) anonymous
letters from the students themselves. “The Sub” is
(intentionally?) reminiscent of Donald Barthelme’s classic “The
School.” The latter’s strength lies in how the stakes are
raised, the former’s is in the variety of voices, the smart and
the not-so, the misbehaving and the apple polishing, the liars
and the too-honest. The truth behind a husband’s behavior when
driving the babysitter home is the central question of “A Split
Level Life” by Sande Boritz Berger. Berger does not attempt
melodrama. Instead, the question threatening the suburban
comfort of brand-names and household tips is not a torrid affair
but simple trust. Sex, however, seems to be the sole
preoccupation of Anderson, the protagonist in Heather A.
Slomski’s “The Allure of All This,” between the mannequins in
the department store where he works to Mia in lingerie to his
wife Ermalinda. As Ermalinda shaves her legs, Slomski writes,
“She did this on every line of her leg and when she switched
legs the suds parted and Anderson could see her nude body like a
calendar page floating in the bathtub.” All of these stories
approach their subjects with vastly different styles, but each
contains the humor, anxiety, and pain of human emotion. The
poetry is more academic in tone, and lacks the accessibility of
the fiction, but rewards – and merits – rereading. [www.triquarterly.org]
upstreet
Number 2
2007
Annual
Reviewed by Miles Newbold Clark
upstreet’s second effort champions the minimalist aesthetic: an all-black cover is graced only with the journal’s name and issue number. There are no pictures to be found anywhere.
While I’m all for stark presentations of any sort, oftentimes I wished that this material had been allowed to “breathe” a little deeper. upstreet’s fiction is unfortunately rife with quotidian false starts like “’Let It Be’ was the first Beatles song I discovered I could actually relate to,” or “This is a story about how my girlfriend and I broke up, how our relationship ended after two years and how I moved on.” Word-by-word, many stories betray their potentially compelling plots with cloying prose. Moreover, they feel stiflingly similar at times; sitting down to write this review, it was difficult for me to recall any of the pieces with much clarity. Even the issue’s centerpiece – an interview with Lydia Davis – was frustratingly elusive. upstreet often has difficulties in getting to the point.
But no journal, especially a young journal, is flawless; and there are several stories that warrant merit. In H. Camp Gordinier’s Hidden Camera, the dry (almost dour) taste of the prose befits a stunted love relationship between a small-time Russian porn director and the mamushka-turned-sex-kitten who falls for him. And in Ed Anthony’s Heretics, a series of unpretentious images form the satisfyingly benign amalgam of simple man’s epiphany in a bakery:
It was the warmth of the room, the early May sunshine pouting in the big front windows, and the smell of windowsill geraniums, and the smell of the fresh white bread and coffee cakes, and the smile of the faintly bovine young woman who waited on him; it was all of it that seized him, not just any one thing.
Those who enjoy straightforward, essayish stories with sparse
embellishments will join me in anticipating the next installment
of upstreet. [http://www.upstreet-mag.org]
Verbatim
The Language Quarterly
Volume 30 Number 4
Quarterly
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomol
Ever wondered where the word “cocktail” came from, or been
annoyed by some corporate entity referring to itself as a
“family?” Have you pondered what dictionary publishers ought to
do in regards to including words that are registered trademarks
of companies with overzealous lawyers? If so, take a look at
this issue of Verbatim, because it's tailor-made for
lovers of all topics linguistic. The three items mentioned above
are treated, respectively, in essays by Rosemarie Ostler
(“Getting Bowzered in Early America”); Matt Coward (“Horribile
Dictu”); and Michael Adams (“Lexical Property Rights: Trademarks
in American Dictionaries”). On the lighter (but no less
seriously treated) side, Muffy Siegel's “Dude! Katie! Your Dress
is So Cute: Why Dude Became an Exclamation” is an exploration of
the popular “dude” and the possible reasons for its current
usage among the young as an exclamation, reference to a male
person, and “gender-neutral term of address.” (Siegel's research
into the “social power” which “dude” has and a word like “guy”
doesn't is interesting, but one wonders why the pleasing vowel
sound of “dude” is never brought up, especially when contrasted
with the harsh “guy.”) Larry Tritten's story, “The Caribbean
Dichotomy,” concerns an eminent “pronunciologist” who believes
“there are only two kind of people in the world: those who
pronounce the word Caribbean [special font needed] and those who
pronounce it [special font needed.]” Can't say I really got the
[special font needed], but I think the piece was meant to be
funny. A few more informative articles, a couple of witty poems,
and a sweet little head-scratcher called “Anglo-American
Crossword No. 103” round out the issue. [www.verbatimmag.com]
Western Humanities Review
Volume 61 Number 1
Winter 2007
Biannual
Reviewed by Miles Newbold Clark
A rich, resonant read, WHR’s academic foundations are never far from the surface. I’m torn between wanting them to be flaunted shamelessly, and keeping it in check with a list of self-conscious characters (character formation found, it seems, in the world of realism). In both cases, the world is defined by a set of objects; for example, DaVinci = academic; Guns n’ Roses = quotidian.
The journal’s forays into the landscape of realism are often the most fulfilling. Dawn Houghton’s portrayal of a misguided woman’s first sexual experience (during her honeymoon) sounds like a more mature, balanced picture of the psychologically constricted tenderness Kevin Moffett usually fails to accomplish. Almost as good is Craig Bernier’s “An Affliction of Starlings,” the story of a failing father-daughter relationship whose normal speech is betrayed, somewhat lifelessly, by descriptions of “mammoth corned beef the size of a hardback Ulysses.” The author’s head is clearly lost in a book, but his heart constantly shows up – or at least seems to be searching for – the right places.
On the other end of things, I am in continual amazement on the success of Steve Almond. Though he makes off with only a flash-fiction-sized slice of WHR, the marks of his territory are everywhere: traces of irony, the play on brand-name products, irresolute conclusions. On the other end of the spectrum is Aaron Fogel, who is allowed to escape with 30 pages – more than 20 percent of the entire journal – which he fills with a piece called “fantasias in g,” the subject material of which can only be described as cannon-fodder for anyone who believes that the business of contemporary short story writing has been to expel meaning to the lunatic fringes of importance in the Quixote-like quest for the irregular and “fresh” premise.
Thankfully, WHR finds a happy medium between heart and head more often than not; I hope you’ll be as happy as I am to let this issue occupy a void on your bookshelf. [www.hum.utah.edu/whr/]
Zahir
A Journal of Speculative Fiction
Issue 12
Spring 2007
Triannual
Reviewed by Jennifer Gomoll Popolis
When I was in college, the English majors and science majors just didn't get along. Reading Zahir, I kept wondering what all that tension was about, since so many of this journal's cross-disciplined writers are able to blend their interests in creative writing and science so well. My favorite piece in this issue is Jerry Underwood's “Traveling Companion,” set in a world which is simply a very long train, constantly moving on a Track with no beginning or end in sight, inhabited by robots all named Bob (if male) or Bobbie (female). Not unlike us, the robots study what they can perceive of what exists beyond their world; they work at typical jobs; they have their amusements; and occasionally they hold each other tight against the disturbing thought that “maybe Track is curved [. . .] and we are going in circles.” Another good one is Alexandra Penn's “Second Law,” in which damage to a tense marriage between a condescending physicist and his down-to-earth wife is corrected only when the second law of thermodynamics is broken, i.e. time goes backward. Nicole Grieco's “Julia Perceiving in Binary: A Futuristic Romance” is a provocative look at the memory files of a robot created for, um, pleasure, and her surprising capacity to learn, feel, and express emotions. Julia loves her man, and some of the most interesting passages of the story concern her repudiation of the beliefs of a Dworkin-esque feminist who finds the existence of these sex robots disturbing at best. There are more good stories here, but my space is limited; if you enjoy speculative fiction, you won't regret a subscription to Zahir. [www.zahirtales.com]
Reviewers - Contributors Notes
NewPages Literary Magazine Stand recent reviews:
Mar 2007
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2007
Dec 2006
Nov 2006
Cumulative Index of Literary Magazines Reviewed