Issue 44.1 of George Mason University’s MFA-student-run Phoebe includes a special feature Poetry Editor Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes first starting mulling over as “disparity.”

She writes, “So many of the struggles in my life and the lives of people I see in the world seem to revolve around some sort of disparity: of place, of mind, of circumstance. After speaking with Qinglan Wang, my assistant editor, I realized I was less interested in the ‘parity’ and more interested in the ‘dis-‘ – in poems that explored disability, in poems that confronted things that dissatisfied or disappointed, and in poems that grappled with disaster.”

Authors contributing to this special dis- poetry feature include Catherine Pierce, Stacey Kidd, Richard Greenfield, Dorothea Lasky, Matt Bell, Martha Collins, and Adam Clay.

I enjoy reading editor introductions to publications as much as the content itself sometimes. Readers and writers alike can be duly informed of the ‘sensibilities’ of a publication based on what they’ll find in those brief opening notes. In her opening letter to the Fall 2014 Catamaran Literary Reader, Founding Editor Catherine Segurson gives much to inform as well as contemplate:

“The freedome to move, to travel and explore, is core to our being. Pulling up roots and heading off to parts unknown frees us from our patterned lives and promotes growth. The journey can be both liberating and terrifying, filled with wonder and potential dangers, every step a lesson about the world and about ourselves – how we deal with the unexpected, how we cope with not knowing what the next turn in the road will bring.”
. . .
“We don’t have to travel halfway around the world or to distant planets to experience the wonder of what it means to be alive. As long as we are fully aware, even a walk around the block can inspire us; closely studying the structure of a primrose can add to our view of the world. These are lessons we learn from art and litearature as well. Writers, artists, and scientists are in the business of examining life and revealing what they’ve discovered – this, in turn, benefits us as readers and gallery visitors.”

Following these sentiments is much to support Segurson’s perspective, in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art (including photography, sculpture, paintings, mixed media, and more – all in full color!). Samples of the artwork and written works published in this issue can be read on the publication’s website.

[Cover art: Candy Tree by Michael Cutlip, 2011, mixed media on panel, 40 x 48 in]

Whitefish Review‘s most recent issue, themed “The Geography of Hope,” includes a feature entitled “Freeflow: Getting into the minds and hearts of Whitefish High School students.” The editors worked with WHS teachers Nikki Reed and Eric Sawtelle to gather students and “gain insight on their sense of place in the mountains and the work they do with Project FREEFLOW (Flathead River Educational Effort for Focused Learning in Our Watersheds).”

Coupling literary magazines with young activists to support their work, give them an audience, and create a bond with the printed arts is a great concept other publications could emulate. In addition, while Whitefish Review charges a nominal fee for submissions, there is no charge for writers high school age and younger, encouraging their participation.

This is especially good to know, considering the publication’s latest call for submissions for a themed issue: Mythic Beasts & Monsters. If THAT doesn’t encourage young writers, I don’t know what will!

Until March 15, 2015: “Whitefish Review wants you to dig into supernatural history: Nessie, Sasquatch, and cousin Yeti—the Brontosaurus still rumbling somewhere deep in the Congo’s swamps. Fairies, Trolls, Dragons, Gods ‘n’ Demons. Our own Flathead Lake Monster. What natural models are these beasts based on? What human hopes and fears? Why do we seem to wish that those creatures are really out there? How big and strange is creation anyway — the real pageant of creatures? What about all the bizzarro beasts that are stranger than any legend? (Thank you to Douglas H. Chadwick for the writing prompt.)”

The most recent issue of Cincinnati Review is unique for a number of reasons. The issue comes with a separately printed, full-color graphic novel, Moth: The Play written by Declan Greene and illustrated by Gabe Ostley. Check out this sweet YouTube video The Making of Moth for a teaser.

The publication also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that allowed the editors to focus on longer forms. “In fiction, this includes several extended stories. In poetry, sequences and long poems lead off each section.” In total, this issue offers almost one hundred additional pages of fiction and poetry.

And finally, the magazine features a unique partnering of music and poetry. Award-winner composer of chamber works Ellen Ruth Harrison has created music to express three poems by Jakob Stein, originally printed in the Summer 2008 issue. The full score for “Sefiros” appears in this issue along with the reprinted poems and introduction by Poetry Editor Don Bogen. Additionally, the art-song will be performed in the Robert J. Werner Recital Hall at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music on Monday February 16, 2015 at 8 p.m. A podcast of the performance will be posted on the publication’s website following the event.

I think that’s quite enough to recommend, don’t you?

The newest issue of Valley Voices (Fall 2014, published by Mississippi Valley State University) is a special issue focused on New York School and Diaspora. Guest Editor Angela Ball writes in her introduction that she hosted a symposium on New York School Poetry and the South and extended the conversation of that gathering with this special issue, including the works of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, and David Lehman, who had originally attended the symposium.

David Lehman agreed to join the project as Associate Editor, suggesting Angela Ball include blog entries she had written for Best American Poetry discussing the “big four poets of the New York School”: Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler.

Also included in the issue are student essays and comments written as part of a seminar Ball was teaching at the time, “The Poetry of the New York School.” Ball writes that these “record what graduate students in poetry writing, fiction writing, and literature have to say about the special qualities of the New York School that make it a potent force for leavening and enlivening contemporary poetry in the South and elsewhere.”

It was the change in format that first caught my eye with the new KENYON Review. Editor David H. Lynn comments on this altered physical appearance, but also a great deal more about how he and the staff and editors at Kenyon Review looked at the changing landscape of its readers to update the publication:

“I am delighted to present this first issue of a new volume year and with it the boldest revisions of design and frequency in the seventy-five-year trajectory of the Kenyon Review. Even that last ‘the’ has been challenged. More on that later. But note, please, that not only the look and feel of our magazine are dramatically new. It will now appear every two months, six times a year, rather than the quarterly iterations of many decades. All of this comes after two years of questions and debate and planning.”

Read Lynn’s full commentary here (and how he got cheeky with the “the”).

The newest issue of Mississippi Review (42.3), besides having a pretty swank cover image, is The Novella Issue, featuring works by only four authors: Katie Chase (46pp), Kevin A. Gonzalez (62pp), Jaimy Gordon (28pp), and Paola Peroni (25pp). Rare to see this kind of page dedication to the long form in an entire issue, making this a great collection for the long read.

New England Review editor, Carolyn Kuebler, introduces the publication’s new poetry editor, Rick Barot, in her Editor’s Note (v35.4). Not new to the publication, Barot was published in its pages in the past, then became a submissions reader. Kuebler writes that Barot “has a penchant for asking the hard questions, the big questions: What is NER for? What is our role in current events and conversations? What makes a piece of writing last beyond its immediate publication date? Must it, will it, should it? Why is so much of what we select so dark?” He turns these questions into conversation, and Kuebler shares what he comes to when considering works for the pages of NER. The Editor’s Note can be read in full here.

The newest issue of Indiana Review includes a special folio, “Understanding Readiness,” which is “meant to present diverse explorations and meditations on the impact of the writing, the figure, and political influence of Amiri Baraka” Poetry Editor Nandi Comer and Editor Britt Ashley write, “The voices in this section share Baraka’s aesthetic bravery – one that grabs its audience, demanding we listen to issues concerning contemporary American life. It also must be noted that the diversity in aesthetic and background of these writers speaks to the span of Baraka’s reach.”

Writers contributing to this folio: francine j. harris, Patricia Smith, Roger Reeves, Tarfiah Faizullah, Toi Derricotte, Matthew Shenoda, and avery r. young. Included with the written works are Amiri Baraka’s original drawings curated from Indiana University’s Lily Library.

Volume 3 of Conium Review is one of the most unique collectible editions of a literary magazine I’ve seen to date. “This is a book for book lovers,” say the editors. The “container” is a hand-stamped wooden box, conditioned with linseed, mineral, and orange oils. Inside are eight new stories from Olivia Ciacci, Tom Howard, D. V. Klenak, Jan LaPerle, Zach Powers, Christine Texeira, and Meeah Williams. Each individual micro-chapbook, broadside, and booklet is printed on unique paper, including parchment, linen, and recylced stock. This volume is also available in the standard perfect bound book form for non-collectors simply looking for good reading. Both can be ordered from the publication’s website.

I recommend reading World Literature Today cover-to-cover every issue, but if you need some extra incentive for the January-February 2015, here you go:

1. The article by J. Madison Davis: “The Idiotically Criminal Universe of the Brothers Cohen.”

2. The special section of flash nonfiction featuring works by Brian Doyle, Josey Foo, Lia Purpura, Vikram Kapur, and Dmitry Samarov.

3. The “Suite of Contempory Ethiopean Poetry” with Misrak Terefe, Abebaw Melaku, Mihret Kebede, Eric Ellingsen, and David Shook.

And my two runner-ups: “Storytelling, Fake Worlds, and the Internet” by Elif Shafak and “Ping-Pong: or, Writing Together” by Sergio Pitol. And everything else in between. But I did say I would pick three to number.

New Letters Editor Robert Stewart asks “Does art do much good?”

In his Editor’s Note, “Making What Matters,” Stewart shares, “In my home city recently, a 10-year-old girl named Machole and a 6-year-old girl named Angel, in separate events, were shot dead by gunfire. Machole was in her own living room when someone in a car shot several times into her house; Angel was walking out the door of a convenience store with her father. Other children continue to suffer abuse and violence, yes, but these two events, nine days apart, have caused many people here to examine the kind of landscape—city and country—we have shaped for our children.”

Go to the National Art Education Association News page on any given day, and you’ll see comment after comment from leaders across the nation proclaiming the importance of the arts in education, of turning and keeping the A in STEM for STEAM. It’s not a new struggle among cultures, among communiites, as Stewart notes the Trappist monk Thomas Merton “in a 1962 letter, where he confessed to being disheartened by evil in the world, despite his own writings and art. ‘Tell me,’ Merton wrote to his friend, “am I wasting my time?'”

It’s a question and concern that pervades and surfaces, resurfaces, confronts and confounds wirters, artists, educators, politician and policy makers. While Stewart answers the question in his commentary, an answer found through reading the works of authors in the journal and concluding on the worth and value of their efforts. A worth and value we need to retain and remind others of every chance we get.

In addition to the cover image, the Winter 2014 issue of The Georgia Review features what Editor Stephen Corey rightly refers to as “the striking art portfolio by Mequitta Ahuja” and notes this is the publication’s “second-ever multi-panel foldout.” This is both a generous and gorgeous dedication to artwork for journal readers to enjoy. Corey also footnotes the artwork introduction with this: “Mequitta Ahuja’s Automythography marks The Georgia Review‘s first collaborative project with the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries. Sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, Ahuja will be in residence at the school from late January to early February 2015, and an exhibit of her work will be on display at the Dodd Galleries.”

Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature is a truly unique publication. Published by Pyriform Press and edited by Ellen Redbird, Nerve Lantern is “a journal of experimental performance texts and texts about performance, supporting a range of forms, including poets’ theatre and page-as-stage.” Some examples from Winter 2014 Issue 7: “Un/Conventional Chorus: A Spoken Choral Work for Ten Voices” by Mary Burger & Yedda Morrison; “A Song about the Moon in the Middle of the Night” by Hannah Rodabaugh; “Xylene Radiator Anxiety Mask: Experimental Sonnet Map for Five Voices” by Gary Sloboda; “Pig of Angels of the Americlypse: An anti-masque for four players” by Rodrigo Toscano.

Submissions for the publication are open, but the editorial advice is to understand why you want to be a part of the Nerve Lantern community and what you feel “akin” to or what “new” you will add to it before submitting. The community can be better understood not just by reading past issues of the publication, but viewing one of the many performance videos shot during the publication’s performance venue: “An Afternoon of Sparking Poetry.” The most recent of these have been hosted by the Medicine Show Theatre in New York.

Redbird offers further “Thoughts to Nerve Lantern Newcomers” on the submissions page, asking questions to have writers consider the performance aspects of their work, not only how it might be performed “on stage” but also on the page. A helpful guide for readers and writers alike to help in our understanding and appreciation for this literary form.

Kudos to Ellen Redbird and contributors to Nerve Lantern for providing, not just a place for this genre, but a community in which it can be fostered.

Modern short fiction highlights the newest issue of Chinese Literature Today (v4 n2). Four award-winning authors were selected to exemplify what editors note is a revival of the short form in Chinese literature: Ai Wei, Fan Xiaoqing, Dong Xi, and Li Shijiang. “Our selection covers different generations of contemporary Chinese writers, both male and female writers, and a wide spectrum of literary styles. The selected stories are some of the most representative pieces that showcase short fiction’s efficacy in re-narrating history and memory, capturing immediate social changes, and aestheticizing fragmented individual experiences.”

Mediterraneans is the subject of The Massachusetts Review special issue for Winter 2014. In their introduction, Editors Anna Botta and Michel Moushabeck write of history of the area, of the many cultures that crisscrossed this busy commerce route, and of the language developed to be shared among them, called lingua franca.

“Another name for this Mediterranean vernacular was sabir,” say Botta and Moushabeck, “a noun that derives from the Latin root sapere, ‘to know.’ This special issue brings into conversation the different dialects, languages, vernaculars of the Mediterranean in order to create a sabir of poetic, fictive, and artistic imagination displaying the plurality of Mediterranean identities. The texts included in the pages that follow do not pretend ‘to know’ the Med, instead they trace the filigree of a sabir which can tell us only indirectly and vaguely what Mediterranean identity is.”

The full text of the introduction can be read on the TMR website along with several works from the issue.

Natural Bridge Fall 2014 (#32) includes a special selection of veterans-themed poetry and fiction. Guest Editor John Dalton writes that though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are said to be ending, “These wars, it turns out, have their own afterlife. Perhaps no one understand this better than the men and women who’ve returned to us as veterans.”

Dalton hopes that this feature will help others better understand the “strangeness” in the role of military service: “to be asked to travel across the world and fight and kill and die in a culture you only partially understand, and perhaps a stranger thing to come home and figure out who you are and just what your service has meant.” It is a conundrum with which we all continue to struggle, and for which we continue to turn to writing to help us navigate as individuals and as a society.

Writers featured for this selection: Marilyn Johnston, Wendy Dunmeyer, John Twobey, Jack Vian, Ty Burson, Nandini Dhar, and Arthur Davis.