Produced within the MFA at Eastern Washington University, Willow Springs literary magazine features writers from their current print issue online.

Featured from Willow Springs 83 are four poems by Maggie Smith (an interview with her is included in the print publication), “The Collector” by Suzanne Highland, “The Year We Lived” by Breanna Lemieux, and “Bless the Feral Hog” by Laura Van Prooyen.

With each feature, the author offers notes on the work as well as whatever random musings they might want to include under the fun title “Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens. etc..”

In her responses, Suzanne Highland [pictured] shares, “I have two tattoos: one says ‘in medias res and the other says ‘(write it!).’ I’m wildly attached to both, but one would have to be to get tattoos like those in the first place, I think.”

Reflecting on Ruminate’s 50th Anniversary issue, Editor Brianna VanDyke writes that when Thích Nhất Hạnh was asked, “Is there a purpose for wearing the robe other than to clothe your body?” He replied, “To remind yourself that you are a monk.”

“I wonder,” VanDyke goes on, “if one day you or I might also be asked a question about reminding ourselves of who we are.” 

She goes on to explore what those ‘reminders of self’ might be, adding, “something about this dream I hold, that these pages continue to be a reminder for fifty more good issues, how the very best stories and art and poems remind us of who we are, why we matter, our longings, our deepest work this day.”

Hear, hear!

Editorial insights abound at the Colorado State University Center for Literary Publishing Editor’s Blog. Home of the Colorado Review as well as several esteemed annual literary prizes, Center Director Stephanie G’Schwind has both breadth and depth in her staff contributors.

Recent posts include:

“Looking toward Spring with Place-Based Writing” by Editorial Assistant Jennifer Anderson

“Revisiting the Holocaust Metaphors of Sylvia Plath” by Editorial Assistant Leila Einhorn

“Procedures for the Slowpoke Poet” by Associate Editor Susannah Lodge-Rigal

“On Love Poetry” by Associate Editor Daniel Schonning

The blog also features links to monthly podcasts: February 2019 Podcast: Writing on Mental Health with Margaret Browne; January 2019 Podcast: Horror Poetry with Emma Hyche; and more.

Check it out here. 

After announcing in November 2018 that he would be stepping down as editor of The Georgia Review, Stephen Corey offers readers an update on his departure in the Spring 2019 editorial: 

As I write now, during the middle days of February, hard upon our Spring 2019 deadline, the dice are still not fully cast for my successor or my exact departure date – and so I will be brief again: the earliest I would step away is 1 June, at which time our Summer 2019 issue will literally be in press and the preparation of the Fall 2019 contents will be in full swing, so my ghost will be around for at least some aspects of the latter. The goal for me, for the rest of the Georgia Review  staff, and for the University of Georgia, is a transition that will be as smooth as possible for our submitters, contributors, and readers.

I will close with a few words (because I have been asked for them) about the why  of my departure from the place of employment to which I have given more than half of my life, and which I have served through almost  (just one year shy of) half of the journal’s life. I’ve been pondering and preparing for a couple of years, with no pressure from anyone other than myself. I’m seventy, I’m healthy, I have several books of my own writing to finish and begin – and I haven’t even toured Great Britain yet, that realm so vital from early days to my being drawn into this literature/reading/writing/editing life.

To be continued…

S.C.

The Kenyon Review offers readers In Memoriam, “a space for remembering notable contributors to the pages of KR. We regret the loss of their voices from the world of arts and letters.”

In honor of W.S. Merwin, Kenyon Review  Poetry Editor David Baker writes, “No contemporary poet’s work has meant more to me than W. S. Merwin’s. We first met in 1979, when I was a twenty-four-year-old high school English teacher in Jefferson City, Missouri; we played pool at Dave’s Bar in Kansas City one night, and he told me I shouldn’t go do my PhD but stay out of academia and write.”

Read the rest of Baker’s comments here along with Merwin’s works published in KR and a link to video interview with KR editor David Lynn and David Baker upon Merwin’s accepting the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2010.

Glimmer Train March 2019 Bulletin offers an interesting selection of craft essays, each just at a tipping point of controversy.

“Words, and Barry Hannah, the Guy Who Taught Me to Love Them” by Marian Palaia shares how Hannah’s voice and vernacular influenced her early on, although now she comments, “if Barry were writing the same stuff now, I can’t imagine how he’d get away with it.”

Devin Murphy’s “We All Do It! Don’t We? The Art of Reading Like a Thief” examines the fine line of “Did I plagiarize the novel I’d read?” He comments on his own teaching and trying to help student writers “understand the value of actively reading for material that will help them deepen their own stories.”

“What interests me about politics in fiction,” writes Siamak Vossoughi [pictured], “is how it informs the lives of characters.” In his essay, ‘The Political Lives of Characters,” he asserts, “A writer only runs the risk of being preachy or dogmatic if he or she makes a character of one political belief less three-dimensional and human than that of another.”

Subscribers to Rattle poetry magazine get bonus in their mailbox with each spring issue: Rattle Young Poets Anthology. If you’re not a subscriber, RYPA can be ordered separately for just $6.

The 2019 issue is a 48-page chapbook of work by twenty poets age fifteen or under, but don’t let the age line fool you. Rattle editors write that this “is not a collection just for kids—these are missives to adults from the next generation, confronting big topics with fresh eyes and a child-like spontaneity.”

Contributors include Lucia Baca, Angélica Borrego, Olivia Bourke, April Chukwueke, Lexi Duarte, Josephina Green, C.A. Harper, Lily Hicks, Angelique Jean Lindberg, Rylee McNiff, Ethan Paulk, Lydia Phelps, McKenzie Renfrew, Ellie Shumaker, Emmy Song, Rowan Stephenson, Saoirse Stice, Zachary Tsokos, Layla Varty, and Simon Zuckert, with cover art by Noralyn Lucero.

Submission deadline for the next issue is October 15, 2019.

Since there is always a lag time created between contemporary news issues and publications of poetry, Rattle has created a quick-streaming solution.

Poets Respond takes weekly submissions (before midnight on Fridays) for works “written within the last week about a public event that occurred within the last week.”

The poems then appear every Sunday on the Rattle homepage. The only criteria for the poem, the editors assert, is quality, “all opinions and reactions are welcome.”

Selected poets receive $50, with poems sent before midnight on Sunday and Tuesday considered for a “bonus” mid-week post.

This week’s selection is “In Defense of Those Who Harbor Terrible Ideas at Tax Time” by Alison Luterman [pictured], in which, yes, she considers “the young black gay actor who orchestrated / a fake hate crime against himself. / It must have seemed like such a good idea to him / at the time,” and later in the poem offers, “I have to forgive this young man his terrible / idea, I have to because, in my own way, I’ve been him.” 

For more information about Poets Respond and an archive of past works, click here.

“Oh, plastic, scourge of the Anthropocene, shaped into adorable shapes and dyed multifarious colors; plastic, who will be with us forever: it’s easy to forget about you, but when I remember you’re here, I’m annoyed and freaked out all at once.”

The opening line of From the Editor: Material Life by Anna Lena Phillips Bell creates a link between the theme for the Fall/Winter 2018 issue of Ecotone: Body and our cultural abuse of plastics. Taking their own use to task, Ecotone announces with this issue they will no longer be shipping the magazines in ‘polybags,’ and the cover of the publication itself will now be an uncoated stock. Walking the talk!

And the contents of the publication focus on “The Body” including campus-carry laws, Indigenous students, the safety of women’s bodies, queer identity, birth and postpartum depression, and much more.

See a full list of contributors and read partial content here.

“All of the work in this special Fall issue of Cold Mountain Review about a fair and just relationship between people and their society has great emotional impact,” writes Consulting Editor Vivian Shipley in her Editor’s Note. And the work strikes upon a variety of justice issues: the opioid crisis; transgender experience; the multitude of experiences of women from different identities, races, and classes; the continued impact of oppression created by colonial occupation; the impact of humans on the environment; ecological aspects; and the role of social media.

From her youth, Shipley shares, “I was taught that anything that had a negative impact on the dignity of life of any person, from their birth to their death, needed to be addressed and eliminated,” and concludes, “This timely and very significant issue of Cold Mountain Review explores many ways to achieve social justice in our currently bitterly divided country.”

See a complete list of contributors and read the full content online here.

Number 25 in the 2River Chapbook Series, Inscape, is a collection of poems by members of the Summer Poetry Workshop at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont. Facilitator and retired English lit prof Bill Freedman introduces the collection, talking about the past four summers he has spent leading the poetry writing workshop, Poetry as Personal Expression.

“There is brotherhood here,” Freedman writes, “the camaraderie of proud men similarly confined, some insist unjustly, stripped of agency and entitlement, vulnerable to an array of humiliations, yet determined to make this time not a suspension of their lives, but, if possible, a useful and worthwhile part of it. Their writing, this workshop, is, I think, for many, an important part of that.”

As with all 2River Chapbooks, readers can find this fully available online, downloadable as a PDF, and in the form of “Chap the Book,” which provides a PDF download that can be printed and folded into a chapbook.

Throughout 2018, Basalt Magazine  “committed to publishing a selection of poems from each month of Ian Boyden’s manuscript A Forest of Names. Over the course of a year, Boyden translated the 5,196 names of schoolchildren crushed in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. He then began a collection of poems, each written on the day of each child’s birth. An in-depth discussion of these poems can be read in Fault Line: An Introduction to A Forest of Names.”

In his discussion, Boyden explains how, had it not been for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the names of these children, and the government being held accountable for the shoddy construction of the schools where these children were killed, would have been lost.

As part of the curation of Ai Weiwei’s work related to the earthquake, Ian Boyden papered a wall with the children’s names, “a massive work on paper consisting of 21 scrolls, together measuring 10.5′ by over 42′ long.”

Boyden then discusses his work, taking the name of each child, the Chinese characters, and translating these into poetic renderings: “Holding the hopes implicit in each of these names in tension with the tragedy of the children’s deaths has also been a translations of one grief to another: perhaps this is the most accurate translation of all.”

The newest issue of The Malahat Review (#205) features LGBTQ2S?+ writers in a celebration of “Queer Perspectives.” Featured authors include fiction by Nathan Caro Fréchette, Christine Higdon, Matthew J. Trafford; creative nonfiction by Darrel J. McLeod, Anaheed Saatchi, Neal Debreceni, Deborah VanSlet; poetry by A. Light Zachary, Arün Smith, Kayla Czaga, Adèle Barclay, Arleen Paré, Nisa Malli, Charlie C. Petch, Sun Rey, and gorgeous cover art by Kent Monkman.

Malahat Lite, the publication’s virtual newsletter, features interviews with Billeh Nickerson, who discusses his poem/lyric essay “Skies,” and Francesca Ekwuyasi, who talks about her story “Good Soil,” both pieces included in this issue.

Over the past several months, writer Michael Nye [pictured] has been working to resurrect Story, which had originally been founded and edited by Travis Kurowski, and ceased publication in 2016. After working out the details with Travis, Michael laid all the groundwork to continue the publication in strong steed.

Nye’s experience with other publications has helped him understand the intricacies and necessities of running a quality journal. Previous managing editor of The Missouri Review and associate editor with Boulevard, Nye has had plenty of experience “steering ships”; this will be his first venture “building them.” He says, “I’ve always wanted to run a literary magazine and over the last fifteen years, I think I’ve learned enough to pull it off.” Travis has worked closely with Michael on the transition and remains involved as the editor-at-large.

In addition, Nye has drawn in a solid staff: Associate Editor LaTanya McQueen; Staff Andrew Bockhold, Brandon Grammer, Robert Ryan, and Brianna Westervelt; as well as a Board of Directors with Ruth Awad, Valerie Cumming, Keith Leonard, and Maggie Smith; and an Advisory Board with David Althoff, Jürgen Fauth, Stephanie G’Schwind, Roxane Gay, Jonathan Gottschall, Andrea Martucci, Speer Morgan, David Shields, Randi Shedlosky-Shoemaker, Jim Shepard, and Marion Winik.

Nye has put his full faith and effort into this venture: “There is a tremendous amount to look forward to in the coming year. I am beyond thrilled to bring Story back. I do hope you’ll join us: we plan on being here for a long time to come.”

Readers can look forward to Story #4 released this February featuring new stories by Anne Valente, Claudia Hinz, A.A. Balaskovits, Phong Nguyen, Brett Beach, Jordan Jacks, Dionne Irving, Katherine Zlabek, and Marilyn Abildskov and debut fiction by Yohanca Delgado.

Frank O’Hara fans will appreciate the January 2019 issue of Poetry, which includes excerpts from A Frank O’Hara Notebook by Bill Berkson: “A fascinating account of Frank O’Hara in the prime of his creative life in New York, told through notes, images, and poems by his friend Bill Berkson.” Published by no place press, an imprint of MIT Press.

Glimmer Train Bulletin #144 continues to offer free craft essays from writers, some of whose works have been published in Glimmer Train Stories.

In his essay “Dialogue: Something to Talk About,“ Gregory Wolos writes: “Like everything else in a work of fiction, quoted words and phrases are inventions created to serve the purposes of the author. Paradoxically, because the meaning behind spoken language may be subtle, understanding it might demand more, not less, of the reader.”

“Playing the Odds” by Melissa Yancy [pictured] is a uniquely grounding and encouraging perspective on writers keeping their eye on their own hidden gems rather than the prizes of others: “We read author bios, convinced that Iowa, the Stegner, or the right borough in New York City will increase the odds. Then what is already in hand becomes currency that we trade in for that gamble.”

Readers can access the most current as well as a full archive of the Glimmer Train Bulletin here.

Reflecting on the 1974 publication Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers  and the work of its editors, Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, the Winter 2018 issue of The Massachusetts Review is an ambitious special issue dedicated to Asian American Literature: Rethinking the Canon.

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials [pictured] and Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, editors for this issue write in the introduction, “[. . . ] the present-day terrain of Asian American literature is characterized by a profound geopolitical diversity that encompasses to varying degrees and often divergent ends the multifaceted experiences of native-born, immigrant, and refugee subjects. Such diversity by way of location is matched by a complexity with regard to histories of racialization, war, displacement, and resettlement. Last, but certainly not least, as the work in this special Massachusetts Review  issue makes abundantly clear, Asian American writing — despite conservative claims ‘otherwise’ — is an integral part of the U.S. literary canon.” Read the full introduction here.

In addition to the full TOC, which can be seen here, the editors have included A Poetry Portfolio, “in the spirit of” poet Fanny Choi’s address, “(B)Aiiieeeee!: The Future is Femme and Queer” (included in the issue). To the “cis-het male vision of Asian American literature,” the editors offer: “this folio invokes a decidedly different Asian American poetic landscape than [. . . ] Aiiieeeee!  Its expansive focus includes queer, femme, gender nonbinary, mixed race, refugee, and adoptee poets of East, South, Southeast, West and Central Asian descent; its poems span diverse aesthetics, intersectional politics, and contradictory subjectivities. The guiding impulse is not merely illuminatory or inclusive, but decolonial. It asks us to see not only the erased but the practice of erasure and our respective roles in undoing that canonical violence – what more responsible reading and publishing practices might look like.”

Each issue of Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review includes four writers responding to a set of four questions on a select topic. The Fall 2018 issue features Kwame Dawes, BK Fischer, Tara Betts and Nikita Gill answering questions about the pressure for poets to act as their own publicists, the new media sense of ‘community’ and its effect on writing, the impact of ‘instant’ publishing (posting) on the writing and revising process, and how social media has changed how we define poems, poetry, and even writers.

The Fall/Winter 2018 issue of The Chattahoochee Review is themed on “Lost & Found.” Editor Anna Schachner [pictured] writes in the editorial: “In many ways, this issue’s special focus of ‘Lost and Found’ is an homage to the writing process itself – the many slivers of ourselves we concede when we write and  the inevitable discovery via writing. That emphatic ‘and’ is important because it suggests an organic progression: that to lose something is to also create space to find something else, not just in writing, but in our thoughts, our expectations, our relationships. So many of the submissions we received seemed to concur, as did so many of the pieces ultimately chosen and featured herein.”

Contributors include Cooper Casale, Margaret Diehl, John Hart, Lindsay Stuart Hill, Raina Joines, Timothy Krcmarik, David Rock, Sophia Stid, Brian Phillip Whalen, Jennifer Wheelock, Erica S. Arkin, John Brandon, Kieran Wray Kramer, Michele Ruby, Kevin Wilson, Ginger Eager, Jennifer Key, Caitlin McGill, Marilyn F. Moriarty, Raul Palma, and Rachel H. Palmer.