TLR Goes Emo

“Emo, Meet Hole” is the title of The Literary Review‘s Spring 2011 issue. Editor Minn Proctor writes, “Whether or not I associate emo (acute aesthetic sensitivity disorder coupled with a tendency to self dramatization) with poetry because Lord Byron is an oft-cited progenitor or because my ex-poet-boyfriend liked Morrissey too much, the spectre of a brooding young man with wet eyes and disheveled hair looks quaintly over a certain tenor of literature…and exes, too. Much to my poetry editor’s dismay, I called for an emo-themed issue of TLR. My undergraduate interns thought it was hilariously apropos and everyone else thought I was speaking in tongues. And yet we moved forth.”

The result is the current issue, with poetry, fiction, and essays by over a dozen authors as well as a variety of book reviews. Several pieces are available full-text online: Poetry by Michael Morse, “Void and Compensation (Poem as Aporia Between Lighthouses),” and Michael Homolka, “Thirteenth Birthday”; Fiction by Christine Sneed, “Roger Weber Would Like To Stay”; and an essay by Anthony D’Aries, “The Language of Men.”

[Cover art by Carrie Marill.]