NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

Never has PMS been so delightful! PMS PoemMemoirStory is a journal of women’s writing, full of energy, life, color, politics, love, and verve. Issue number nine combines 40 pages of poetry, 47 pages of memoir, and 41 pages of fiction—all well-crafted and all high-quality. Continue reading “PMS poemmemoirstory – 2009”

“After a disarmingly calm opening, this issue plunges right into the temptations of sex and chocolate, which even Death seems to find irresistible,” says editor and publisher Dan Veach in his “Welcome.” The calm is Catherine Tahmin’s “Small Talk” (“It’s raining and that’s all / we want to know.”); the sex is Michale Myerhofer’s “First Crush” (“Across our little circle jived this ribboned thing / with her anatomical differences / of which we Catholic boys knew nothing.”); Janet Jennings and Mary Soon Lee contribute the chocolate with “The Chocolate Factory” (“You can smell the roast from two miles away”) and “Master of Chocolate” (“After fifty-six years selling chocolate, / he knows what his customers want”). It’s Soon Lee’s poem that brings us death, too, though somehow it seems unfair that it’s the person who sells the chocolate, not the one indulging (“The old woman who leaves her dachshund outside / wants foil-wrapped liqueurs for her sister / and a single hazelnut cream for her dog.”) who must die. (To be fair, death eats her chocolate slowly and allows the salesman “to write a last note to his wife.”). Continue reading “Atlanta Review – Fall/Winter 2009”

This issue features more than four dozen poems in a general section, the work of Rattle Poetry Prize Winner Lynne Knight and ten honorable mention recipients, the work of 30 poets in a special “Tribute to the Sonnet,” and lengthy interviews by editor Alan Fox with Alice Fulton and Molly Peacock (Fulton and Peacock in the same issue! Too good to be true!). It’s hard not to be curious about nearly two-hundred pages of poems that begin, as this issue does, with Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s oh-so-American-current-preoccupation: Continue reading “Rattle – Winter 2009”

The front cover of the 2009 issue of Barn Owl Review depicts a destroyed playground, the aftermath, perhaps, of a tornado: a blue twisting slide on its side, trees smashed into the remnants of a swing set, what might have been a plastic fort. On the magazine’s back cover is a picture of a little plastic lion cub sitting on a toilet, tail lifted. These photos are nothing too out of the ordinary yet convey states of mind caught between damage and play, humor and humanity’s excreta, metaphoric and otherwise. Continue reading “Barn Owl Review – 2009”

The editors of The Southeast Review like to present the familiar in unusual form. This attitude is made clear with the playful front cover photograph depicting a baseball player with index finger extended at an umpire who was apparently in the wrong. Bat in hand, posture aggressive, the ballplayer clearly won’t tolerate an unfair call. The twist: the ballplayer is a woman, apparently a member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s Fort Wayne Daisies. The fiction, poems and nonfiction in The Southeast Review play by the rules, but reserve the right to imbue them with a slightly askew tone. Continue reading “The Southeast Review – 2009”

Everything in this issue was (happily, happily) unexpected. Karl Elder’s “Snowman” in the shape of a snowman that could have then been silly, but was not: “this is snowballing toward a title below – / both visible and invisible like like without / the ‘k,’ like the buzz word for a buzzard / sitting on a blind man in a blizzard.” Mary Molinary’s series “poems composed for the left hand,” which combined verse in lines, prose poems, verse in columns, and childish hand-written scrawl (“to keep dementia away”). “Leaning in from the Sea” by Kerry James Evans, short bursts separated by bullets and punctuated by bold, violent outbursts (“Fucked the green out of her eyes,” and “All that blood. All those feathers.”). Philip Pardi’s “My Father’s Christening,” a poem in nine numbered segments that begins with the utterly seductive single line “After the story, its telling, and only then is it a story.” Don Shofield’s “Harmony, USA,” a poem in a dozen numbered segments that ends: Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Winter 2009/10”

South Loop Review, a journal of creative nonfiction and art/photography published by Columbia College in Chicago, “publishes essays in lyric and experimental form.” The editors prefer “non-linear narratives and blended genres…montage and illustrated essays, as well as narrative photography.” While a good deal of the work in Volume 11 is considerably more traditional in both form and style than this description, there are a number of provocative “non-linear” and “blended” efforts. Continue reading “South Loop Review – 2009”

There are lots of reasons to read this issue, but here’s what you won’t want to miss: poet Khaled Mattawa, author of four books of poems (one forthcoming from New Issues Press) introduces and translates the poems of Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser (now based in London). The translations are lovely, fluid, authentic, and credible. Nasser’s poems are marvelous, deceptively simple and incredibly powerful in a subtle and lyrical way, as in this excerpt from “Once Upon an Evening in a Café”: Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2010”

This edition of Straylight has everything: a life-like horror strike that comes on like lightning; a story that asks you to suspend your disbelief (and you willingly do); an amusing take on a bridge’s history; a travelogue of sorts; and a doppelganger in a poem. It gives the publication a sense of completeness rarely found in literary magazines. It made it, quite truly, a joy to read, and an honor to review. Continue reading “Straylight – 2009”

Great short fiction exists! This issue of Colorado Review confirms it. Volume 36, Number 3 features three extremely good short stories, including the magazine’s annual Nelligan Prize winner, Angela Mitchell, whose first-ever published story, “Animal Lovers,” is both unpredictable and reasonable, by which I mean credible, realistic, and emotionally compelling. Mitchell has an ear for natural and believable dialogue, a great sense of timing, and casual, but carefully composed prose that is readable, but not incidental. Continue reading “Colorado Review – Fall/Winter 2009”

Upstreet’s fifth annual issue contains over two-hundred pages of stories, poems, creative nonfiction essays, and a very entertaining and insightful interview with Robin Hemley by Vivian Dorsel. Continue reading “upstreet – 2009”

There are so many stars in this issue one almost needs sunglasses to get through the Table of Contents. Reading the work, one sees that these bright names (Francine Prose, William H. Gass, Peter Gizzi, Maureen Howard, Cole Swensen, Nathaniel Mackey, Ann Lauterbach, Rachel Plau DuPlessis) deserve their shiny reputations. Some of their work conforms to the issue’s theme, “Not Even Past: Hybrid Histories,” described by editor Bradford Morrow as “works in which past moments in history play a centralizing role.” Other work is categorized simply as “new.” Continue reading “Conjunctions – 2009”

I know I sound like a broken record, but I can’t say it enough. I just don’t think there is a magazine published on this side of the border that can compare with the Canadian magazines. Grain is published in Saskatchewan and like the many marvelous literary journals produced across the vast and exquisite land to my north, it is exceptionally good. The theme of this issue is “Conversation,” which I understand to mean dialogue, relationship(s), images that reverberate and connect, and language in the service of vision, understanding, and meaningfulness. Editor Sylvia Legris traces the word’s roots to “the act of living with” or to keep company. Grain is all this and more. Continue reading “Grain – Fall 2009”

This journal, by choosing a different international city with a substantial Jewish population for each issue, examines the effects of Jewish culture on its surroundings as well as its own evolution. In the Moscow issue, the brooding Russian presence digs deep into the Jewish cultural consciousness. Themes of loneliness, death, estrangement, emigration, and abandonment permeate much of the writing. However, hope and redemption also lurk. The journal itself is book-sized, with a brilliant night photograph of Moscow on the cover, and is less than 200 pages. Continue reading “Habitus – 2009”

Short and sweet is probably the most appropriate description of Magnapoets, a biannual literary journal out of Ontario, Canada. The 8×10, saddle-stapled journal features four essays on poetry, six pages of Free Verse and Form poetry, six pages of Haiku and Senryu, and six pages of Tanka.

Continue reading “Magnapoets – January 2010”

In this volume of Mare Nostrum, poems, prose, translation, and reviews are inspired by the traveling exhibit, to Seattle, of Florentine art restored after a 1966 flood. Each piece here is lively and deserving of praise, and has a prominent sense of belonging within these pages. The reader gets a glimpse of this in editor Kevin Craft’s foreword. To wit, “Seeing them restored was like witnessing the first gleam of the Renaissance all over again – the emergence, literally, of perspective as a compositional axiom, of naturalism in the fine shades of feeling etched into each attentive figure.” And, like art itself, the pieces here are both alluringly ambiguous, and wrought with imagination that begs to be understood. Continue reading “Mare Nostrum – June 2006 – May 2008”

As the average attention span continues to decrease and the printed page is replaced by the teeny tiny screen, practitioners of flash fiction seem poised to take advantage of this evolution. The editors of NANO Fiction take the idea one step further. While many flash fiction narratives extend into the several hundreds of words, the stories in this volume are far shorter. The great struggle for the writer is to increase the potency of their narratives as the word count decreases. Continue reading “NANO Fiction – 2009”

Keith Flynn, the editor, proudly states that this is the only poetry journal in the United States that subsists entirely on retail sales and subscriptions. It boasts a circulation of 3000 and has fourteen staff members. The latest production is 223 pages and contains a wide variety of poetry, interviews, essays, and book reviews. It was founded in 1994, and my only regret here is that I lack sufficient space to give this subject proper justice. Continue reading “Asheville Poetry Review – 2009”

Cave Wall is a modest literary magazine that succeeds in its simplicity. It is a thin volume and consists exclusively of poetry, though it doesn’t leave you wanting anything more. The quality of the selections is consistent throughout. In the Editor’s Note, Rhett Iseman Trull sets the tone and the context for the issue saying “we cannot remain in one place. The circle of life keeps turning. In memory and in our art, however, we can revisit a moment, letting it touch and change us anew.” Organized by author, each address this theme in their poetry; it is interesting to see each approach as a powerful examination of this very important human issue. Continue reading “Cave Wall – Summer/Fall 2009”

This “general” issue of the journal includes analytical/critical essays on Archibald MacLeish, current writing about fatherhood, an examination of burlesque in classical myth, an exploration of a novel by Gail Godwin, review essays on Melville and books on pedagogy, and book reviews of books on poetry, rhetoric, and film. While clearly intended for an academic audience, the journal is nonetheless quite readable for a less specialized audience, in particular essays by Raymond A. Mzurek, “Work and Class in the Box Store University: Autobiography of Working Class Academics,” and Arielle Greenberg and Becca Klaver, “Mad Girls’ Love Songs: Two Women Poets – a Professor and Graduate Student – Discuss Sylvia Plath, Angst, and the Poetics of Female Adolescence.” Continue reading “College Literature – Fall 2009”

The most recent issue of Field, Oberlin College Press’s magazine of poetry, begins with a symposium on Phillip Levine’s work, including some of his most famous poems, like “Animals are Passing From Our Lives,” along with short essays analyzing each. Even those readers who are not interested in the analysis of poetry will find the poems themselves excellent. The strength of this issue, however, is in the original contributions, many of which take inspiration from nature and are full of references to wolves, foxes and various birds, including ravens, crows and swans. Continue reading “Field – Fall 2009”

I would move to Canada just for the magazines, Geist among them. Geist is published in Vancouver (one of North America’s most creative cities on so many levels), and I don’t imagine it’s easy to find this side of the border, especially on the east coast. But, I doubt they’d turn down your subscription! And I doubt you’ll be sorry if you subscribe. Continue reading “Geist – Fall 2009”

An eclectic and sophisticated journal that aims to sustain the past (a posthumous short story from Walker Percy), enliven the current moment (new poetry, fiction, and essays from a dozen writers), represent a range of nonfiction options (from a historical look at the use of puppets to literary criticism), serve as a mini gallery of visual artistic expression (fascinating drawings by Graham Nickson), and serves as an arbiter of current reading (reviews of fiction, poetry nonfiction, and other media by five experienced reviewers). Continue reading “The Hopkins Review – Spring 2009”

Just as the mother of a large family on a tight budget attempts Christmas shopping by making her dollars work magic, so Iodine Poetry Journal is economic with its pages; by spending space only on poems that will satisfy in numerous ways, the poetry journal fulfills and exceeds expectations. This volume, like the foolproof gift of assorted chocolates, captures an array of artfulness. The goods of both established and emerging writers are found here, all under a cover adorned with an abstract painting by editor Jonathan K. Rice, who is also a visual artist. Continue reading “Iodine Poetry Journal – Fall/Winter 2009/2010”

Mandorla subtitles itself “New Writings from the Americas” and also identifies itself in Spanish as: “Nueva Escritura de las Américas.” The magazine is a bilingual collection of essays, poetry, short stories, and excerpts published mostly in untranslated English and Spanish. If you are uncomfortable with the conventions of Spanish-language literature, the fast switches from one style to another may require you to adjust your expectations. You’ll need to embrace some confusion. Continue reading “Mandorla – 2009”

Editor Daniel W. Lehman says his own stories seem like dreams: “Real-life writing sometimes is that way: the stakes are high; the details sting.” In a world where what constitutes “real” (nonfiction) and invented (fiction) is not merely blurred but often obliterated, the stakes are, indeed, very high. And River Teeth deserves high praise for recognizing and honoring the difficulty of the task and for selecting work that respects readers’ commitment to and on-going interest in the nonfiction enterprise. Alongside the masterful work of well-known prose stylists Rebecca McClanahan (an interview with her also appears in the issue) and Brent Spencer, there are worthwhile essays here by ten other writers. Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2009”

The title page of this inaugural issue lists Mary Gordon, Paul Muldoon, and Michael Burke as the “featured contributors” – pretty impressive for the debut of any magazine. All the more impressive when we realize, though one has to read the contributor’s notes to figure this out, that The Round is essentially an undergraduate student publication. Nowhere does the journal announce affiliations, but several writers, all undergrads at Brown University, are credited with being co-founders of the magazine in their contributor’s note. The issue opens with a foreword by Gordon who compares the writing in this issue – at least in its aim to “invoke large terms” to Donne, Herbert, Dickinson, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Flaubert, Proust, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, both Eliots, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Auden, James, Cather, Faulkner, Welty, Porter, Trever, Coetze, and Morrison. This magazine’s work will remind us, she says, that “literature is beautiful and joyous and the place where we [are] reminded what it is to be most fully and richly alive.” Continue reading “The Round – Fall 2009”

The Santa Monica Review has little space for drawings or photographs. From cover to cover, pages are packed with writing presented in a generic font as though it were simply a college essay waiting to be graded. It is rare to see a nationally distributed literary arts journal with a layout entirely devoted to sharing high quality writing without unnecessary visual distractions. Continue reading “Santa Monica Review – Fall 2009”

Winners of the Third Coast fiction and poetry contests are announced on the first pages of this issue, with a justification for their choices written by judges Stuart Dybek (fiction) and David Rivard (poetry). The gambler in me skipped those pages and went right into the content of the magazine hoping to suss out the winning pieces. Would anything distinguish their work from regular submissions, except they got publication and a thousand bucks for their effort? Maybe it was the frame of mind in which I read, or the preference of the editors, but there seems an element of risk, physical and spiritual, running throughout the writing in this issue. Continue reading “Third Coast – Fall 2009”

“If you’re not seized by dread you’re not paying attention.” “We are now recognizing each other’s humanity, are connected and transformed by each other’s experiences. Or so we hope.” Do these statements contradict each other? Yes! Do they represent the realistic dichotomy of American life in the current moment? Yes! Do they summarize the dual themes of “dread” and “hope” that organize the work in this issue of Tin House? Yes! Continue reading “Tin House – Fall 2009”

It’s a good thing Aufgabe only comes out once a year because it takes nearly that long to read the whole issue – and the whole issue is worth reading. The 2009 special feature is a huge section on Russian poetry and poetics guest edited by Matvel Yankelevich, who teaches Russian literature and language at Hunter College in New York and is a founding member of Ugly Duckling Presse. Poems, essays, and manifestos by fifteen contemporary Russian poets appear in translation (no originals are included), along with Yankelvich’s introductory essay. The poets’ essays are of particular interest, offering insights both about the nature of poetry in general and of contemporary Russian poetics in particular. Continue reading “Aufgabe – 2009”

A special theme issue on play and the absurd, which includes the Children’s Poetry Contest Winners, an interview with composer Ruth Fazal, who sets excerpts (some of which appear here) of the widely acclaimed and popular book of children’s writings, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, from the Terezin concentration camp, to music; Ariela Freedman’s essay, “Letter from Jerusalem”; reviews; and more than two dozen playful poems. Contributors include the prolific and well known writer Lorna Crozier and a contributor too young to have made much of a name for himself yet, four-year old Mikhael Dylan Auerbach, who – absurdly or at least incredibly – “is currently interested in Spiderman, trains, soccer, and copying Old Masters like Braque, Matisse, and Da Vinci.” His drawings are exceptional, and if he really is only four, this is not so much absurd as frightening! Continue reading “Vallum – 2009”

“The Aurorean seeks to publish poetry that is inspirational, meditational and/or reflective of the Northeast.” In this issue, the magazine carries out its mission to reflect the Northeast with poems that specifically name or make reference to the area: “Mohonk moon” (“Scarlet Turnings” by Mike Jurkovik); the Atlantic ocean as seen from a “bed & breakfast” in Ogunquit, Maine (“Yellow Monkey” by Lainie Senechal); New England’s “slate skies” (“January Poem” by Ellen M. Taylor); a frosty New England context for the hammering of fence posts (“Fences” by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith); a salt marsh at Plum Island, Massachusetts (“Boardwalk” by Margaret Eckman); a weeping beech tree at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston (“Weeping Beech” by Alice Kociemba); a cranberry harvest near Beaver Dam Road (the specific state is not mentioned in Judy Snow’s “Harvest off Beaver Dam Road”); a nighttime ride to Mt. Riga (“Mt. Riga” by David Sermersheim); an unusually warm first-day-of-fall near Mt. Adams (“If, Ands, or Buts” by Russell Rowland); a view of middle age as seen against the context of the view of a heron at Hall’s Pond (“Middle Age” by Robin Pelzman); the varieties of apples grown in the Northeast – McCoun, Northern Spy, MacIntosh, and Cortland (“The Ingathering” by Carole W. Trickett); and the wild Lake Superior cold (“Lone Baptism” by Steve Ausherman). Continue reading “The Aurorean – Fall/Winter 2009-2010”

This lit mag specializes in flash fiction and publishes stories on a regular basis nine months of the year. Then they publish their Top 50 selections: fifty short fictions that come from other journals. Several editors from Wigleaf routinely monitor what is being published throughout the country, select the two hundred they like best, and send these stories to another editor who chooses the fifty he judges to be the best of the best. A wearying process to be sure, but it makes for some great reading. Continue reading “Wigleaf – December 2009”

The first few pages in this volume of The Bitter Oleander feature international poems, each first in the author’s language followed by the translation. I’m not multi-lingual, but I like seeing the poem in its original form. It gives me a feel for what can’t be completely translated. One such challenging poem is Rafael Jesús González’ Mexico, a “homage to the country in erotic hue.” The sexually charged imagery, such as “The banana bloom hangs like a horse’s sex / & your rough breasts give oil to suck,” makes me wish I could read and understand it in its original Spanish, as some of the nuanced sensuality is probably lost with the hard consonant sounds of English. Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Autumn 2009”

This is a thick, meaty text. At slightly more than 350 pages, this publication looks brilliant standing toe-to-toe with any anthologies you have marching across your shelf. The volume is packed with fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from over 50 contributors. The cover is described as a Po-Collage, a combination of poetry and visual art, by artist Valery Oisteanu. The collage of cupids striking at Siamese twins under the cover of umbrellas lends a threatening edge to a broad context. Appropriate, as the entire issue is devoted to commemorating the twenty years since the fall of Communism in Europe as depicted through the writing of mostly Eastern Europeans. The selected writings echo the disjointed nature between the menaces of both the past and present. The most striking example of the issue’s focus comes in the opening stanza of William Doreski’s moving “Life Studies.” Continue reading “Yellow Medicine Review – Fall 2009”

The Broken Plate is an annual produced by undergraduate students at Ball State University, which includes the work of many novice writers alongside more accomplished contributors. Particularly noteworthy are poems and essays in the “In Print Section,” which  features the work of authors celebrated during the University’s In Print Festival of First Books (March 2009). This section is composed of essays on craft by fiction writer Kyle Minor and memoirist Laurie Lindeen, and the poetry of Nickole Brown. Minor and Lindeen’s essays are insightful explorations of their own artistic processes. Brown’s poetry is expertly crafted and polished. Her voice is wry and worldly, feigning innocence, but demonstrating savvy. Continue reading “Broken Plate – 2009”

This literary journal presents eight stories a month to the reading public and then has viewers vote on their favorite. That story becomes the featured story of the month, to be included in a downloadable biannual collection produced in July and January. Two new stories are featured each week, encouraging frequent visitations to the website by interested readers. This is strictly a fiction website, and there is a range from microfiction up to 4000 words. Continue reading “Bartleby Snopes – November 2009”

For those of us fortunate to live in Massachusetts, the name Paul Revere nearly conjures magic, in the fairy-tale sense. Perhaps it was by design, then, that the publishers of this journal’s very first edition would use tales that evoke feelings of long-agos, and far, far-aways. Micaela Morrissette’s tale, “The Glowing Light in the Forest” is the perfect ambassador for Paul Revere’s Horse’s first foray, and the perfect example of magic conjured by pen. Truly, I can give but a hint or two of her ingenious story/poem. For example, “In the cool, damp, dark forest, a princess.” If this seems like a slight tease, then I’ll add one of Morrissette’s devilishly clever lists: “The forest. The princess. The well. The tower. The red rose. The frog. The ring. The dog. The tear. The servant. The key. The mirror. The witch. The disguise.” But that is all I will say. To give you, the reader, more would spoil the surprise that is Morrissette’s writing, and her utterly captivating tale. This imagining would be enough to recommend the journal; it’s that good, but Paul Revere’s Horse has so much more to offer. Continue reading “Paul Revere’s Horse – Spring 2009”

I admire Bellevue Literary Review for its consistency and the polish, confidence, and competence of its contents. Produced at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, with a focus on “illness, health, and healing,” it is easy to conceive of a journal that might compromise on or sacrifice literary quality in its quest to adequately represent these themes, yet Bellevue pays as much attention to composition as to subject matter. Featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and book reviews, the journal presents the work of accomplished writers with impressive credentials from the world of medicine, literature, the social sciences, education, and the MFA poetry scene. Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Fall 2009”

This second edition of Bloodroot, “dedicated to publishing diverse voices through the adventure of poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction,” features the work of 27 poets, five fiction writers, and one essayist. Poems tend to fall into one of three categories, personal narratives, nature scenes, or personal encounters with nature, with a few exceptions (including a few more metaphysically oriented pieces). David Strait’s “Christmas Day” is characteristic of the personal narrative. The poem begins: Continue reading “Bloodroot – 2009”

This magazine was founded in 1957 in print form and none other than Jean Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett contributed to its pages. In the years to come, it continued to feature such luminaries as William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Terry Southern, and Allen Ginsberg until the final issue in 1973. The Review was revived as an online edition in 1998. The present edition, issue number 120, has a pleasant mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reviews, and several reprints from the past. Continue reading “Evergreen Review – October 2009”

“Defining literature. In real context.” is how Fifth Wednesday describes itself, making smart use of the multiple layers of meaning these terms evoke (I especially like “defining,” which works grammatical overtime). That said, I’m not sure what this actually does mean. What I do know, thanks to publisher Vern Miller’s Editor’s Notes, is that each issue is guest edited (fiction editor this issue is J.C. Hallman and poetry editor is Nina Corwin); in this fourth issue the journal has now added a section of book reviews; and the magazine feels “obligated” to bring readers some new voices in literature. Alongside these emerging voices, Issue 4 also includes a poem by the incredibly prolific and popular novelist and poet Marge Piercy and award-winning poet Arielle Greenberg. An interview with Greenberg opens the issue. Continue reading “Fifth Wednesday Journal – Spring 2009”

I recognized only two names in the Table of Contents, Nahid Rachlin and Simon Perchik. Yet, even a quick glance at the Contributors’ Notes lets me know that most of the 16 fiction writers, three nonfiction writers, and more than two-dozen poets whose work appears here have substantial publishing credits. Despite the popular notion that people don’t read and the literary world is suffering, languishing, or on the decline, there are so many journals of all kinds, and so many people writing and publishing, it is difficult to keep up with them all. Gander Press Review, published by Loosey Goosey Press in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is doing its part to keep small press publishing thriving. Continue reading “Gander Press Review – Spring/Summer 2009”

Editor-in-Chief Kimberly Ann Southwick kicks off her new mag with a warm welcome to potential contributors: Continue reading “Gigantic Sequins – 2009”

Hanging Loose always does a good job of mixing it up: a combination of established poets and newer voices, along with the fresh work of “writers of high school age.” The youthful poems are particularly appealing this issue, more mature in their insights than one has a right to expect from such young writers. Continue reading “Hanging Loose – 2009”

This edition of inscape finds loss of every sort within its pages. Each piece is different, naturally, but the element of emptiness seems to touch each poem, each story, in this journal. The first I’ll give a glimpse of is Brian Brown’s “History of Time”: Continue reading “Inscape – 2009”

In May and June of 2008, The Cedar River, after days of torrential rain, broke through its restraints, and the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was suddenly plunged into a flood, destroying the city and displacing most of its inhabitants. The memory of this event permeates the pages of this edition of the Iowa review, and the journal cannot be read without feeling the loss that these people, and these writers, felt. So deep was their loss, and their shock, that stories and poems about the river fill each and every page, with nostalgia, sadness and anger. All manner of emotion can be found within The Iowa Review’s pages. Continue reading “The Iowa Review – Fall 2009”

This journal is, not the least surprisingly, composed almost entirely by long, short stories. It was a joy to read, and it is my sincere hope that, at the end of this review, I will have convinced you to purchase a copy. Continue reading “The Long Story – 2009”