NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

Freefall: Canada’s Magazine of Exquisite Writing features selections from both Canadian and American authors, although the vast majority is Canadian. This journal is the first Canadian journal I’ve read, and I found the poems and stories clear, concise, and engaging. Continue reading “Freefall – Winter/ Spring 2007-8”

“American Apocalypse” – the theme of the twentieth anniversary double issue of Green Mountains Review. The editor discusses the differences between “dread” and “apocalypse”: “‘dread’ implies profound fear, even terror of some impending event” while “apocalyptic thinkers are more actively engaged…and sometimes actively embracing the apocalyptic event.” The editor wants to add “imaginative perspective” to reflecting on the end of the world. Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – 2007”

NANO Fiction is a small booklet, not much bigger than the size of my hand, and only about sixty pages. A wistful-looking woman adorns the cover, her shock white hair blowing in the wind, looking forward; the surrealistic scene continues on the back where a girl has antlers growing out of her eyes, flowing to connect with the hair of the woman on the front. Swirling strokes of blues, greens, reds, oranges and yellows engulf the two figures. The artist, Nomi Meta-Mura, has three enigmatic black and white drawings in the journal. Enigma is appropriate for a journal that consists of short-shorts. Continue reading “NANO Fiction – 2007”

Reading the NYQ, founded in 1969 but new to me, I felt as I used to when I met a man I’d later love. At first it was not terribly attractive; I did not think it was my type. These poems were not what I’m usually drawn to – new formalism, or free verse in which formal elements break the surface like shark fins, or tight lyrics that startle like a butterfly rising, or narratives that travel some scenic route, climaxing, not toward resolution but breath… Continue reading “New York Quarterly – 2007”

Oleander Review’s debut issue has a lot going for it: a couple translations of Kostas Karytoakis’ dark poems, some solid poetry and prose, and interviews with Elizabeth Kostova and Robert Pinksy. Karyoatakis’ poems are selections from Battered Guitars: Poems and Prose of Kostas Karyotakis. His haunting poem, “Optimism” begins its concluding stanza: “Let’s assume that we have not reached / the frontiers of silence by a hundred roads, / and let’s sing.” Joshua Olsen’s poem, “I thought I saw my mother in Detroit” reveals his mother’s sad past and then concludes “She seemed lost and I wanted to help her find her way / but didn’t, fearing it really was her.” And Emma Morris’ “Water/Music” demonstrates, once again, that water is an amazing property, and she does so in a much more artistic and compelling way than a high school chemistry book. Continue reading “Oleander Review – Fall 2007”

Slice Magazine is a high-quality production with a layout that is both stimulating and friendly to the eye. The inaugural issue appropriately takes shape around the theme of firsts and new beginnings. Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, shares a short but moving account of how books being present during his childhood left “ineradicable interfused impressions” on him. Continue reading “Slice – Fall/Winter 2007”

The Virginia Quarterly Review’s Fall 2007 issue, “South America in the 21st Century,” is a must-read for anyone interested in Latin American politics and culture, as well as those fond of New Journalism – using the fiction writer’s tools, like scene setting, character development, and dialogue to build news stories. The techniques have been accepted for decades now, but here they are spit shined to gleaming. I read the magazine from cover to cover. The poetry, fiction, cartoons, and collages are note-worthy, especially Chilean poet Marjorie Agosín’s poetry of exile; but the journalistic impulse dominates the writing and photography. Continue reading “Virginia Quarterly Review – Fall 2007”

For their 30th anniversary edition, Watershed’s editors decided to choose one selection from each of the years 1977-2007 and arrange these selections in chronological order. While reading these pieces, I traveled both through the history of Watershed and also through the history of our nation and the world. Many – though definitely not all – of the poems respond to or refer to current events. For example, Greg Rappleye’s “Letters to Yeltsin” is a response to NPR’s statement that Boris Yeltsin suffers from weariness: “Word arrives in the steamy depths / of the American summer, / the torpor so general / I cannot rise from my couch. / I share your struggles, comrade.” Continue reading “Watershed – 2007”

White Chimney – “The Creative Arts Journal” – hails from England. The slim, magazine-size, thirty-page journal packs a punch. The cover art, by Christophe Reme, harks back slightly to the psychedelic sixties’ art, with fantastic smoke emerging from a building, and skulls peering from a cloud; bare trees in the foreground, jagged hills in the background – an incongruous yet interesting rendering that mimics the variety in this journal. It contains two literary interviews, six drawings or photographs, seven poems, and six short stories – my personal high point. The art is first-rate – engaging and well-chosen. Margaret Murphy, a crime-fiction writer, and the poet Jacob Sam La Rose, are both interviewed capably by Caroline England and Chishimba Chisala. Continue reading “White Chimney – Summer 2007”

World Literature Today, published by the University of Oklahoma-Norman, is international in scope, focusing on languages and cultures worldwide. It ambitiously considers the ways in which language and art are defined by culture, emphasizing that our own culture can only be enriched by exposure to others. In this way, it speaks against xenophobia, not through polemics but by its mere presence. Continue reading “World Literature Today – September-October 2007”

A fascinating feature of this online magazine is that each issue is published “as it comes together,” right before your web-weary eyes. It is a double treat to witness the process as some of the finest poetry, fiction, and art available are assembled; however, that pleasure doubles a reviewer’s troubles. The “emerging” Fall issue waits while I offer a response to the summer issue. Continue reading “The Adirondack Review – 2007”

580 Split calls itself “A Journal of Arts and Letters.” If there is any overall theme to its roughly one hundred and thirty pages of poetry, short fiction and single interview, it can be “seeking.” Many of the poems and characters in the prose seem to be searching, not necessarily for something, but in an existential manner. The poetry is quite modern. Derek Pollard’s “Vine Street Lightens the Streetlights Out” is arranged visually in something of an octagon, with words overlaid to the point of unreadability, yet readable enough to pass on a message, which manages to be stronger than the striking visual impact. Continue reading “580 Split – 2007”

The Painted Bride Quarterly, published four times a year online and annually in print, has a long and proud history of giving voice to new and established talent. For over thirty years, PBQ has consistently sought and published writers whose very individual work seems to rush us to the edge of the known world, and then signal us to risk the leap; yet, as innovative and personal as these works are, they seem to belong, too, to the communities and cultures that gave rise to them. Perhaps more remarkable is that although PBQ is sponsored by great institutions and organizations (Drexel University is home), the magazine has retained its authenticity. Continue reading “Painted Bride Quarterly – November 2007”

The journal that calls itself “Canada’s eclectic review” very nearly earns the title based on the cover photograph alone. “Miss Julie” lounges in a flowered black overshirt, high-gravity malt liquor in hand, infinite stories to be told with her painted lips. Inside, Alberto Manguel’s essay could be a case for eclecticism. He contrasts the inclination of the great artist to produce a diverse range of works with posterity’s tendency to remember a single one the artist may not feel is representative. Nature themes abound, appropriate in a Nova Scotia-based publication. Eleonore Schönmaier’s poem, “Tracks,” features a protagonist challenging her place amongst the trees and clouds and snow. Karen Shenfeld’s poem, “Bathurst Manor,” evokes a simpler time “When the summer air cooled like bath water,” and time was passed by “squinting through the deepening dusk / to wait for the wishing star.” Human nature arises in Christine Birbalsingh’s story “Trapped,” which depicts a young mother whose eagerness to care for her children is her undoing. Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Summer 2007”

This issue of the UK’s Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature features Lebanese poetry. The five prose selections are all novel excerpts – some contemporary, some from decades ago. Both poetry and prose are Arabic translations. This may be one reason why it took me so long to get through the journal. Another may be the very reason why I reviewed it: to relieve my ignorance to a culture’s literature. Continue reading “Banipal – Spring 2007”

Inspired by owner and chef Dennis Leary’s Canteen restaurant in San Francisco, which has hosted a number of “literary dinners,” “Canteen aims to engage readers with both the arts and the creative process,” say publisher Stephen Pierson and editor-in-chief Sean Finney. A prominent example of this intent is the poem “Song” and its accompanying close reading and reflective essay by Julie Orringer and Ryan Harty. I knew that it was only a matter of time before the words from the Magnetic Poetry Kit jumped off refrigerator doors and other metal surfaces to land – where? Here? In analyzing their process of cutting and sticking these dozen lines and photographing them, Orringer and Harty demonstrate and evaluate one experience of this gimmick’s effect on word choice and syntax. I’ve played this “poetry game” in several languages, but never have I believed that the restrictions it imposes are worthy of serious effort. Now I know why. Conversely, Katie Ford’s poem “The Vessel Bends the Water” deserves the reader’s attention for its pure beauty and, I think, perfect slipperiness. Continue reading “Canteen – 2007”

Although unique is almost a clichéd word, one cannot but apply it to Conveyer. Conveyer is a literary journal, which, according to its title page, is in the business of “articulating and documenting Jersey City’s sense of place though image making and storytelling.” This second issue of the journal fulfills this purpose in a variety of ways. The first section is hand-drawn grid maps with accompanying pictures and anecdotal commentary. The comments are both quirky and informational and give an insider’s sense of place in specific neighborhoods. Continue reading “Conveyer – Summer 2007”

This issue of The Journal reads geologically: something is always happening but its effect is perceptible only with the distance of narrative. A tornado, referred to “in code” by one family, is revisited decades later in “Finding Oz,” The Journal’s William Allen Creative Nonfiction Prize Winner. Connie Vaughn rediscovers affections for her father she had long since dispelled: “If our differences are the centrifugal forces that have sent us flying apart throughout our lives, the tornado might be a form of centripetal action bringing us back together.” That thesis-sounding sentence – and the tidy structure – are more essay-ish than creative nonfiction, but it’s a damn good story regardless. Continue reading “The Journal – Spring/Summer 2007”

This issue marks the publication’s fortieth anniversary with an entire issue in tribute to the founder, long-time editor, and guiding spirit, Robin Skelton. Here we have a “collage” of pieces from students, friends, peers, and people who never even met him – the “composite,” as Editor John Barton said, “emerging from the overlapping and multilayered reminiscences, essays, and poems by forty-one contributors from five countries is not exact, but the likeness suits our beloved, be-ringed, pentacled, cape-draped and walking-stick-strutting master.” Continue reading “The Malahat Review – Fall 2007”

Rhino, a thirty-year running annual, bursts with imagination and innovation. Modern poetry covers most of the one-hundred-fifty out of two-hundred-and-some-odd pages, along with several enigmatic short-shorts and a few piercing, quick essays. The official title is Rhino 2007: The Poetry Forum. According to editor Kathleen Kirk, Rhino has been “charging ahead for thirty years,” since it began as poets gathering together. Here the editors have assembled a diverse yet cohesive collection of modern poetry that forms a smorgasbord of the world, putting every possible flavor together, all delicious. The poetry can best speak for itself. There is the devilish “Lucifer Cleared His Goatish Throat,” by Jeannette Allee: “Lucifer cleared his goatish throat / and yawled, Hey Gawd, you’re snogging off on the job again.” Continue reading “Rhino – 2007”

This first issue of the St. Petersburg Review: White Nights 2007 is an opening for English readers to a part of the world previously denied them, to ravishing poetry, fiction and essays that will hopefully be coming for decades. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2007”

A glance at the Tampa Review’s website reveals that it is published in hardback, and that it seeks to combine various arts to carry on the “tradition of illuminated manuscripts.” This edition of TR’s “gallery space in print,” offers journalistic photos by Peter Andrew Bosch and David Swanson to illuminate J. Malcolm Garcia’s “Encountering Afghanistan.” An image of Hanneke Beaumont’s bronze sculpture of a runner kneeling fits well with Mark Baumgartner’s story “Some Miles Back.” Continue reading “Tampa Review – 33/34, 2007”

Water-Stone Review is a veritable kaleidoscope, spawning with colors to amaze your keen literary eye. Plus it offers a smattering of striking, disciplined photographs that capture a specific subject very poetically – such as a pink bed, clothes on a mattress, a boy staring, a man posing on a rock, paper on fire – all ordinary scenes captured in an extraordinary way, enhancing the mystique of this volume. Continue reading “Water~Stone Review – 2007”

What knocks me out about the Beloit Poetry Journal’s fall 2007 issue is the cover. On the front, there is a black-and-white portrait of a woman. Her dress is leopard print but modest. She holds her left arm across her chest, revealing henna calligraphy that runs from her forearm up and across her fingers. She is not beautiful in the way of Gwyneth Paltrow, but she is beautiful – a woman Picasso might have painted. Her eyes are wide and dark, her lips thick, her hair short and curly. Her necklace is a swirling flame. Most striking is a great dignity, the shoulders straight, the chin raised high. I was spellbound by these details, yet it took me several viewings to see that in between tiles that form the background – stars of David – are other tiles shaped like crosses. On the back is the same woman, same pose, same background. Here she wears a veil that covers everything but her face and left arm with its calligraphy. I suppose these photos may represent the meeting or juxtaposition of the three Holy Land faiths, but there’s no need for simple conclusions. The woman is breathtaking. She is how you would want a poem to be. Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Fall 2007”

This issue of Willow Springs combines accessible poetry, flash fiction, and a couple great interviews into one volume. I think the tea cup on the cover is symbolic: one could sit down with this journal and tea and finish them both at the same time. Maybe this is a little bit of an exaggeration – the tea might be cold at the end of the volume – but these great poems and stories fly by, one after another. Continue reading “Willow Springs – Fall 2007”

The music issue of Color Wheel literally sings. Well, almost literally. With essays ranging in subject from the Doors to classical composers, poems that conjure up every noise you can imagine, and actual songs, notes and all, this issue comes as close as you can get to capturing music on paper. Continue reading “Color Wheel – 2007”

In this inaugural issue of the Journal of Literary Disability, Editor David Bolt observed that disability is “…present in all literary works, but too frequently absent from literary criticism.” Theoretical perspectives are appreciative of class, ethnicity, and gender, “…so why are there so few (curricula) that are appreciative of disability?” Continue reading “Journal of Literary Disability – October 2007”

Court Green number four is political. Each issue of this all-poetry magazine is divided into a “Poems” section, featuring poems on any subject, and a “Dossier” section, dealing with a single theme. It’s the best of both worlds, combining the freedom of a traditional format with the focus of the themed issue. Continue reading “Court Green – 2007”

Cutbank is a beautiful journal, published on glossy paper, brimming with cutting-edge poetry and prose, and highlighting a visual artist’s work with full-color images. This issue is particularly rich. Louisa Conrad’s collages grace the covers, front and back, and provide a stunning centerfold of images that are as thought provoking as they are sumptuous. The series simply mesmerizes. So does the prose in this issue. In particular, the short story by Edan Lepucki entitled “The Baby.” Continue reading “CutBank – Spring 2007”

“It makes me mad,” writes Mark Jarman, fiction editor of The Fiddlehead. “The story has such a great tradition and it’s being turfed as if it’s a regrettable hairstyle.” Continue reading “The Fiddlehead – Summer 2007”

This Hiram Poetry Review has a lot of light poetry for an issue whose cover photo is a gravestone. Greg Moglia puzzles over his ineptitude in the real word in “Burger Days”: “why [did] it seem so difficult? / …here bugs land on burgers / The best worker is an ex-con and / There are answers everywhere / And I know none of them.” David O’Connell discusses zombies in “Symposium” where “Jack’s mourning the death of zombies in American movies / …and I’m all sympathy.” Continue reading “Hiram Poetry Review – Spring 2007”

Light verse is a genre surrounded by contentious debate. Some refuse to call it “poetry,” finding its singsong meters predictable, its whimsical themes facile. Continue reading “Light Quarterly – Spring/Summer 2007”

Flipping through this issue of TNQ, the first thing I notice is the offbeat, quirky whimsicality of Charles Checkett’s cartoons. Highlighted in a 16-page color spread, these caricature drawings of iconic Canadian figures (Neil Young, Elvis Stojko, etc.) lend a dash of frivolity to a magazine that is quite serious about promoting Canadian voices. Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Spring 2007”

This awards issue of Nimrod represents the work of forty-nine writers, including an interview with U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall in which he suggests we are seeing a surge in poetry’s readership and notes his fondness for poetry that “thrills in the mouth.” Given the sheer number of poems and short stories that received awards in this issue, it is difficult to highlight particular pieces. Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Fall/Winter 2007”

The North Dakota Quarterly’s mix of essays, memoirs, poems, fiction, and reviews forms a pleasing whole. A lot of the pieces in this issue revolve around a description of a place or landscape. This trend begins in the first short story “Zulu” by Karen Alpha in which the plains of Alberta form the backdrop of a love story between a horse and a zebra. Karen Babine very overtly continues this theme in her essay, “Sligo: Yeats and the Theology of Place.” She specifically discusses sacred places, “places where the physical and the spiritual cannot be separated…visible signs of invisible grace.” Four poetry selections by Marilyn Dorf describe dusk, harvest and spring in a country setting. In “In the Green of the Year,” she uses her title as a refrain, weaving in and out of beautiful natural images: “In the green of the year…the willow bows / in the direction of rain, / the air mushroom-soft, / and the bay mare / at the barnyard gate / watching for the one who will feed her.” Molly Cooney’s “Lining” describes a river trip and the landscape of the Canadian Artic; in Melodie Edwards’ story “Nightplain” a river is the focal landscape for a daughter searching for her father. Continue reading “North Dakota Quarterly – Winter 2007”

This issue of Red Cedar Review promises lively reading in both fiction and poetry. The theme of the story selections seems to be appearance versus reality. Almost every main character has a vice which he or she wishes to hide from his or her close ones. These faults range from the small disruptions of a middle-schooler in Chris Moore’s “The Vicks” to a middle-aged woman’s adulterous relationship in “Without Windows” by Margaret Hermesto a murder committed by one spouse on another in J.C. Dickey-Chasin’s “Blue Jesus.” The reader has different amounts of sympathy for these transgressors. Lydia’s adultery in “Without Windows” can be explained in that her husband has been cheating on her, but Mrs. Betts stark murder in “Blue Jeans” cannot be justified by the estrangement of the couple. Continue reading “Red Cedar Review – 2007”

Once again, Salt Hill upholds its tradition of publishing fresh, flavorful, innovative fiction and poetry. The Hill serves up an invigorating trio of poems by Amit Majmudar. Reading “Merlin” is like watching a movie that never once disappoints the imagination, except that it ends too soon. The images powerfully evoke the collective pathos of human history, making this easily one of my favorite poems. The wise wizard found that “Histories resolve more justly [. . .] when you study them being rewound.” So that’s what he did. Merlin “saw the hanging before the crime” and how “fire collected smoke to build a hut, / and bums arrived to live in it.” Merlin witnessed in Dachau as “A muddy field ruptured. / Jews sprang irregularly, / flowers that they were, / the roots of their necks / sucking up blood / by capillary action / down to the last fleck, / risen rosebuds. / They grew healthy / and donned their rightful clothes / and went home wealthy / to readied ghettoes.” Merlin saw men grow young and return to the womb, being unborn, “savored,” “digested,” and so on. He eventually went back to witness the first cave paintings, back before language gave birth to history, hoping to finally make sense out of “all he has witnessed.” Continue reading “Salt Hill – 2007”

This issue contains seven essays, all extremely diverse in subject matter. From Susanna Ashton’s essay about Booker T. Washington’s use of language to Catherine Himmelwright’s argument about Kingsolver borrowing from both the Western and the Native American myths, this issue’s articles show the interplay between great Southern writers and the historical period in which they wrote. Continue reading “The Southern Literary Journal – Spring 2007”

In a beautifully designed issue devoted to the war in Iraq, The Virginia Quarterly Review makes a compelling case for why literature matters. The editor’s note, “The Dreadful Details: The Problem of Depicting War,” addresses the history of representing war’s carnage in photographs and the writing of witness, taking the position that “We must continue the painful work of bearing witness for posterity, of looking with the camera’s unblinking stare at the horrors of humankind.” Continue reading “The Virginia Quarterly Review – Summer 2007”

Smokelong Quarterly publishes flash fiction – the whole range from plot-driven mini-stories to language-twisting prose poems. Reading a new issue is strangely addictive, a bit like opening a box of chocolates and trying to eat only a few: before you know it, you’ve eaten (or rather read) it all, the box is empty, and each chocolate tasted perfect in its own way. What I like about a Smokelong-style flash is a sense of closure, of minimalist perfection. The pieces don’t feel slight or unfinished – they feel complete. If you want to know what this flash/micro/”sudden” fiction thing is all about, check out this publication. Continue reading “Smokelong Quarterly – 2007”

The issue contains both poems that address current events and poems with timeless themes. The best poems, as often happens, combine both the relevant and the timeless aspects. Bob Hicok, a professor at Virginia Tech, writes such poems, their main focus his silent student who became a killer: “[…]the code for language= / sight. Even now, I go back and listen / to what he was saying by not saying, I look / at my memory of the unsounding / […]but there’s nothing, no knob of sound” (“Mute”). After describing the particular murderer, he asks the general question that all witnesses ask: “why did this happen,” – a common enough question in the aftermath of any tragedy, but poignant nonetheless because no one has yet given a satisfactory answer. Susan Stewart’s response to another massacre – this one in the Amish community – is to use the victims’ names as a refrain throughout her poem. Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – Sept/Oct 2007”

Storyglossia is the online magazine I turn to if I feel like reading long short stories – rich, complex stories that feel old-fashioned in the same way original wooden floors are old-fashioned: darkly lustrous and strong enough to carry some weight. The magazine’s sparse, easy-on-the-eyes layout (large font, no frills, cream-colored background) resembles a plain book page, aptly enough, since the stories compare to the offerings in printed magazines both with regards to style and length. Not very flashy, perhaps, but so satisfying! Continue reading “Storyglossia – October 2007”

If you’re looking for writing that skirts, tunnels under, or transcends the ordinary, open any issue of The Bitter Oleander. Beyond any other criterion, this journal prefers provocative work – work that engenders a change in the mind of the reader, whether that change involves heightened sociopolitical awareness, or simply a gorgeous revolution of one’s perception of words and sound. Indeed, the best indicator of The Bitter Oleander’s character may be the uncompromising language found on nearly every page. Consider a sampling of lines from this issue’s poetry selections: “Your face breaks open to light” (Jacob Russell, “The Sea Bandits”); “the incarnate heart in your mouth pricks you” (Estrella del Valle, “My Room and Justine”); “Every morning the sun rises behind the guardhouses / wearing filthy hospital pajamas” (Titos Patrikios, “Habits of the Detainees,” in translation from the Greek). The short fiction offers similar raw intensity in lines like these from “Tale of a Long Winter” byAllen Kesten: “She remembered standing on her head after she had cut away the skin from her thighs, rivulets of blood running down her body and drying like prison bars on her torso.” Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Spring 2007”

VerbSap, an online magazine, publishes Concise Prose – Enough Said: Fiction and creative non-fiction, and very occasionally a poem. Work found here tends to be on the short side (at most 3000 words long), and all pieces have that surprising, jolting quality that comes from very close observation and the writer’s unwillingness to settle for the second best word. There is room for the unusual and disturbing in VerbSap‘s selections, but you’ll search in vain for gimmicks or sloppiness. Each large issue should be consumed in small sips, since these concentrated bits of fiction resonate a long time. Continue reading “VerbSap – Fall/Winter 2007”

I’ve recently begun teaching in the inner-city, so I thought I might find reading material for my freshman from the Bronx Biannual: The Journal of Urbane Urban Literature. Although I soon discovered that the explicit content guaranteed that these weren’t stories I’d casually give fourteen-year-old students, this issue contains great reading for the more mature reader. Continue reading “Bronx Biannual – Number 2”

Prose poetry is a genre I was introduced to a year ago when reading poetry by James Galvin. His poems intrigued me and forced me to ask what the definition of prose poetry really is. The guest editor of CUE’s thin volume (the entire journal can fit snugly into the pocket of my fall coat), Jason Zuzga, defines it as being the “self in process […] in prose proper […] something like Montaigne thinking on the page in an essay.” His words are an apt description for the prose poetry in this volume. On an initial glance at the form of these seventeen poems, some look like carefully placed lines of free verse and others appear almost as stream of consciousness paragraphs. On further inspection, all contain writers’ detailed observations – though maybe not quite as astute as Montaigne’s – on the visible universe that enlightens the invisible thoughts and emotions. Continue reading “CUE – Winter 2007”

Making good on its name, Dislocate does not identify genres, leaving it to the reader to discern each work. The second print issue features the usual suspects – poetry, fiction, essays, interviews – as well as a one-act play by Monica Hill and reprinted poems by John Berryman. One story, “Double Concerto” by Robert Wexelblatt, is ideally suited to the issue’s format, as it uses a point-of-view shift to play with genre expectations. Other prose offerings are more straight-ahead but no less rewarding, especially Michael Sower’s essay “Writing Notes: the Chateau and the Chalkboard,” about a different kind of dislocation: that of moving from lawyering to writing and teaching poetry. Continue reading “Dislocate – 2006”

With this issue, Fourteen Hills has captured at least one more subscriber for itself. Both the fiction and the poetry are innovative and powerful. This is business as usual, judging by previous reviews here on NewPages. In “Population One” by Don Waters, winner of the 2007 Iowa Short Fiction Award, we find a story Cormac McCarthy might write if he wrote short fiction. As a trip through the murderous heat of the desert turns disastrous for the two main characters, we are reminded of how the innocent and the guilty are each a little bit of both, and, in the end, chained to the same fate. John Henry Fleming contributes to this issue with his beautiful and mysterious story entitled “Cloud Reader.” The cloud reader, a humbly Socratic, Christ-like figure, struggles not to betray his convictions when instead he could take the easy way out. This is after the townspeople turn against him only days after they sought (and even paid for) a prophetic word from the mysterious wanderer. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Summer/Fall 2007”

This issue of Inkwell contains a batch of strong short stories, many of which focus on the female psyche. Besides a couple lapses into a male’s perspective in the opening story by Alethea Black, Peter Selggin’s novel excerpt and Anthony Roesch’s “Two Good Dogs,” the remainder of the stories are told about females or from a female’s point of view. These stories are not necessarily feminist; many simply deal with problems often attributed as “female issues”: Kathryn Henion’s “Translating Silence” with jealously; Amy Ralston Seife’s “What We Do” with depression; Edward Kelsey Moore’s “Ruth and the Beer” and Susi Klare’s “Cosmo” with unhealthy attachment; and Melissa Palladino’s “Spring Cleaning” with guilt (among other issues). Continue reading “Inkwell – Spring 2007”