The Gettysburg Review – Spring 2007
Perhaps the most instantly recognizable literary magazine being published today, the ever-beautiful The Gettysburg Review enters its twentieth year with this excellent issue.
NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews
Find literary magazine reviews on the NewPages Blog. These reviews include single literary pieces and an issue of a literary magazine as a whole.
College Literature – Winter 2007
True to its name, this journal’s stated ambition is to provide college instructors with new ways of organizing their material for classroom presentation. Comprised entirely of literary essays, I was often hard-pressed to find evidence of the CL’s pragmatic impetus, which was often sequestered in the endnotes, or tacked on as an afterthought in the concluding paragraph. Cross-pollinatory or not, the essays in College Literature are recommendable on their own merits; Zora Neale Hurston finds her home in a multiplicity of pedagogies, while Russian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin’s prejudice against the poem (too self-assured to be a truly dialogic, and thus vital, enterprise) is called into question. D.H. Lawrence, LeRoi Jones, Brigit Pegeen Kelly also make appearances.
Borderlands – Fall/Winter 2006
There’s nothing particularly distinctive about Borderlands, but it does contain some fine poems, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Many of the poets here take small moments for their subject matter, suggesting larger introspection, as in a poem by Eric James Cruz. Here, an early morning run in a beautiful, pastoral place puts the poet in a meditative state of mind: “It is good to come here, / this happens to be your life, / this cradle of dark things, / this place in need of naming.”
Beloit Poetry Journal – Spring 2007
BPJ publishes some serious poetry, and by that I mean finely-tuned, well-crafted poems that may require two or three or twenty readings to reveal themselves to you. There’s nothing “fun” or “hip” here, and I say this not as a value judgment on “fun” or “hip” or even “serious,” but so that readers new to this venerated journal know what to expect.
Backwards City Review – Spring 2007
A lot of litmags call themselves contemporary, but Backwards City Review is one of the few that truly feels like a product of the 21st century. It’s not just the alt comics and offbeat fiction, but the awareness that literature and art can, indeed, be fun. Dorothy Gambrell’s Cat and Girl comic, for instance, presents a waitress (girl) and an indecisive customer (cat) trying to decide on an order. (What’s “the anthropomorphic platter?” “Beef tongue on a roll.”)
Arkansas Review – December 2006
Peter McGehee’s “The Ballad of Hank McCaul” is a story whose setting begins in a hotel room, moves out to a pool hall, onto Claredon, a town an hour’s drive away from Little Rock, and then ends back in the hotel room. It begins with a problem that, by the end of the story, the narrator solves. Although it’s not as simple as all that, really, because the underlying conflict is deep and rooted and thick. The narrator, Sammy, having just visited the newly dug grave site of his lover, Hank, sums it up when he glimpses, as he is drinking beer, a sideways view of the Seventh Wheel’s clientele. “The whole world may change,” the story goes, “but the town you come from never will.”
Practice: New Writing + Art – 2007
Practice is a beautifully designed journal, an elegant compilation of literary (prose and verse) and visual work (photography, paintings, and graphics) that successfully mines the past and present. The creators preface their work as well as being prefaced themselves with that ever-present brief bio. Most artists and authors are presented through multiple or multi-part works.
Call: Review – 2005
Call doesn’t include contributors’ notes, but few of these poets require them. The twenty poets represented here include Diane Wakoski, Annie Finch, Peter Gizzi, Virgil Suarez, Rachel Hadas, Nathaniel Mackey, Cole Swenson, Mary Jo Bang, and Jerome Rothenberg, among other poetry greats.
Bird Dog – Spring 2006
Enclosing 76 pages of innovative wordplay by contributors, Bird Dog constitutes a thin journal. But the density of material it contains ranks Bird Dog’s seventh issue among my favorites, one of the reasons for which is the cover—an electric orange with many dogs howling at a birdlike black gnash. My first dive into the material brought to face a labyrinth of giddy texts, where sentences sprang in every direction with ease. Most works deserve praise for their innovation.
CUE – Winter 2006
This slender, elegant prose poetry journal is full of rhythmically lucid, semantically challenging works. The digital ululations of Andrew Zawacki’s “Roche Limit” crackle with imagistic suggestiveness never yielding to static; Jason Zuzuga’s tight-lipped description of abandoned cargo containers in “Donald Judd” proves that “nothing” can be bordered, defined, organized, and given a delightful shape. Most successful are David Lehman’s wry facsimiles, particularly “Poem in the Manner of Ernest Hemingway.”
The MacGuffin – Spring/Summer 2006
Each text in this issue of The MacGuffin is precisely located to aid the journal’s reading. Consider the opening lines of the first piece, Sara Lamers’s poem “California, Long Distance”: “Let’s drift through these looming / vineyards all afternoon.” Then wade into inter-national and inter-cultural exchanges in Elizabeth Khan’s “Saeeda” and Efrem Sigel’s “The Boy Who Always Told the Truth,” the former a family saga set in Pakistan, the latter a disillusioning tryst of a volunteer teacher in one of the African nations so terribly in need of things other than volunteer teachers drifting in and out of their deserts. The thick middle pages are full of imaginary leaps through age and time. In Oyri Thuhp’s “No Eyewitness” an old people’s home has residents fighting over a glass eye, mulling over a love triangle and determined to be crowned monarchs of their dotage. There’s a parable, “The Poet,” by Herman Hesse, and it blends into the issue as well as the poignant, and just enough photographs. Lynn Pattison, a late-but-resplendent-bloomer poetess is especially featured, with an interview and six poems, the first of which, “Catching Her,” is beyond compare in its evocative accuracy. It opens with: “Four minutes ago, the light told a different story, / but the man holding the camera wants this one.” After this halfway point the texts begin to embrace disintegration and a nostalgic longing develops until it is at crescendo near the end. Near the back pages are the aptly placed “Poetry Reading, State Prison” by Shelby Allen, which ends with “becoming what you are capable of”; and Connie Harrington’s “Texas Armadillo” flash piece “Texas Armadillo,” in which the said animal is “alive” and induces a man to reach for his “wife’s hand, and hold on tight.” What an armadillo. What an issue!
[www.schoolcraft.edu/macguffin]
The Portland Review – Spring 2006
The 50th Anniversary issue of Portland Review offers a mixed bag of poetry, fiction and photography. The editors favor prose poems and unpretentious narrative verse, which is of varying quality. The fiction, however, is quite appealing, including “Plenty of Room in Heaven” by Jonathan Evison, which kick-starts the journal. The narrator writes of a depressed former philosophy professor: “He even went so far as to devise what he called the Sweats to Pants Ratio (S.P.R.), by which success was measured relative to the number of days a week one spent in casual versus formal attire, formal being anything with pockets.”
Zahir – Winter 2006
Why did it take me so long to read this magazine? Like so many, I have shied away from “speculative fiction” not sure exactly what genre it might be (a controversy even among those who favor it), but what I have found here is a rediscovery of why I (like so many) was fascinated with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. And like those timeless classics read in my college days, Zahir is a journal I would highly recommend to teachers of short story and sci-fi/fantasy lit.
The Hollins Critic – December 2005
The Hollins Critic publishes a single, digestible piece of criticism in each of its five issues per year. This issue George Garrett examines the genre of the Hollywood novel with special attention paid to the work of Bruce Wagner. The journal’s economy and presentation, rather like a chapbook, makes the sometimes unenviable task of reading criticism more palatable. This is only aided by Garrett’s easy-going prose and obvious love of Wagner’s work. Garrett argues that the Hollywood novel, defined as “stories about movies and movie people,” is a “conventional, self-reflexive, allusive arrangement and rearrangement of various versions of itself.”
subTerrain – Number 43, 2006
A theme-based literary magazine from Vancouver, the fiction, poetry, commentary, memoir, and photography in the current issue of subTerrain explore the idea of “neighborhoods,” both fictional and real. Much of the work is vivid, raw, and gritty (poems Christopher Shoust and John Roberts, stories by Hungarian writer Grant Shipway and Katherine Cameron). Given the edginess of so much of the work, Diana E. Leung’s commentary, “Buying-in-Security: Safe Zones and Sanitized Living” about the culture of fear in which we live and the building of crime-free zones in Toronto seems appropriate, and given the times in which we live, it is satisfying to find a thoughtful commentary about these issues in a literary magazine.
Tampa Review – 2006
This is my favorite issue of this handsome annual yet. It’s smartly edited, with a collection of pieces that seem very much to belong together and to belong in exactly the order in which they appear. The issue opens with a silver print by Jerry N. Uelsmann of a sky inside a hand holding up both a house and a naked shadowy figure looking to one side, but approaching the house. On the facing page, Kathleen Spivack’s poem, “Seeming to Happen,” concludes “I, who thought myself ‘indecisive,’ find indeed I was only waiting: / waiting for you, for me, for a path, for a way to walk into this / painting.”
TriQuarterly – 2005
Guest editor Kimiko Hahn has compiled a collection of poems and stories based on research, paintings, photographs, and other source materials, several essays about writers’ relationships to influences and original sources, and lengthy contributors’ notes describing the writers’ processes and approaches. Hahn provides an introduction to the issue in a poetry/theory style, “Notes Re: Trawl/Troll,” and includes two poems of her own in the issue. As a reader who is partial to research-based writing, I was especially interested in this issue, but I am confident that readers with no particular connection to this type of work will find a great deal to appreciate here.
Hunger Mountain – Spring 2006
Ruth Stone Prize in Poetry judge Nancy Eimers, prose guest editor Victoria Redel, and poetry guest editor Roger Weingarten have selected strong, original work for this very satisfying issue. Poet and novelist Redel offers a short and fabulously poetic introduction to the “rigorous fictions” she has chosen in which she praises “the surprise and heart-stopping happiness of a sentence.” I don’t know if it is by coincidence or design that she has selected several pieces by excellent poets who, like herself, are also successful prose writers, including work by Sheila Kohler, Terese Svoboda, and Richard Katrovas.
Booth – 2016
Booth never fails to present a beautiful product, and Issue 9 is no exception. In fact, it’s such a beautifully produced issue, I wrote notes about it in a separate journal, unable to bring myself to scribble in the margins and ruin a good thing. A green color scheme starts on the cover with art by Jillian Nickell—a house on a hill that’s actually a sleeping creature’s back—and carries through the entire issue. Even the inside cover flaps are donned with colorful art. Luckily, the editors put in just as much care in their writing selections, so readers guilty of judging books by covers will not be disappointed when they read the work this issue of Booth holds.
Sonic Boom – April 2016
Sonic Boom is a journal “for writing that explodes.” Even the cover art of the April 2016 issue explodes with rich colored graffiti, a photograph by Kyle Hemmings. Issues start out in the Poetry Shack, then move on to Paper Lanterns—a section for haiku, tanka, senryu, and other Japanese forms—before continuing on to prose, art, and an interview, with 64 total contributors found in this issue alone.
Bop Dead City – 2016
The 15th issue of Bop Dead City was released last month with the theme “Dreams,” a dreamlike state carrying over to much of the work in this issue.
Typoetic.us – 2015
Typoetic.us is a play on words, on the url and its own name (Typoeticus: ending like so many Greek names with the -ticus), and just a downright playful poetry journal. But don’t take playful to mean light and frivolous; rather, playful in the way that us literarians appreciate. The featured writers skillfully play with language, sound, emotion, and experience, and as readers, we are invited along as playmates. With the variety of styles the editorial sense includes, no one is left out.
CALYX – Fall 2015
Since 1976, CALYX has published art and literature by women. Senior editor Brenna Crotty describes this issue as a “search for meaning and identity.” More specifically, this issue resembles Cindy Cotner’s cover art, “Becoming.” The contributors examine how we become who we are, even as we grapple with the fact that often there is no recipe and no completion. Becoming is a continuous process.
Prairie Schooner – Winter 2015
NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga—if you are reading or dare say, published in Prairie Schooner’s Winter 2015, then you’re playing in the big leagues; say good-bye to the minors, enjoy your box-seats, and greet Natalie Diaz as the guest commissioner.
Five Points – 2003
The quiet, simple beauty of Paula Eubanks’ black and white photographs featured in this issue tells you all you need to know about the fiction you’ll find here. These are high-quality stories, told in clear, confident, but unadorned prose. This issue opens with “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” by Alice Hoffman, with strongly depicted characters and a keen sense of place: “I could place a single blade of eelgrass between my fingers and whistle so loudly the oysters buried in the mud would spit at us.” In “An Only Child,” Julia Lamb Stemple gives us a heartbreaking look at a boy’s ambivalence towards growing up: “He wanted to hold himself close to [his babysitter] again but thought that she didn’t want him to, and something seemed to come loose inside him. He looked over at the triangle of shadow between the ficus and the entertainment center where he had been hiding and saw that she must have known he was there all the time.”
Shenandoah – Fall 2003
Civil war buffs will particularly enjoy this Fall 2003 issue of Shenandoah as it features a portfolio of twenty-three poems about the Civil War. It also showcases nonfiction, short fiction, poetry, and book reviews; many of the pieces have in common a sense of restraint, almost an old-fashioned polite reserve.
Work here is on the formal rather than the experimental side. I enjoyed Paul Zimmer’s amusing nonfiction piece “The Commissioner of Paper Football” and Mark Doty’s lyrical poem “Fire to Fire,” which begins: “All smolder and oxblood, / these flowerheads, / flames of August: / …the paired goldfinches / come swerving quick / on the branching towers, // so the blooms / sway with the heft / of hungers…”
Overall a satisfying read, especially those who like Southern regional flavor; there were quite a few contributors from the state of Virginia and its environs. One note for fans: the editor writes that this journal will now be appearing three times a year instead of four.
[Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University, Troubadour Theater, 2nd Floor, Box W, Lexington, VA, 24450-0303. shenandoahliterary.org]
Shenandoah Volume 53 Number 3, Fall 2003 reviewed by Jeannine Hall Gailey
The Bitter Oleander – Summer 2003
This issue of The Bitter Oleander is heavy on translations and features an interview with writer and editor Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz as well as a selection of his poetry, which, overall, provides an international flavor to the collection. The translations in this issue are accompanied by the pieces printed in their original languages, from German to Spanish to Swedish, which I think adds nuances to the reading that otherwise might not be caught.
88 – October 2003
This new-ish journal (only on its third issue) has already generated lots of positive talk among poetry insiders and continues to showcase a wide variety of writers: experimental, traditional, narrative, lyric – name a style, and you’ll probably find it in here. A feeling of whimsy and humor pervades this issue; in the editor’s notes, Ian Randall Wilson confides that they used a “Dada” method to organize the submissions. But the felicitous juxtapositions created work in the reader’s favor.
No: a journal of the arts – 2005
No is more than a literary magazine; it is a journal of the arts. That lofty subtitle is not just a marketing ploy. No really does bring the literary magazine to the level of art form. It is so well put together it succeeds as a discreet collection of poems and as a unified whole. Beautifully bound, this creative cornucopia is overflowing with the smartest, edgiest, and most provocative poetry. This issue heavily features Marjorie Welsh’s poetry and painting, including the book-length “From Dedicated To,” which acts as a kind of book-within-a-journal in this case. Continue reading “No: a journal of the arts – 2005”
Pool – 2005
“For genius, at least where poetry is concerned, consists precisely in being faithful to freedom,” Dean Young quotes from surrealist poet Yves Bonnefoy in the latest issue of POOL. Although this quote comes from Amy Newlove Schroeder’s interview with Young in the back pages of POOL, it might as well be the magazine’s credo. From the Natasha Sajé’s prose poem “B” to Jeff Chang’s “Things to Forget”—“Under the skin is another layer. / We call this baby skin. // Under a baby’s skin, / snowflakes.”
The Greensboro Review – Spring 2003
Spring is The Greensboro Review’s contest issue and the prize winning story, “The Cornfield” by Ann Stewart Hendry, and prize winning poem, “Poem from Which Wolves Were Banished,” by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, are indeed exemplary. Hendry’s story of the ruin of a farm as a result of foot-and-mouth disease on a neighbor’s property is beautifully written, old-fashioned in some senses (a pleasingly traditional story), much like the family farm itself.
Colorado Review – Summer 2003
This last issue to be edited by David Milofsky (“…it’s important to know when to write the conclusion…”) is a study in contrasts. For the most part, the fiction is plainspoken, colloquial, and of the moment. The poetry, on the other hand, tends toward the abstract, fragmented, and difficult, with marvelous syntactical configurations in poems both long and short.
Descant – Winter 2003
This Canadian review is separated into sections titled “Up the Down Staircase,” “Stone Games,” “Mask in Flight,” “In Fall/Forest Garden, Book, and Prison,” Stories From the Water Glass,” and “Strange Honeymoons.” The section titles are as lyric (and sometimes as obscure) as the poetry, fiction, essays and art contained within. The weirdly haunting short fiction “Bloodline” by Janette Platana is a standout piece, as is the poem “Babies in the Eyes” written by Wang Shunjian and translated by Ouyang Yu. Continue reading “Descant – Winter 2003”
The Antioch Review – Winter 2004
Judith Hall, the influential poetry editor of this esteemed literary journal, should be congratulated for producing one of the best issues of “The Antioch Review” that I’ve read in a long time. This special all-poetry issue, subtitled “What to Read, What to Praise,” contains, contrary to what you might believe from the cover, more than just poetry.
New Letters – 2003
Editor Robert Stewart’s interview with Renée Stout — reproductions of her mixed media assemblages, paintings, and sculptures appear on the cover and on sixteen pages within — is reason enough to look at this issue, but, not the only reason. Poems by Sherman Alexie, Simon Perchik, Diana O’Hehir, short fiction by Lance Olsen, and essays by Janet Burroway, and Jodi Varon make spending time with the most recent New Letters especially worthwhile.
The Gettysburg Review – Autumn 2003
The Gettysburg Review is a consistently beautiful literary magazine. Distinctive art work grace its cover and internal gallery, and it has a sensual “feel good” quality. The Review continually selects works of fiction, essay, and poetry which make you sigh. This issue does not disappoint, although the art work—desolate industrial Manhattan landscapes by Andrew Lenaghan—can best be appreciated after reading the insightful commentary by Molly Hutton.
River Styx – 2003
In the “Route 66” issue, River Styx succeeds in its “homage to that lingering spirit of the road” with poems (by Gaylord Brewer, Walt McDonald, Nancy Krygowski, Rafael Campo, among others), short fiction, essays, illustrations and photography. These lively pieces concentrate on the vast subject matter encountered during automobile travel around the United States.
The Gay & Lesbian Review – March/April 2016
The Gay and Lesbian Review (G&LR) analyzes and affirms queer culture in the arts. The March-April 2016 issue, The Art of Memoir, compiles essays, book and theatre reviews, and a smattering of poetry to comment on and question how far the queer movement has come (or hasn’t). Continue reading “The Gay & Lesbian Review – March/April 2016”
Grain – Fall 2015
Since 1973, Saskatchewan’s Grain: the journal of eclectic writing has been publishing new and emerging writers. The Fall 2015 issue entitled “Who’s Knocking?” complied by guest editor Alice Kuiper, begins with a quote from Thomas Edison: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work.”
The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2016
With sixty poems, eight fiction pieces, three nonfiction essays, four reviews, five new translations and a featured artist, the 223-page 2016 winter issue of The Cincinnati Review has more than a little something for everyone. It’s biblical in scope, thick in thought and entertaining as hell. Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2016”
The Asian American Literary Review – Fall/Winter 2015
“(Re)Collecting the Vietnam War” is the theme of unrestrained poetry, prose, drama, and art in this special issue of The Asian American Literary Review. This hefty volume can be regarded as a history, much like survivor accounts of other wars. Its five sections are each prefaced by a curator, some offering more explanation than others to illuminate what follows. Contributors to this volume straightforwardly talk about the past, present and future, while not glossing over the conflicts in Southeast Asia four decades ago.
Continue reading “The Asian American Literary Review – Fall/Winter 2015”Catamaran Literary Reader – Winter 2015
Melissa Gwyn’s oil painting on the cover of Catamaran Literary Reader hints at the 40 spectacular works inside by various artists. Gwyn’s creations are hard for me to describe, so I’ll let her do it: “Drawing upon the opulence and detail of Netherlandish painting and the sensual materiality of Abstract Expressionism, my work explores an ‘embarrassment of riches’ that is both visual and thematic.” Her description still leaves me hanging, but it doesn’t distract from the beauty and complexity of her paintings that appear to be flowers or buds and other times appear otherworldly. Continue reading “Catamaran Literary Reader – Winter 2015”
South 85 Journal – Fall/Winter 2015
South 85 Journal lets readers and writers know that they’re especially interested in writing with a strong voice and/or a strong sense of setting, and the writing in the Fall/Winter 2015 issue demonstrates this preference, with just enough selections in each genre to keep a reader interested without being overwhelmed. There’s no padding here, no skimming of pieces, no skipping anything over. Each piece begs to be fully consumed.
Continue reading “South 85 Journal – Fall/Winter 2015”Blink Ink – Number 23
Micro-mag Blink Ink has seen some exciting changes thus far in 2016, including a new and improved website, a special glossy-covered issue at the beginning of the year, and in the latest, #23, a postcard insert of Kristin Fouquet’s black and white, gender-bending photograph “Edgar Allen Poe-Boy.” But there’s more to Blink Ink than a new site and a fun postcard: there are also great little poems packed into every issue, issues small enough to comfortably fit in the back pocket of one’s jeans. Continue reading “Blink Ink – Number 23”
Phantom Drift – Fall 2015
Phantom Drift is an annual journal of slipstream writing: fiction, nonfiction and poetry which experiment with fantastical and realist elements. The work published in Issue 5, Navigating the Slipstream, is unapologetic and unseats us from our perceptions of reality. Continue reading “Phantom Drift – Fall 2015”
Polychrome Ink – October 2015
For Polychrome Ink, the goal is simple: prove that “diversity is not a niche market.” The contributors and their content exhibit diverse sexuality, gender, religion, race, ability, and more. The authors featured dig into the intersection of power and vulnerability to tell stories where people are diverse, but most importantly: where people are people. Continue reading “Polychrome Ink – October 2015”
Seneca Review – Spring 2005
I Wanted to Write a Poem, William Carlos Williams explained why he reduced a five line stanza so that it would match a four line stanza: “See how much better it conforms to the page, how much better it looks?” Unsurprisingly, this same attention to form–form for form’s sake, as an aesthetic consideration, perhaps even more than a literary one–characterizes much of the work of the fifteen writers Seneca Review features in their Spring 2005 edition “New Lyric Essayists.” Continue reading “Seneca Review – Spring 2005”
The Louisville Review – Fall 2005
This issue’s guest editors, Crystal Wilkinson, a professor of creative writing at the University of Indiana, and award-winning poet, Debra Kang Dean, have selected four stories, five essays, and fifty pages of poetry by established and emerging writers. I was struck by the volume’s unifying tone, which might be best described as poignant — quiet, traditional work, deeply felt, writing that is both psychologically astute and moving. Edmund August gets my vote for the most poignant title in the issue, perhaps for one of the most poignant titles of all-time: “How Will We Know Which One of Us Died First?” Continue reading “The Louisville Review – Fall 2005”
Fourteen Hills – Winter/Spring 2005
“Ooh, mail art!” Such was my glee in flipping through Fourteen Hills, which is chock full of collages by collaborators Mike Dickau & Jon Held Jr., not to mention the inimitable Winston Smith. This issue of the journal is something of a collage itself, boasting a variety of talented writers from San Francisco and from around the world. Binyavanga Wainaina’s “Hell is in Bed with Mrs. Peprah” takes the reader to a beauty shop in Kenya in the late 70s, where a young girl sits among the hot combs and gossip and listens to the educated, eccentric, and undeniably strong “Auntie” Peprah defend herself against naysayers. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Winter/Spring 2005”
Decant – 2004
The ten stories of this issue are eclectic in style and, alas, quality: most are engaging, many are well-written, and some could use a bit more work. Descant opens with Paul H. Williams’ “Seeds in the Cellar” about a young man who is somewhat embarrassed by his Cherokee heritage but embraces it in a private moment of mourning for his dead grandfather. Continue reading “Decant – 2004”