NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

From the moment you pick up Quick Fiction, something tells you it isn’t a standard literary journal. There’s the diminutive size, the quirky cover art, and, most notably, the refreshing and innovative selections of flash fiction. Each piece clocks in at five hundred words or less, the subject matter ranging from a surreal sexual encounter to sea turtles to an overdue library book to an interview with the CIA, featuring styles both lyrical and gritty, with some entries blurring the line between prose and poetry. Continue reading “Quick Fiction – Fall 2005”

Poetry dominates the spring edition of Bitter Oleander, a handsome, glossy journal produced by Bitter Oleander Press. This issue features work by twenty-six poets, with six excellent translations among them. Standouts include David Johnson’s stark and affecting three-part poem “Morning” and Christine Boyka Kluge’s “Swallowing Darkness”: “This is the time of night / when blackest dreams unfold / like bats from secret eaves.” Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Spring 2005”

Lake Effect, an annual journal published by Pennsylvania State Erie, features an eclectic selection of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. This issue includes the winners of the Sonnenberg Poetry Award, the Rebman Fiction Award, and the Farrell Nonfiction award, plus brief paragraphs stating the judge’s reasons for selecting the winning manuscripts. Both winners in the prose categories are short pieces, two to three pages, and lush and surreal in tone. R.M. Evans’s “Seahorse,” the nonfiction winner, is a particularly innovative look at the author’s recurring dreams and filled with unique imagery, “I feel my alveoli distend like spinose balloon fish.” Continue reading “Lake Effect – Spring 2005”

isotope, a journal of literary nature and science writing, published by Utah State University, boasts an impressive selection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, in addition to a striking, full color portfolio of artwork by Richard Gate. This issue includes the winners of the first annual Editors’ Prizes: “Consumption,” a remarkable essay by Sunshine O’Donnell, and a suite of poems by Thomas Joswick that examine the life and art of John James Audubon. My favorite of Joswick’s poems is “Audubon Anticipates Dawn and Blood”: “Before sunrise, from scratching grounds, / where males assemble to strut and boom, / you may hear their rumpled notes, / followed, at times, by rapid / and petulant cackling, / like laughter.” Continue reading “Isotope – Spring/Summer 2005”

Too beautiful by half, Bardsong, The Journal for Celebrating the Celtic Spirit, is an unabashed 8.5 x 11-inch publication devoted—in both senses—to the Celtic theme which is expressed by Assistant Editor Kathleen Cunningham Guler as: “[. . .] hiraeth. Untranslatable into English, my own understanding of it has come to mean several ideals: a melancholy longing for an unfulfilled dream of the way things should have been; a need to return to the ancientness of our culture and people; and that beneath the surface of what we consciously see in the present world lies another place, one that is sacred and holds the secrets that are the heart of our heritage.” Continue reading “Bardsong – Summer 2005”

32 Poems could have taken a more minimalist approach to poetry, as its design and layout would suggest, but instead it touches on every fundamental poetic theme—life, sex, change, death—with the varied imagination of the finest journals around. With a book binder’s precision, each poem is designated to one page, never longer. Continue reading “32 Poems – Spring/Summer 2005”

This issue of AQR devotes 80 pages of photo-essay to: “Chechnya: A Decade of War,” by Heidi Bradner. “A Chechen woman holds photographs of her missing sons [. . .].” For those not au courant, Stalin deported the Chechen nation to this desolate area during World War II. Deborah A. Lott’s “Fifteen,” a moving account of her father’s legacy of insanity provides this remarkable insight: “That I made the mistake of aligning myself with the parent who was crazy because I confused his intensity with love.” Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Fall/Winter 2005”

From its attractive table-of-contents pages to ads for the Missouri Review, Notre Dame Review, and Shenandoah, New Letters is a class act, including the inside-cover ads for books by and about Peter Viereck as well as for New Letters itself. Robert Stewart’s “Allow Yourself to Say, Yes, An Editor’s Note,” includes this quotation: “‘This playfulness,’ says scholar Richard Rorty, ‘is the product . . . of the power of language to make new and different things possible and important [. . .].'” Continue reading “New Letters – 2005”

Editor Jaime Robles chooses a quotation from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose to help define “uncanny love,” this issues’ theme: “first the soul grows tender, then it sickens…but then it feels the true warmth of divine love and cries out and moans and becomes as stone flung in the forge to melt into lime, and it crackles, licked by the flame…” But there isn’t much moaning here, as it turns out. The work in issue 22 is, for the most part, controlled, tightly wound, sure of itself, and intense. Continue reading “Five Fingers – 2006”

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”

Always been a fan of E.E. Cummings? Then Spring is the journal for you – nothing for 234 pages but essays about Cummings, poetry influenced by Cummings, and critical examinations of his life and work, with titles like “Hermetism in the Poetry of E.E. Cummings: An Analysis of Three Obscure Poems” and “Squaring the Self: Versions of Transcendentalism in The Enormous Room.” You may see how these kinds of pieces may appeal mainly to scholars of the late poet’s work, but even amateur fans of Cummings can appreciate the playful poems, like this one by Tony Quagliano called “ON BLY ON POETRY”:
Continue reading “Spring – October 2002”

This slim but vivacious lit mag out of the University of South Dakota is bristling with content: eight short stories, twenty-eight poems, and two essays. Continue reading “South Dakota Review – Winter 2003”

Everything expected of a journal co-founded by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks is here in an issue commemorating Warren’s 10oth birthday with his own fine prose (three letters to friends) and six memoirs—including the delightful “Places: A Memoir” by his daughter, poet Rosanna Warren. In a season in which rereading All the King’s Men for dominant themes seems ever more relevant, the brilliant short stories in this issue touch upon war in “Hot Coffee, Summer” by Christine Grillo, in John Lee’s perfect, first-published story “Fires”—”[. . .] a thin blaze over the northern horizon, and we heard that Seoul was about to fall when the pyobom, the leopard, began to appear in the valley,” and in Asako Serizawa’s memorable study of Alzheimer’s Disease “Flight,” astonishingly also a first publication. Continue reading “The Southern Review – Spring 2005”

Sometimes clichés are true: this issue of Prism International illustrates the concept that good things do come in small packages. The journal contains poetry which ranges from Bernadette Higgins’ traditional poem, “Short Wave,” describing language, music, and thoughts which tease and cross on the air late at night, to a strong contemporary poem by Matt Robinson, “why we wrap our wrists the same each time,” exploring a hockey player’s quest to “do anything” to beat his “jinx.” Ouyang Yu translates four Chinese poems from the 8th and 9th century, which are beautiful in their simplicity and complexity. Continue reading “PRISM International – Fall 2003”

This issue of Santa Monica Review is an extraordinary collection of memorable short stories and novel excerpts. Editor Andrew Tonkovich has selected outstanding first-person narrations with the theme of morality, as well as religion, appearing in most and uniting them in surprising ways. From the amusing dangers of “Daily Evangelism,” by James D. Houston to Paul Eggers’s moving “A Thinly Veiled Autobiography Regarding My Reasons for Giving Up Chess,” moral concerns rank high. In Roberto Ontiveros’s “The Fight for Space,” the narrator—meshing his mundane job and intellectual super-hero obsessions with Batman’s fictional universe—comes down hard on the comic-book icon: “Batman’s trophy room pisses me off the most; it’s like our hero does not want to find peace.” Continue reading “Santa Monica Review – Spring 2005”

The Seattle Review’s lovely cover photograph belies the region’s mountainous nature by offering not a hint of near—or distant—mountains while providing the merest glimpse of Lake Washington; and from a locale often thought stubbornly regional, this issue’s surprising highlight is Kathleen Wiegner’s interview of M. Scott Momaday: “Some of my students sometimes say to me, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you wrote in Kiowa?’ My answer is, well, in the first place, you can’t. There’s no written language.

Continue reading “The Seattle Review – 2005”

Just over one third of the fall issue of FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics is dedicated to a symposium on Russell Edson, a strikingly original poet, playwright, novelist and illustrator who died in 2014. Born in 1935, Edson studied art as a teen, then began publishing poetry in the 1960s. His corpus of work, in addition to numerous books of poetry, includes a book of plays, two novels, and the much-cited 1975 essay, “Portrait of the Writer as a Fat Man: Some Subjective Ideas or Notions on the Care and Feeding of Prose Poems.” In fact, The Poetry Foundation has referred to Edson as the “godfather of the prose poem in America.” In tribute, several contemporary writers each comment on a different Edson poem. Continue reading “FIELD – Fall 2015”

The vicissitudes of pain, a stranger who won’t leave, a talking hole in a shoe. These are just a few of the poetry plot lines in the Winter 2015 issue of Able Muse which individualizes itself by publishing work “with a focus on metrical and formal poetry.” Continue reading “Able Muse – Winter 2015”

Flight, as a magazine theme, can suggest numerous interpretations including a state of transition, a secret passage, or confronting the unknown, according to TLR: The Literary Review Editor Kate Munning. She, along with her crew, chose several pieces to reflect this broad theme. Continue reading “The Literary Review – Fall 2015”

Cumberland River Review’s self-defined goal is “to feature work of moral consequence—work that transports us.” And not just sometimes, but “always.” I tried to sort that out from the added fact that the publication is produced by the department of English at Trevecca Nazarene University, which could further weight whole concept of “moral consequence”— as if we English folk don’t do it enough on our own, let’s just add the mission of a Christian university to that. Relax—we’re not talking preachy, biblical moralities here. Rather, CRR editors have a clear sense of selecting writing that seeks to question, even challenge, what moral means, and in doing so, cause readers to seriously consider the consequences in their own lives. Continue reading “Cumberland River Review – Issue 5”

For ten years, Words Without Borders has been publishing an annual graphic novel issue each February. According to Editorial Director Susan Harris in “Graphic Novels at WWB: The First Ten Years,” this issue brings the amount of graphic works on the site to a whopping 174. A link to the entire graphic archive is provided, and after reading this issue, readers won’t be able to resist diving in. Continue reading “Words Without Borders – February 2016”

Produced by the students of creative writing and web design at Arizona State University, the online Superstition Review showcases a great selection of writing and art, all easily accessible from a cell phone. Continue reading “Superstition Review – Fall 2015”

Brilliant Flash Fiction, the online literary magazine, is all about the flash. Individual issues are made up of one continuously scrolling page, eliminating the distraction of returning to a table of contents or turning digital pages, and there’s no PDF download required. The stories fall down the page in quick succession, accented by the flashes of color the accompanying photographs provide. Readers are carried from one story to the next with just enough time to get acclimated to whichever setting or character’s mind we’re suddenly thrust into. Continue reading “Brilliant Flash Fiction – January 2016”

At the heart of this issue is fine work from photojournalist Jill Krementz’s “Literary Encounters” series, featuring pairings of literary icons, including my favorite: Reynolds Price and Eudora Welty, grinning at each other from opposite sides of what appears to be a bed. Thanks to Virgil Suarez for the unforgettable thought of circus nuns “offering spiritual grounding” to the “alligator man, bearded lady,” and “boy who is all head” as they fall through the world with the smallest of ease. In David Wagoner’s “The Escaped Gorilla,” we see how much more poignant is the predicament of wildness when, out of weariness and at too far a remove from what it was meant to be to ever bridge the distance, it becomes complicit in our need to vanquish it: Continue reading “Ontario Review – Spring/Summer 2004”

Weighing in at two-hundred and eighty pages, this issue of the long-lived Passages North is a hefty journal not only in terms of the writers it publishes, but also just sheer size. That page count allows them the leeway to do what many literary journals cannot: publish a short series of poems by the same person so that it’s possible to gain a wider feel for the poet’s work. Bob Hicok and Jan Bailey, for example, enjoy a run of five poems each. The only complaint I had about the poetry is that there’s so much good stuff here, it’s difficult to focus on one poem or poet to the exclusion of the others. Continue reading “Passages North – Winter/Spring 2004”

I was immediately impressed by the overall presentation of this issues of Pleiades, beginning with the cover artwork by Julie Speed and following with the overall heft of the issue itself. The contents are pretty evenly divided between one hundred pages of creative writing and one hundred pages of book reviews. Continue reading “Pleiades – 2005”

It’s nearly impossible not to pick up this issue of Pebble Lake Review, with its almost hypnotically vibrant cover photograph of a sun-dappled graveyard. Fortunately, the contents of this slim, unassuming journal don’t disappoint. The poems tend to be short and straightforward; no experimental rambles here. Likewise, the fiction moves quickly, and there is a handful of various art works by seven different people. Continue reading “Pebble Lake Review – Fall 2004”

Notre Dame Review &Now, and Then is this issue’s theme, by which the editors mean: “a larger than-traditional conception of what counts as literature” based on the premise that “the world changes” and literature, like painting and music, will “reflect larger historical changes.” &Now plus and Then is/are literally one/two journals, the front cover of &Now becomes the back cover of and Then as halfway through one must flip the journal over and begin again to be reading right side up. &Now, the editors tell us, is a “festival of new writing” and somehow the word festival gives me permission to revel in these “larger than traditional” pieces with largesse. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Winter 2005”

This magazine is short and pleasant, about 150 pages. Within its covers, the reader will find stories, an interview, pictures, and lots of poetry. Many of the stories and poems in this issue seem to center around parent-child relationships. There are several Jewish stories and poems and a Latin American story. Another story focused on a young girl’s reaction to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, filled with emotion and poignancy. Continue reading “The Saint Ann’s Reviews – Number 4”

Some lovely work here from Hawai’i and beyond, with an emphasis on poems about the natural world, although strong poems and stories consider other subject matter, as well. I was happy to be introduced to poets whose work I had not read before, above all, Joseph Stanton, professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa, whose poem “The Hospice Flocks of St. Francis” moves with the quiet, self-assured power of a flock of birds: “The thought of them lingers: flecks of tiny,dark-chocolate birds, / dressed for mourning but full of staying alive,  / ecstatic mouths filling with seeds / and unsolvable small songs.” The most unusual, and for that reason, the most fascinating piece in this issue is short fiction by the prolific and talented Wendell Mayo, “Twice-Born World.” I’m tempted to call this a prose poem or perhaps poetry prose, although it might also be categorized as sudden fiction, a burst of lyrical tension and a small, tense plot-less plot unfolding inside language that is as finely crafted as poetry: “Stay—and by the double light of the cleft and cowardly moon, we will raise a split ladle to the cold, numb mouth of the twice-born world.”  Continue reading “Hawai’i Pacific Review – 2004”

The Literary Review had a strange, other-worldly feel to it, the stories and poems a mixture of reality and surrealism. It’s some of the best damn writing I’ve read in awhile. I’ve rarely encountered a story as disturbing as “The Child,” by Edgar Brau, which depicts five women who are jailed shortly after giving birth to children. They must hide themselves behind hoods when their jailers approach; the punishment for failing to do so is death. Each woman, one by one, is taken away, presumably for execution, but not before the jailers send the women dolls as “replacements” for the babies that were taken from them. No explanation is given as to context for this story, or why these women and not others, or anything else; the women themselves have no understanding. This off-world is reality, and you must accept it on its own terms. Other noteworthy stories and poems include “The Widow in Her Weeds,” by W.J. Thornton; “Walker Percy in the Desert,” by William Miller; and “Polar Animal” by James Grinwis. [The Literary Review, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940. E-mail: [email protected]. http://www.theliteraryreview.org/] – JP Continue reading “The Literary Review – Winter 2004”

I read this literary magazine from cover to cover. (Well, OK, this is a bilingual publication. I did NOT read the Italian translations of stories, just the English.) Every story in it was fabulous, every interview with the author of the published stories interesting. From Joyce Carol Oates’s exploration of a young girl’s disappearance in a New Jersey town to Massimo Lolli’s description of a dance hall where strangers meet for a few minutes for sex and intimacy, the four stories collected in this volume were stunning. However, my favorite part of Storie is the section near the end where they include a short paragraph critiquing the stories that they rejected for this issue. Witty, kind, but also critical, these paragraphs seem a unique service to the writer: a mention of the story and its merits but also its shortcomings. [Storie,Via Suor Celestina Donati 13/E, 00167 Rome, ITALY. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $10. http://www.storie.it/contenuti/english.HTM] – JP Continue reading “Storie – All Write – 2003”

I expected something devoted a bit more to Southwestern literature, since Blue Mesa Review is published at the University of New Mexico, but this appeared to be a standard literary magazine without regional focus. This issue is jam packed with great essays, stories, and poems, including “Weathering the Freeze” by Bonnie Jo Campbell, a visceral description of sub-zero weather on a farm in Michigan; “Black Box,” by Katherin Nolte, a short story about a woman having an affair with a man whose wife becomes a zombie, quite possibly because the philandering woman’s husband knows voo-doo and has discovered his wife’s affair; and a long section featuring Gene Frumkin’s poetry, whose work “succeeds above ground and deep in the mine shaft.” Because I love non-fiction rooted in a sense of place, my favorite piece in this issue is an essay by Jennifer Brice, entitled “Wild Music: Reflections on Big Oil and Innocence.” In it, Brice explores the Alaskan past and present, explaining that yes, the “pipeline” and “oil” changed Alaska in myriad ways, but the core part of Alaska that “seems unwilling to compete with or improve upon nature” has remained the same. [Blue Mesa Review, University of New Mexico, Dept. of English/Hum 217, Albuquerque, NM 87131. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $12. http://bluemesareview.org] – JP Continue reading “Blue Mesa Review – 2003”

I remember reading about the controversy over Amiri Baraka’s poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” written and performed after 9-11 and after Baraka’s appointment as poet laureate of New Jersey. One line in the poem— “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / to stay home that day”—was condemned as anti-Semitic and led, ultimately, to Baraka’s sacking as poet laureate. In this issue, African American Review explores not only that incident (and whether it is legitimate to condemn Baraka as anti-Semitic), but they publish several controversial Baraka poems, an interview with Baraka, and essays covering the range of Baraka’s career as a poet and radical. Among the most notable poems, “Somebody Blew Up America” and “The McVouty Bible,” both showcasing Baraka’s anger and politics. My favorite essay was “Sometimes Funny, But Most Times Deadly Serious: Amiri Baraka as Political Satirist” by Jiton Sharmayne Davidson, which explores the history of Baraka’s satire, from his earliest, humorous attempts to his latest jabs at former New York Mayor Giuliani. [African American Review, Saint Louis University, Shannon Hall 119, 220 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63103-2007. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $12. http://aar.slu.edu/] – JP Continue reading “African American Review – Summer/Fall 2003”

Don’t let the title fool you—there’s nothing rag-like about this small, beautiful journal. Encompassing two short stories, an illustrated humor piece on a phallic mushroom species, an interview with poet Mark Morris, reviews and poetry, the latest volume of Main Street Rag is as elegant in presentation as it is edgy in content. Mike Watson’s cover art alone is worth the issue price. The two short fiction pieces by Nils Reid and Mary Ann Ruhl Thomas are in keeping with Main Street’s professed bias for grittier material, treating, respectively, a morally lapsed missionary and a girl contemplating killing her father. However, it is the poetry that dominates these pages, with some established voices alongside many newer ones. Aside from a couple of sonnets, the journal favors free verse in a range of styles, from Louis Daniel Brodsky’s highly imagistic “Conception: A Recollection,” to Kevin Sweeney’s facetiously trendy “Hopefully.” There are memorable speakers in these poems. Pamela Garvey’s beggar in “Toward the Face of Absence” challenges us: “Who assumes responsibility? / Who slips pennies into a cup clanging / with emptiness.” But the editors also enjoy a laugh and on the facing page give us Nathan Graziano’s English teacher, desperate to interest a terminally bored class: “Extended metaphors / sweat in the sheets, / Payment for sticking around / for the entire poem.” Graziano closes his poem with an unforgettable deadpan that I won’t give away here. Intellectually stimulating, accessible, enjoyable—Main Street Rag is everything you could want from a literary magazine. [Main Street Rag, Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Charlotte, NC, 28227. E-mail:[email protected]. Single issue $7. http://www.mainstreetrag.com/TheHub.html]- DM Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Winter 2004”

In a creative writing course, I was once asked to write the next scene of a story, then rewrite the scene as something entirely unexpected, and then write the scene in yet another direction. The exercise felt uncomfortable at times, pressing into strange or outrageous sequences. By contrast, the poems, stories, and essays in Milkfist take bizarre and wild turns with confidence and without apology. Self-described as “dedicated to showcasing the abscessed underbelly of art, nonfiction, poetry, and prose,” the magazine challenges readers with work that defies conventions of style, form, and storytelling. Continue reading “Milkfist – Summer 2015”

Room is a Canadian feminist publication of female authors and artists. Issue 38.4, Fieldwork, includes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, an interview and book reviews. The pieces build upon each other, each work conversing with the ones before and after. The grounding framework of this issue is editor Taryn Hubbard’s interview with Marie Annharte Baker. Baker, a First Nation Anishnabe poet and oral storyteller, articulates that “Storytelling is a way to interact.” And while she refers to oral storytelling, her words ring true to Room where the stories interact with each other. This issue is full of conversations between stories as well as an exploration of silence as interaction. Continue reading “Room – 2015”

A Cappella Zoo, a journal of magical realism, dedicated its 15^th issue to queer stories. Though titled Queer & Familiar, rather than creating a queer and familiar text, A Cappella Zoo creates a work that queers the familiar, capitalizing on the opportunities in magical realism. This collection makes queerness familiar. Continue reading “A Cappella Zoo – Fall 2015”

The idea behind 3Elements Literary Review is a fun one. Each issue, writers are provided with—you guessed it—three elements which they need to incorporate in their piece. Discovering the different (and sometimes similar) ways in which the writers implement the elements is like exploring a treasure map with the three chosen words as a compass. The Winter 2016 issue required writers to get imaginative with the elements ‘mania,’ ‘tower,’ and ‘exposure,’ taking readers on a whirlwind journey through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography, and art. Continue reading “3Elements Review – Winter 2016”

Reading Still Point Arts Quarterly is like being able to go into your local art gallery, all in the comfort of your favorite pair of pajamas. With selections from the Still Point Arts Gallery, each issue is a peek through the gallery’s windows, the Winter 2015 issue featuring selections from the exhibition: Simplicity. Continue reading “Still Point Arts Quarterly – Winter 2015”

Before even opening the first issue of Prodigal, its matte cover felt comfortable in my hands, inviting, like a good handshake at the front door of an unfamiliar residence. Inside, the journal is rich with traditional and experimental poetry that plays with form, structure, and even grammatical conventions. There are poems broken into parts, prose poems, and poems that demand attention in different spaces across the page. The issue also includes a few prose pieces, an interview with political theorist Wendy Brown, and translated works from Søren Kierkegaard, Juan Benet, and Bertolt Brecht. Continue reading “Prodigal – Fall 2015”

ZYZZYVA’s Fall 2015 issue took me a very long time to review. Not because it was long or dense or difficult, but because I did not want to finish reading. Every time I started to write, I, like a vortex, would be sucked back into reading and my critical abilities would evaporate. I would become that teenie-bopper hiding under the sheets with a flashlight late into the early morning savoring each page, each character, each line. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Fall 2015”

If focus is the key to success, Barrow Street is throwing straight bullseyes. Forget author interviews, genre-jumping, and flashy art, and delve into the text, straight into the words on the page. The Winter 2014/15 issue has a simple no-nonsense design. Authors are listed alphabetically. Bios are found at the back in fine print jammed together to save precious real estate. No editor’s letter. No ads. Just a tight masthead and a New York address and 96 outstanding poems, running the gamut from short and sweet to epic and tragic. Sixty-two poets are published, ranging from first-timers to big names from big institutions with supporting bibliography. Whatever process the Barrow Street editors and readers are using to sift through their slush, which I imagine to be a mountainous snow bank, doesn’t change a thing: because it is working. Since 2000, they have had 18 poems selected to be anthologized in Best American Poetry. Continue reading “Barrow Street – Winter 2014/15”

If I were shipwrecked on a deserted island, I would take a machete and a subscription to Rattle. Perhaps a seagull could deliver quarterly. I’d open a coconut and start reading the conversation with the working poet that is included with each issue, then work my way randomly through the alphabetical compilation, memorizing and reciting to all my friends: the geckos, turtles, butterflies and rocks. If I lost my sanity, at least I would be happy. Continue reading “Rattle – Fall 2015”

In 1981, I spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union. Every city was a highlight, but the most breathtaking destination was Peter the Great’s summer palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The garden fountains were fun, yet I found the dazzlingly golden statues most extraordinary. Those recollections piqued my interest in reading an issue of St. Petersburg Review. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2014”

The Common magazine aims to present “bold, engaging literature and art.” Two informative essays accompanied by art definitely meet that criteria. The first, “Millennium Camera” by Jonathon Keats, is a fascinating look at a pinhole camera he created “with a one-thousand-year exposure time that will remain inside Amherst College’s Stearns Steeple until 3015” when an image over time will be captured for a future generation to see. With that in mind, there’s a wonderful surprise for current readers. On the last page of this magazine is a diagram for a Century Camera that can be cut out, assembled, and exposed for 100 years. Continue reading “The Common – October 2015”

A lot of originality is packed into a smart little anthology called Studio One. Take a look at the bright cover art, “Old Lady with the Black Eye” by multi-talented Ernest Williamson, greeting readers. Williamson has an additional painting within the volume, “Artist Delving into Her Craft,” which on the one hand I can’t quite figure out, and on the other hand I find impossible to stop looking at. Also outstanding is a portfolio of five luminous scenes by Colorado photographer Rita Thomas. “Pixie Forest,” which appears to be frost-covered trees by moonlight, is most stunning. Continue reading “Studio One – 2015”

Alligator Juniper is named for a tree in the juniper family with bark like alligator skin, and the editors of the magazine say the name “invites both the regional and the exotic.” The magazine does so successfully by including pieces from their National Writing Contests in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry along with the winning pieces from Prescott College’s annual James & Judith Walsh Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards. I admire how undergraduate students receive the opportunity for publication alongside outstanding pieces by professional writers. In addition to the award-winning pieces and nominees, the magazine includes an interview and a curated gallery of creative works. Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2016”

A beautiful hardcover issue, the 50th Anniversary Issue of Tampa Review is rich with colorful images and powerful contemporary writing. Though there is no set theme, each piece contains strong yearning from the characters or figures, bringing the reader close to intimate thoughts. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2015”

BULL Number 5 is covered in colorful, urban-styled art, created by the late Patrick Haley, whose work is profiled at length in this issue. Inside, his black and white drawings of surreal settings, strange creatures, and highly-detailed settings take influences from a variety of interesting visual sources such as Salvador Dali, R. Crumb, Heavy Metal magazine, and street graffiti. Each of the thirteen pages of drawings and sketches plucked from the artist’s notebooks tells a story, even the most basic “practice” sketches, with a couple in particular that could make one feel as though they could fall right into the page. Continue reading “BULL – 2015”