NewPages Blog :: Magazines

The Pedestrian is curious. In the best sense. A compilation of essays written by long-dead writers and today’s up-and-comers, The Pedestrian is dedicated to immortalizing what some may view as a dying art, the essay. With the rise of creative nonfiction, the essay has been sorely missing from many modern journals. The existence of this magazine is promising, and, like any good essay, ripe with curiosity, wonder, and philosophy. Continue reading “The Pedestrian – August 2010”

This volume of the Roanoke Review features the work of 8 fiction writers, including the journal’s three fiction prize-winners, 24 poets, and an interview with poet and novelist Lee Upton. Contributors’ notes include the writers’ statements about the genesis of their pieces and/or their writing process. Poetry and fiction are characterized by affable, accessible voices, and moving stories. Continue reading “Roanoke Review – 2010”

Published by Pacific University in Oregon, Silk Road includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. As diverse as these three genres are, so is the work presented within each. Continue reading “Silk Road – Spring 2010”

This is a tiny little journal, literally, despite its large ambitions—“this journal is designed as an opportunity to bask in the general shiftiness of translation…serves as a home to foreign poetry, as a tool for developing new work, and as an experiment in translation,” the editors tell us—Telephone fits snugly in one palm. This inaugural issue features the work of Berlin poet Uljana Wolf whose original five poems serve as a “jumping-off point” for more than a dozen poets writing in English, including Mary Jo Bang, Matthea Harvey, Robert Fitterman, Erin Moure, and Craig Santos Perez, among others. Continue reading “Telephone – Fall 2010”

Any Table of Contents where the names Simon Perchik and Catherine Sasanov appear is a good sign! These favorites of mine are joined by more than 50 other poets and 5 fiction writers whose work comprises an engaging issue of this magazine. Continue reading “Skidrow Penthouse – 2010”

One of poetry’s most useful, satisfying, and unique characteristics is the power to capture life’s small philosophical or metaphysical realities with a kind of precise, economical, focused – and uncanny – accuracy. These are the sorts of poems at which this small journal seems to excel. Poems that embody both physical and emotional immediacy. Masters of the art represented here include David Wagoner, Margaret Gibson, Carl Dennis, and Kelly Cherry, who are joined by more than two dozen others who clearly also excel in this arena. Continue reading “Southern Poetry Review – 2010”

Willard and Maple is a literary and art magazine produced by Champlain College. Continue reading “Willard and Maple – 2010”

An exciting issue, beginning with Daniel Backman’s front cover “architectonic collage” (“Oakland in Transit”). Backman’s collages, he explains in the note that opens the issue, “envision a city in a constant state of transformation” and exhibit “the themes that have traveled with me throughout my experience as an artist, a designer, and a city dweller.” Continue reading “580 Split – 2010”

This slim issue moves its poetry seamlessly from religion to nature to philosophy. Albatross is a small, chapbook-like magazine, stapled together in the center, featuring only poetry. On the inside of the front cover is a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Continue reading “Albatross – 2010”

One can hardly believe that the astounding works within Allegheny Review’s 28^th volume is all from undergraduates. The wording might be a bit self-consciously ornate; which can be put to youthful enthusiasm. However, there is an explosion of images and modifiers, working toward emotional complexity – the effort succeeds; entrancing, engaging and enchanting the reader. Continue reading “The Allegheny Review – 2010”

In “The lure of the gallery wall,” one of the excellent conversations in the Canadian Arc Poetry’s “Poet As Art Thief” issue, the poet John Barton says writing ekphrastic poetry is “a way to expand our world, especially as so much of 20th-century poetry seems overwhelmingly concerned with the self.”

Continue reading “Arc Poetry Magazine – 2011”

Cave Wall’s latest issue invites us, in Robert Bly’s poem “Flowers with Holes,” to “look for / The odd places / In each other / And write poems about them.” The issue begins with an editor’s note that describes the poems in this issue as endeavoring to “embody that quest to communicate what moves us most deeply.” The style of communication varies, from the narrative free verse poem “Kung Pao with You on the Anniversary of Your Suicide” by Elizabeth Volpe which communicates with a deceased friend through the poem, to Sara E. Lamer’s ode to decay, “Compost.” Continue reading “Cave Wall – Summer/Fall 2010”

Fine sonnets, formal verse, and modern poetry inhabit The Evansville Review. The covers of the mag feature a blue glossy finish framing a woman who is arching her back in front of some stained glass icons, it is very formal and a slightly theatrical painting, titled “Mariana of the Moated Grange” by Millais. Besides poetry, inside the elegant covers are eight pieces of short fiction and three items of nonfiction. The short fiction tends to have an other-worldly tension about it, a dreamy quality mirrored in the painting. Continue reading “The Evansville Review – 2010”

The 2009 edition of Limestone is titled “Legacy Obscura,” which I assume is a reference to the “camera obscura,” a device used to project images onto a screen, which led to the invention of photography. It’s a relevant title. This issue is ripe with photography and other visual arts, as well as poems and stories that create verbal images of legacy. What is a legacy? Is it something we’re born with? Do we carry it with us? Editor Rebecca Beach says “what we are and what we will be hinges on our past.” This journal examines that past. The past is where we come from and informs the future. The speakers of these poems and stories share their personal memories, yet they are universal and timeless. Continue reading “Limestone – 2009”

Over the years, the publication calendar for Many Mountains Moving has seemed erratic and unpredictable, at best, yet it’s always worth waiting for. This issue features a special section of “ecopoetry,” with selections by two-dozen poets, followed by an “ecopiety essay”; the magazine’s flash fiction and poetry winners, runners up, and finalists from 2008 and 2009; 9 short stories; four nonfiction contributions; “mixed genre” work (flash fiction/prose poems) by two contributors; and a general section of poetry with the work of another dozen and a half poets, including several selections from Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi’s recent book of very fine translations of the work of Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku; and one review. Continue reading “Many Mountains Moving – 2010”

Mythium is a journal that publishes poems, fiction, and nonfiction written by writers of color. Its mission is to celebrate the cultural voice. The content is as varied as there are ethnicities. From African American and Native American writers with violent and unjust ancestral histories, to more recent immigrants of Latin, Asian, and African heritage (and then some) looking to find a place in a new America, it’s natural to assume that this magazine is a collection of many voices and many stories. Some of the material is depressing. Some is hopeful. All of it is interesting. Continue reading “Mythium – 2010”

An issue you can definitely sink your teeth into. “We finally have work by Phillip Lopate between our covers,” says editor Joe Mackall. Lopate’s “In Defense of the Essay Collection,” is preaching to the choir in some ways, River Teeth’s readers are already interested in the genre, as it is, after all, a journal of nonfiction narrative. But, it’s a great read nonetheless. Lopate is in good company. The 11 other essays in this issue are equally worthy of attention. Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2010”

If I have any complaint at all about roger, and I really only have one, it is that the wonderful translations by Anny Ballardini, Patrizia de Rachewiltz, and Jennifer Youngquist (of work by poets Paolo Ruffilli, Cesare Pavese, and Etienne Lero) do not include the originals and the contributors’ notes do not include the poets’ bios. It makes for good reading to find these well executed translations of poets I might not otherwise have an opportunity to read among the work of Jim Daniels, Sandra Kohler, Charles Harper Webb, and many other competent, though lesser known writers. But, I would like to be able to read the originals and to know something about the poets. Continue reading “roger – Spring 2010”

“Speaking the same language through literature” are the words spread in light gray block letters over a dark gray background on the cover of St. Petersburg Review. This publication is “independent and international”; it was founded and is headed by an American, Elizabeth Hodges. She has traveled to Russia numerous times and participated in several Summer Literary Seminars at St. Petersburg. Among the associate editors, staff and advisory board are many American-looking names, many who by their bios have traveled to or live in Russia. Others are native Russians or “citizens of the world.” Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2009”

In “The Last Jesus I Know Of – ” a nonfiction piece from Descant’s “Writers in Prison” issue – Stephen Reid writes “amongst living books, the shape of your world can shift a thousand times, one for each title, or be changed forever in a single page. In its own way, the prison library is more dangerous than the big yard.” Continue reading “Descant – 2010”

It sounds huge – Forklift. It’s subtitled as if the description was written after a night of heavy drinking – A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety. It’s quirky – for example, section titles from the TOC: A Precaution in Planting; Fresh from the Nursery; Animals in the Garden; Sprinkling vs. Watering; and so forth. It looks fun, with whacky illustrations and graphics. It feels small – Forklift fits in one palm. It’s all of these things. And none of them. And you should take it seriously, even if it does its level best to dissuade you from doing so, at least at first glance. Continue reading “Forklift, Ohio – Fall 2009”

This journal is run by the MFA students at Texas State University and was founded in 2006. Each edition produces some combination of fiction, nonfiction, book reviews, interviews, poetry, and audio/videos. Continue reading “Front Porch – Summer 2010”

This issue is consistent with Main Street’s approach both to the mag and its chapbook series, direct, approachable poems and stories composed of casual diction, conversational tones, and familiar imagery. This issue features an interview with Main Street chapbook author Richard Allen Tyler, along with the work of 28 poets and a half-dozen fiction writers. The work of four photographers rounds out the issue. I liked, in particular, “A Pike’s Peak Spring” from M. Scott Douglass, clouds and snow gathered on and around railroad tracks captured at a moment of altering textures, depicted expertly in the photograph. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Summer 2010”

Nimrod’s eagerly anticipated annual awards issue features prize winners, finalists, semi-finalists, and honorable mentions in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction: Terry Blackhawk, Shannon Robinson, Harry Bauld, Lydia Kann, Dan Kelty, Deborah DeNicola, Morris Collins, Sue Pace, Jude Nutter, Francine Marie Tolf, Ed Frankel, William Pitt Root, Laura LeCorgne, Andrea L. Watson, Usha Akella, Mark Wagenaar, Kate Fetherston, and Pamela Davis. Their work is accompanied by poems and stories by several dozen other poets and prose writers, including the amazingly prolific poet Linda Pastan, widely published poet Richard Terrill, and several fine translations of poetry originally published in Turkish and German. Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Fall/Winter 2010”

When I received phoebe, I was struck by the name. Phoebe was one of the Titan gods and for some time was in control of the Delphic Oracle. She’s been called Goddess of Wise Counsel, Thoughtful Replies, and Snappy Answers. What a great name for a journal! I though with glee. I began reading with an earnest hopefulness that phoebe would turn out to be wise, intelligent, and quirky. Was she ever! Continue reading “Phoebe – Fall 2010”

This issue of the Santa Monica Review features eleven stories introduced by a brief excerpt from each of the contributors (“Ab Intra”). The journal’s website describes its contents as fiction and nonfiction, though there is no genre classification in the TOC or the pages of the magazine. I’m tempted to refer to every entry simply as a “story” (real or imagined), though some pieces clearly do read more like fictive creations and others like “lived tales,” beginning with the opening piece in the issue, “Expert Opinion,” by Michelle Latiolais, a story about suicide, medical malpractice, and the fatal consequences of “adverse” reactions to commonly prescribed drugs. Continue reading “Santa Monica Review – Fall 2010”

The magazine’s contest winner Dean Rader is joined by two dozen poets and a marvelous “Crossover” feature, “Book Sculptures” by Samantha Y. Huang, photo reproductions of exactly what the title of her work denotes, pages, spines, covers, words/text the stuff of three dimensional “ideas.” Poems in this issue, like Huang’s book sculptures, aim to reshape the way we think about spaces, places, and the capacity of language to capture unique angles. Continue reading “The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review – Number 20”

Amber Albrecht’s intricately composed, enticing drawings, more than two-dozen of which appear in the magazine as well as on the front and back covers, are representative of the work in this issue. You want to look more closely, find out more, figure out why a tree is sprouting from the back of a dress or from the chimney of a house. These images and perspectives are hard to classify. They’re not whimsical or playful so much as intensely of-the-moment, heightened in a familiar, but somewhat mysterious manner. They seduce with a kind of welcoming strangeness, a dress that looks like an egg from which the figure is hatched, a patch of ground that resembles a flying carpet, and titles like “People Who Are Not Like Us,” a short story by Brock Clarke. The opening of the story, too, captures the spirit of magazine as a whole: “Rupert goes first. Rupert’s real name is Shamequa, but we call her Rupert because one of the things we do is give black women the names of white men.” An irresistibly original beginning. Continue reading “Sycamore Review – Summer/Fall 2010”

Formerly the Kansas Quarterly, this issue of the Arkansas Review features two essays, a memoir, a poem, one short story, and numerous reviews. I like the narrow double column format (found most commonly these days in newspapers and The New Yorker), which makes the analytical essays (“Ain’t No Burnin’ Hell: Southern Religion and the Devil’s Music” by Adam Gussow and “Farmers and Fastballs: The Culture of Baseball in Depression Era Northeast Arkansas” by Paul Edwards) highly readable. These essays are intelligent and informative, but not stuffy or opaque. Continue reading “Arkansas Review – August 2010”

The “borderlands” concept has never been more accurate. Along with a more general selection of more than 20 poets, this issue features a special section of “translingual poets,” defined as writers who “create in a language other than the one they were born into.” Editor Liliana Valenzuela praises the fine work of the translators whose work appears here alongside the originals and notes that many are gifted poets themselves. This issue also includes wonderful artwork by Liliana Wilson, terrific images with surreal elements, but wholly “real” human aspects that render the work both familiar and wondrous in the magical (but not silly or childish) sense of the word. Continue reading “Borderlands – Spring/Summer 2010”

Sarah Legow’s cover art for the latest 245 page volume of Cream City Review depicts ordinary objects inside eggshells. One shell holds sand. Another holds fur. Others hold clock gears, cigarette butts, shells, and twine. It’s oddly perfect for the issue, as Cream City is crammed with strange, good pieces that give magic-realistic tinges to ordinary and gritty subjects. Continue reading “Cream City Review – Spring 2010”

Is Bob Hicok stalking me? His name appears in the TOC of nearly every journal I’ve reviewed for so long now that I no longer remember what is was like to read a magazine without encountering a Hicok poem. Not that I’m complaining. Who would dare complain about an opening like this one to “Perhaps an entry somewhere in a book”: Continue reading “Salt Hill – 2010”

Photographer Carolee J. Friday’s “El Santuario de Chimayo,” at the center of the issue, a beautiful rustic stone church set against shadows that seem almost surreal they are so “hyper-real,” captures beautifully a true New Mexican sensibility. I find the issue’s artwork (photographs, paintings, a graphic story, illustrations), much of which has a decidedly Southwestern feel, especially appealing. Inspired by the region, too, are a short story from Bibi Deitz (“3^rd Person, March”), a poem by Kathryne Lim (“Over the Taos Gorge”), and a poem by Michael G. Smith, who is also interviewed in this issue, “Late Autumn Poem, Winter Coming.” Continue reading “Santa Fe Literary Review – 2010”

With its announced theme “Issues of Death” and its ghoulish cover of skulls, it’s impossible to imagine that inside this issue of Seattle Review, one of the most satisfying features is a graphic story, “Number One,” written by Janice Shapiro and drawn by Jessica Wolk-Stanley, a wonderfully illustrated tale of “the social pyramid of North Hollywood circa 1965.” And, yes, it’s about death. Continue reading “The Seattle Review – 2010”

“The Ancestors We Were Looking for We Have Become: International Queer Indigenous Voices,” is this issue’s special theme, guest edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán. An impressive 260+ pages, the issue includes work by writers from numerous tribes and nations, including writers who originate from and/or have lived in the mainland United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, Sweden, Somalia, New Zealand, Palestine, Costa Rica, Croatia, South Australia, Kenya, Tonga, Nicaragua, Lesotho, Nigeria, Tibet, Afghanistan, Guahan, Fiji, and Canada. The majority are “mixed race” (a decidedly problematic term). Most are widely published. Many are activists and/or active in other arts (dance, photography, theater arts, etc.). Some self-identify as queer, others as gay, others as lesbian, others as bisexual, and others as transgender. Continue reading “Yellow Medicine Review – Fall 2010”

This is the most beautiful literary journal I’ve read recently, possibly ever. From the text layout to the colored paper stocks behind the illustrations, each detail contributes to a visually striking book.

Continue reading “Annalemma – 2010”

Fourteen Hills spans the spectrum of creative writing, producing an exciting and vivid cross-section of contemporary writing. Alison Doernberg’s rich and textured poem “(Save)” kicks off the issue, with “everything / suspended in ink, and everything that is not” an apt description of the content that follows. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – 2010”

The Meadow is an annual published at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada with an editorial staff of faculty, an awards program, and a predilection for personal story and narrative-driven writing. The work of two veteran and gifted writers, Adrian C. Louis and Mark Terrill, and accomplished photographer Dana Oldfather, is accompanied by much student writing, including poems, personal essays, and artwork. Continue reading “The Meadow – 2010”

This issue features 7 short stories, four works of nonfiction, and poems by a dozen and a half poets. Best-known writers in the TOC are poets Philip Dacey, Simon Perchik, and Mary Crow. Art Director Keith Demanche contributes a number of captivating black and white photographs of Minnesota nature scenes. They capture with uncanny accuracy the grandeur and drama of the landscape with its massive skies and showy weather. Continue reading “Minnetonka Review – Fall 2010”

Guest editor Nanora Sweet defines this issue’s special section on Writing/Politics/Status/Gender as “driven by gender in a political year…a body politic(s) knit tenuously together by that most gendered set of relationships, of family.” Her selection of family-themed poetry, fiction, and essays is largely of work I would describe as affable without being cloying, sometimes deceptively casual while possessing deeper implications, and eminently readable. Continue reading “Natural Bridge – 2010”

I was considering giving up this reviewing gig, finding myself a bit weary having written several hundred mag reviews over the last few years. But then this issue of Center landed in my lap and I shudder to think at what I would miss! With its “Symposium: Place in Nonfiction,” this is one terrific issue. One personal essay on a place of sorts (gardens) and 10 short essays for the Symposium, are accompanied by the work of 20 poets (in which, unannounced as part of the place focus, place figures largely in nearly every one), three stories (place again in every one!), and a very, very good “conversation” with Croatian poet Tomaz Salamun, an interview of greater depth than many I’ve encountered that focus narrowly on writing techniques and related topics of limited interest. Continue reading “Center – 2010”

This is a terrific issue of the Chicago Review featuring new translations of work by Stephane Mallarmé by Peter Manson, a long poem by British poet Simon Jarvis, a wonderful essay by poet and critic Stephen Burt on the usefulness and uses (read: need) for non-academic literary criticism and reviews (like this one!), three fine pieces of nonfiction writing (not a personal essay among them), a number of worthwhile poems, book reviews, and three solid short stories. Continue reading “Chicago Review – Spring 2010”

“For a long time we looked at the world and thought not,” begins Suzanne Buffam’s (nonfiction?) story “Trying.” This exceptionally good issue of Denver Quarterly is not merely trying, it succeeds, as does Buffam’s highly original piece on trying to conceive a child, part personal story – part musing on history and biology. Perhaps it does not matter that I do not know if the three prose pieces included among the work of nearly three-dozen poets and an interview with Dawn Lundy Martin, whose newest poetry collection will soon be released, are fiction or nonfiction. Continue reading “Denver Quarterly – 2010”

This is an unusual online journal. Its founder and editor, Andrei Codrescu, can be found opining periodically on National Public Radio, and the journal reflects his attitudes and opinions. Continue reading “The Exquisite Corpse – 2010”

Issue number 71 is a slender volume of poems that act as a slice of American life, with a focus on entertainment. Since entertainment is such a heavy influence in American culture, it seemed fitting, though sometimes oddly juxtaposed to the poems that focus more on rural life in America and to the cover image, the letter and photograph of a Civil War Soldier. Continue reading “Hiram Poetry Review – Spring 2010”

Upon finding Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet on the review list, there was but one response I could make – SQUEE!!! Continue reading “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – May 2010”