NewPages Blog :: Magazines

Curiosity got the better of me. Once I’d read the title, “Je Suis un Ananas” (I am a Pineapple) in the TOC, I had to turn to Libby Cudmore’s essay right away. I got doubly rewarded for my impatience. First, with Cudmore’s short, insightful response to “new media” (YouTube, Facebook) efforts to encourage a revisionist approach to childhood memories; and then by Colleen Pilgrim’s exquisite black and white photo, “Bog Trail,” which I had not expected on the facing page. The quality of Pilgrim’s photo sent me straight back to the TOC to look for other photos, and I was happy to find another of Pilgrim’s photo, and stunning images by Patrick Mog and Robert McGovern. Continue reading “The MacGuffin – Spring/Summer 2010”

In this era of short attention spans, multi-tasking, split screen viewing, fast food, speed dial, and the quick fix, I admire Northwest Review’s daring: this issue features three very long short stories (Charlie Smith’s “We’re Passing Through a Paradise” is nearly 50 pages) and a lengthy essay by poet Eavan Boland (just under 20 pages). The work of 15 poets rounds out the issue. Continue reading “Northwest Review – 2010”

A glossy, four-color magazine produced quarterly in Arkansas, featuring magazine journalism, fiction, a dining column, news of the south, and the annual “Best of the South” selection. This year’s “Best of the South” turns “best-of” lists upside down with quirky “Odes to” places, trips, events, people, experiences, books, activities, nature highlights, sports, commercial establishments, food and drink, the visual arts, famous personalities, moods and moments by writers, artists, and actress Sharon Stone. Beth Ann Fennelly expounds on “Ten Sexy Books” (writers as distinctly different from each other as Tennessee Williams, Zora Neale Houston, and Ellen Gilchrist make the list). Maud Newton writes about the Biltmore Hotel in Florida. Barrah Hannah’s ode is advice to a young writer advising that he/she treasure loneliness. William Giraldi celebrates body builders in Louisiana. Continue reading “Oxford American – 2010”

This is the “short story” issue, fifteen short works (2-4 pages) many of which read more like memoirs or personal essays than fiction, and they may be (genres are not identified). They are direct in their intention to be “reflections of Jewish thought.” Half have titles that announce their Jewish-ness in one way or another (“Post-Abrahamic,” “Tekiah Gedola: The Strongest Call,” “Mamala,” “Zaydie the Courageous,” “A True Hillel and Shamai Story,” “Yom Kippur,” “Israel Journey, ’94 Heart”), and all have overtly Jewish themes of one type or another: one’s relationship to Israel; the portrait of a grandparent as an example of Jewish life as it used to be; differences in Jewish practice or belief between parents and children; the experience of Holocaust Survivors; memories of synagogue services; relationships with Christian neighbors; coping with aging parents; the changing nature of Jewish families. Continue reading “Poetica Magazine – Spring 2010”

This issue’s cover is a riveting photo of Japanese-Americans at a Los Angeles rail station on their way (forcibly) to internment camps in 1942. In fact, the photo is so beautifully composed and so striking, it’s hard to open the cover and leave it behind. But, it would be a shame not to, the issue’s simply terrific. “Poetry…survives war’s upheavals and seeks to leave an enduring record…rebuilding has always been part of poetry’s promises,” assert Poet Lore’s editors. Much of the work here certainly deserves to endure. Continue reading “Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2010”

With this issue, the journal moves from its home at the Attic Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon to the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College on the Puget Sound. Editor Kevin Craft says the journal will remain true to its “capacity to be of one place and reflective of many,” and he describes the journal’s editorial approach: Continue reading “Poetry Northwest – Spring/Summer 2010”

Sometimes other diversions provide resonance to my reading. Last week I watched SMILE, a Michael Ritchie film that I’d seen several times back when watching old movies meant late night broadcast stations, not TCM. I remember how hip I thought that movie was, because it acknowledged that beauty and charm were just as much part of women’s competitive framework as doing well in track or basketball. Knowing what I do now about life, women (and women’s pictures), I was naive. I was also in the first generation of girls that went to school after Title IX was enacted in US schools. Equal opportunities in athletics, back then, seemed a new, honest and honorable route to personal achievement. Continue reading “Room – 2010”

Full disclosure: I read this issue and am writing this review while recuperating from surgery to repair a fractured hip. So, this issue’s focus on the corporeal (Special Double Issue: The Lyric Body) is of particular interest. Of the body, editors Stephen Kuusisto and Ralph James Savarese say they present “a form for engagement” that “is always political…and always lyrical, whether we see it that way or not.” If lyrical means poetically inspired, and political means engaged with the world, then I would say their choices for the issue are, indeed, lyrical and political. And they’re also quite wonderful. Continue reading “Seneca Review – Spring 2010”

Tipton Poetry Journal is a small, stapled, chapbook-like (in appearance) publication featuring “poetry from Indiana and around the world.” This issue’s 44 pages include the work of three-dozen poets. While I was not familiar with these poets, all have substantial publication credits in a wide variety of journals and several have authored full-length collections and/or novels. Continue reading “Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2010”

Small and unassuming, The Orange Coast Review, an annual put out by Orange Coast College, is visually dazzling, for the cover art to the glossy midsection gallery. Including far more artwork than most journals, the 2009 issue features the work of fifteen different artists, several contributing multiple works. The most arresting pieces include Barbara Higgins’s photographs of mod-clad mannequins at a glitzy Laundromat, Jonathan Fletcher’s series of pin-hole photos, distorted, elongated features of his subjects all the more striking in black and white, and Frank Martinangeli’s etchings, which give the viewer the feeling they are viewing two worlds simultaneously. Continue reading “The Orange Coast Review – 2009”

Though lamentably thin for an annual journal, Oyez Review still provides the reader with tremendous value and represents a pleasant afternoon of reading. Considered as a whole, the editors selected fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art with a European feel. The work traffics in easily accessible themes, but refuses to offer easy, unfulfilling answers to important questions. Continue reading “Oyez Review – Spring 2010”

This issue of Quiddity is simply delightful. Beginning with Fani Papageorgiou’s poem “The Welder,” it goes about its business of entertaining the masses of literary fandom: Continue reading “Quiddity – Spring/Summer 2010”

Almost nothing can excite me more on the cover of a magazine than these five words “a novella by Andrea Barrett.” Barrett is a terrific storyteller and a master of the form. Novellas are hard to find (so few journals publish them). And Salmagundi is always great, so finding the combination Barrett/novella/Salmagundi signals good reading ahead. And both Barrett and the journal deliver. Continue reading “Salmagundi – Spring/Summer 2010”

Guest editor Amy Hempel selected the work of 21 writers for the issue’s special “Innovative Fiction” focus. She looked for work that was “new,” but also new to the author (poets writing fiction; fiction writers experimenting with memoir forms). And she sought work “that was visceral and visual, that joins nerve and insight, that is darkly funny, that does not back away from compassion…and that amplifies the possibilities of what a story can be.” Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Spring/Summer 2010”

Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, a publication of Firewheel Editions is, in my not-always-so-humble-opinion, one of the most exciting and satisfying journals being published today. Editor Brian Clements favors work that is provocative (but not ceaselessly edgy) and often inventive, but nonetheless solidly grounded. There is seldom anything superfluous or ostentatious; never anything crude; nothing designed to shock or surprise for the mere fact of surprising. The work tends to be highly original and idiosyncratic, but is rarely opaque, obscure, or impenetrable. Inventive forms and hybrid genres are created of carefully crafted language, respect for the integrity of meaning, and attention to the primacy of rhythm and the value of original, but plausible and impressive imagery. Continue reading “Sentence – 2009”

The inaugural issue of The Asian American Literary Review – whose mission is to form “a space for writers who consider the designation ‘Asian American’ a fruitful starting point for artistic vision and community” – features an interview with Karen Tei Yamashita; three book reviews; poetry; and prose that often concerns individuals confronted by personal shortcomings. Continue reading “The Asian American Literary Review – Spring 2010”

This issue is dedicated to Hayden Carruth who taught at Syracuse University where the journal is produced. “It has never been our intention,” say the editors’ notes, “to explicitly define ‘upstateness’ in so many words…but it does seem to be true, in a purely ostensive way…that our editors in each issue have helped communicate a vision of our region that is more vital than perhaps even those of us who live here would suspect.” Upstate is, in fact, they conclude “a state of mind.” Evoking that state of mind is the work in this issue of nearly two-dozen poets, nine fiction writers, a dozen nonfiction writers, a short drama, two dozen visual artists, a handful of book reviewers, and Mary Gaitskill, who is interviewed by Jennifer Pashley. Continue reading “Stone Canoe – Spring 2010”

Published by Minnesota State University at Mankato, Blue Earth Review is a stellar compilation of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. This happy threesome is fresh and enjoyable. There’s no niche. No artwork other than the cover. No crazy long commentaries by editors. Therefore, why go on and on about this journal’s vision? No reason as far as I can see. Let’s jump right in. Continue reading “Blue Earth Review – Spring 2010”

Let me tangle Continue reading “West Wind Review – 2010”

This issue is dedicated – in a trend that is becoming increasingly (happily) noticeable in literary magazines of all kinds – to translation, and reflects the editors’ efforts to “sharpen Bombay Gin’s focus.” The Translation Portfolio includes versions from the Navajo of Frank Mitchell’s “17 Horse Songs” by Jerome Rothenberg and an accompanying essay; an interview with Zhang Er, followed by poems of hers translated from the Chinese; an interview with Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña, followed by her work; as well as poems, ancient and contemporary, translated from Japanese, Finnish, and French. Continue reading “Bombay Gin – 2010”

This hefty issue of Carpe Articulum begins with an account of David Hoffman’s Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, from the author, himself a writer for the Washington Post, and an interviewer. There are so many secrets detailed in this issue that one can imagine just how explosive the book itself is. As Ted Hoffman relates, both from the book and from his interviewee, Continue reading “Carpe Articulum – Summer 2010”

This lit mag has a manifesto: “We worry about the state of modern literature. We worry that it’s too realist, monolithic, corporate, print-bound and locked in its own bubble…We think literature is a place to safely explore controversial and unpleasant topics and unfamiliar points of view.” Online magazine websites are vastly different in structure, and I found this one a bit difficult to negotiate in the beginning, but there are many gems to be discovered. Continue reading “Fringe – Spring 2010”

Gargoyle is a fat annual published in Arlington, Virginia. At nearly four hundred pages, this large volume of work is surprisingly consistent in tone, which, for the most part, tends toward the sardonic and distanced, rich in contemporary imagery, with edgy and provocative openings, and social, political, and cultural implications to varying degrees. This issue presents the work of nearly 70 poets, 5 nonfiction writers, two and a half dozen fiction writers, and two photographers, whose black and white photos include landscapes and close-ups of animals. Continue reading “Gargoyle – 2009”

As a woman entering an age in life when motherhood is a main area of interest and concern, I was excited and intrigued by the idea of a magazine titled get born and dedicated to “the uncensored voice of motherhood.” The title of this magazine alone is reminiscent of certain phrases like get lost and get bent. I must say, I was very hopeful. Continue reading “get born – Spring 2010”

In this issue of Glimmer Train, there is an interview with Andrew Porter by Trevor Gore. Porter is the author of The Theory of Light and Matter, a collection of short stories, recently published by Vintage/Knopf that won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction. He’s also won far too many accolades for me to mention here, except to say that he’s a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, which put him up a notch in my view. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Summer 2010”

Literal is a bilingual journal published three times a year in Houston, Texas. It’s a large-format, glossy, visually impressive publication of political reflection, artwork, fiction, scholarly essays, book reviews, interviews, poetry, and commentary. The current issue is dedicated to the intellectual as a “contemporary pensive figure.” The exploration begins with the cover photo of a sculpture by Mexican artist Victor Rodríguez, “White Head, 2005,” the head of a man lying on its side, eyes closed. The artist is interviewed (in Spanish) by Tanya Huntington Hyde in the magazine. Continue reading “Literal – Spring 2010”

This issue begins with a simple question, but Susan Nisenbaum Becker’s “What If?” is a complex amalgamation of blessings that might just change everything, but that ends with a rather sobering wondering. For instance, she writes, Continue reading “Lumina – 2010”

Why I adored this issue of the New Quarterly: Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Spring 2010”

An especially appealing issue, often playful but not merely for the sake of fun; attuned to poetry lovers’ interest in language, but not merely to invent or experiment; inventive, but not merely to impress; clever, but not merely to show off; serious, but not merely gloomy or solemn; well crafted, but not stodgy or overly formal; surprising, but not merely startling or crass or shocking. Continue reading “Rhino – 2009”

This edition of Avery is lovely for its cleverness. While each piece is unique unto itself, together they make for a satisfying romp through today’s literati. Chelsey Johnson’s story, “Devices,” for example, offers a surreal picture of attempted perfection in “Once There Were an Artist and an Inventor”: “They are right up next to the sidewalk, and the inventor is always drawing the curtains shut and the artist is always opening them. The artist needs light. The inventor needs privacy. In other words, they are deeply in love. But both of them are a little bit more in love with the artist.” Lovely writing. Of the artist, Johnson writes that when she takes self-portraits, the effect is, “a look of assured surprise, a look somewhere between caught-off-guard and ready-for-my-close-up.” And, “If everything becomes like love, the artist starts to wonder, what is love?” Analogies emerge everywhere, but she realizes she has no idea what the things is itself is: “It is the negative space of a drawing, its form determined only by what interrupts it.” Continue reading “Avery – 2009”

This thirty-fifth anniversary issue features poetry from several dozen poets with largely, though not exclusively, narrative tendencies, two essays, six works of short fiction, and three illustrators. Stephen Dunn, Maxine Kumin, Molly Peacock, and Charles Harper Webb are the headliners, joined by such other familiar, it not household names, as Leslie Adrienne Miller and Sarah Kennedy. Bret Gottschall’s charcoal on paper drawings are stunning (“I am interested in the allure and mystery of beauty in the nape of a woman’s neck or the light that, reflect off breasts, illuminates the lonely underside of a chin. In the right light and surroundings, we are all beautiful in one way or another.”). The issue is, overall, extremely pleasing, creating a sense of satisfied, contented reading, a story to sink your teeth into (whether in verse or prose). Continue reading “River Styx – 2010”

Oh, how lovely! Produced and inspired by the power of wind (“The Bateau Press Office is run on the renewable energies of hydro and wind power”). Handsomely printed on a letterpress (a letterpress!). Small, square, a lithe 79 pages (poems, prose poems, reproductions of black and white woodcuts and drawings, and a two-page graphic story) that fit neatly in one hand. Unassuming, understated, unpretentious. And utterly gorgeous from cover to cover. I loved holding Bateau between my palms. I loved the work, poems that, for the most part, contain small lyrical mysteries and large telling silences. I loved discovering new writers with impressive credentials and stellar work, but who are not the same big name stars I encounter again and again. I loved the journal’s simplicity and elegance and quiet, self-assured lyricism. Continue reading “Bateau – 2010”

Sou’wester is a journal produced by the Department of English at Southern Illinois University nearing its 50^th year of publication. New poetry editor, highly acclaimed poet Adrian Matejka, expects to choose poems “appreciated for their varied timbres, dictions, structures, and strategies” and to continue the journal’s tradition of cultivating “a dialogue between the diverse aesthetics in contemporary poetry.” I think it is safe to say that he’s off to a good start with this issue. The work of a dozen and a half poets is accompanied by nine short stories and one essay. They reflect Matejka’s desire to present a variety of modes, styles, and approaches, as well as varying levels of publishing experience. Continue reading “Sou’wester – Fall 2009”

I always look forward to this large format annual with its glossy pages, beautiful artwork and photography, and well-composed and thoughtful works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This issue also features a section titled “Siouxland,” which includes an interview with poet David Allan Evans, and reviews of books by Ted Kooser and Andrew Porter. Continue reading “The Briar Cliff Review – 2009”

If poetry is the food of love, then Spinning Jenny is a five-star restaurant. Whether you’re in the mood for sweet or savory, their menu has it all. This modern delicacy features eighty-plus pages of delicious poems, with a center insert of eight pieces of unconventional art. It’s straightforward. You open Spinning Jenny up. You flip through the first few pages of copyright and staff information, and voila! One page lists the titles of the poems. The rest is love. Or food. Something like that. Continue reading “Spinning Jenny – 2010”

Vibrantly produced, engaging, and fascinating for the sheer range of styles and tones in both the photography (amateur and professional) and literary selections, Camera Obscura must be terribly expensive to print – and the cover price of $18 suggests this is so. On the other hand, it’s less expensive than admission to many museums ($20 these days to get into MOMA), the magazine presents museum quality work, and you don’t have to wait in line for a ticket or battle the crowds in the galleries. Continue reading “Camera Obscura – Summer 2010”

Always handsome and beautifully printed, this year’s edition features, for the first time, visual art from the nineteenth century reproduced from the Tampa Book Arts Studio Library, and it’s glorious. Oil paintings, illustrations, drawings, a color letterpress print, the cover of a blank writing book, and engravings in a broad range of styles. The Tampa Review’s large format provides an appropriate platform for these works, and they are carefully selected to be appropriate in their placement alongside the literary works. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2010”

A semi-annual from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, Cold Mountain Review features writers with substantial and impressive publication credits and accolades, but who are still, in many cases, at “emerging” stages (few, if any, books published). The work tends to favor people/characters/personalities over ideas or philosophies, including many family stories and profiles of individuals. This issue includes the work of two-dozen poets, three fiction writers, and one essayist. Continue reading “Cold Mountain Review – Fall 2009”

Big skies. Big mountains. Big bears. Whitefish Review is an ambitious magazine that operates out of Whitefish, Montana, a place of natural beauty and wonder, harsh winters, and glorious summers. The magazine’s mission is to give its readers a hearty dose of mountain culture and an appreciation of the natural world. Whitefish Review publishes emerging and established writers, as well as art, essays, interviews, and book excerpts, and the work featured in its pages is mostly concerned with nature and our place in it. Montana is a place of stark beauty, and Whitefish Review seeks to explore and emulate this type of beauty. It is both rustic and thoughtful. Continue reading “Whitefish Review – Winter 2009-2010”

Big names (Rae Armantrout, David Lehman, Alice Notley, Amy Gerstler, Sherman Alexie, Lyn Lifshin, Elaine Equi, Denise Levertov). Pretty big names (D.A. Powell, Jeanine Hall Gailey, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Matthew Thorburn, Amy Newman, Catherine Pierce, Adrian Blevins). Names to watch for (Kate Thorpe, Carly Sachs). And lots of ideas, big, pretty big, and worth listening for. This issue of Court Green offers exactly what we have come to expect of this provocative annual, including its entertaining Dossier, which this time focuses on the 1970’s. Continue reading “Court Green – 2010”

This magazine presents reading material nearly every day and a great variety of it. There is fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, observations of various sorts, and a selection of online stories from other online magazines. The magazine is a bit difficult to negotiate and archives are not easily accessible, but a monthly calendar is available and one simply clicks the day desired. Also, they do not label things well, and I often found myself unable to decipher what was fiction versus nonfiction. Continue reading “Dark Sky Magazine – May 2010”

Elder Mountain, published at Missouri State University-West Plains, will feature “manuscripts from all disciplinary perspectives (particularly anthropology, economics, folklore, geography, geology, history, literature, music, and political science), as well as interdisciplinary approaches; and high-quality short stories, poems, and works of creative nonfiction and visual art that explores the Ozarks.” Work must be “carefully wrought” and “free of common Ozark stereotypes.” This first issue includes the work of 8 poets, 3 fiction writers, 6 essayists, and 2 visual artists, one of whose photographs, a black and white image of house looking solitary and solid (by Barbara Williams) is reproduced on the back cover. Continue reading “Elder Mountain – Fall 2009”

The eighth issue of f-magazine: novels in progress and more – came forty two years after the first issue. The subtitle, “Story – Imagining: Departures and Arrivals,” gives a hint of what’s to be found inside. It is commendable to be so bold as to include so many excerpts of developing novels, with all their rough edges intact. For example, “Smoky Mountain National Park” from Where the Angels Are by Anne-Marie Oomen shows great promise. It touchingly juxtaposes a couple’s hike down the Appalachian Trail on the beginning of the second Gulf War, punching the narrator in the gut. She writes, “It is the last time I cry…Oh, let there be angels.” It is also heavy-handed, thinner on story and fatter on message, and very much inside the narrator’s mind. Still, it brings the reader along. Continue reading “F Magazine – 2009”

A great balance of prominent poets (Carl Phillips, Lawrence Raab, Kate Daniels, Jim Daniels, David Wagoner, John Burnside) and lesser knowns (Rhett Iseman Trull, Jessica Greenbaum, Luke Hankins, Martin Arnold). Editor Nathaniel Perry categorizes these poets’ work (“the poems that really began this thing, and they are still the boss of it”) as poems that “come to my door thundering and insistent, or quiet and strong, or sneaky and sidelong,” and I’d say all of these types make an appearance in this issue, along with two new features, book reviews and 4×4, in which four of the issue’s contributors answer the same four questions, resulting in “a hybrid between essay and interview.” Continue reading “The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review – Winter 2009”

Jelly Bucket is a new journal produced by Eastern Kentucky University that gets its name, as editor Tasha Cotter explains in an introduction, from “archaic coalminer slang for lunch pail.” Cotter proclaims that the journal’s “only requirement is excellence.” Jelly Bucket’s aesthetic straddles these two aims interestingly, resulting in 185 pages of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction that challenges the mind while feeding a reader’s base, human desires for story, wordplay and visual art. Continue reading “Jelly Bucket – 2009”

The Journal is published semi-annually by Ohio State University. A journal of “literature,” entries are not classified by genre, so it can be difficult to know if prose pieces are fiction or nonfiction (though I sometimes wonder if we really need to know the difference), but the journal would appear to include poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and reviews. The most immediately recognizable names this issue are Elton Glaser, Renee Ashley, Denise Duhamel (whose “Backwards and Forwards” was co-written with Amy Lemmon), Patricia Lockwood, Jesse Lee Kercheval, David Wagoner, and Nance Van Winckel, but most contributors are widely published, many in fine and prominent journals. Continue reading “The Journal – Autumn/Winter 2009”

The Feral Issue. That’s right feral. In other words: animal studies. Guest editor Heather Steffen introduces this special feature section by explaining that animal studies has assumed increasing prominence over the last decade, but that our preoccupation with non-human animals is probably as old as the first human. As for this feral issue of the magazine, “if it has a leaning, it is to build a cultural materialist account of animals in our world…a cluster of essays that look at animals in literature, theory, the military, law, cultural history, and food production.” The work varies widely from personal accounts of relationships to animals and their larger implications, as in John Fried’s “This Treatment Isn’t in Any Way Cruel,” to analysis of the writing of Kenneth Burke by the guest editor, to an interview with vegan eco-feminist writer Carol J. Adams. A wide range of views and perspectives through essays, poems, short fiction, interviews, and reviews of animal studies publications is presented and offer the reader an excellent introduction to this growing field. Continue reading “the minnesota review – Fall 2009/Spring 2010”