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This handsome perfect-bound journal out of Chicago with its heavy matte cover first drew me in with its impressive and diverse list of contributor’s names on the back: Nick Carbó, Karen Volkman, Wanda Coleman. From lyric narratives to post-avant experimental work, the poems have in common a certain hipness, an investment in emotion and image, and a conversational directness that draws the reader in. Continue reading “Columbia Poetry Review – Spring 2004”
Feminist Studies, a glossy, intellectual journal that balances its essays on research and theory with literary fiction, poetry, and art, manages again to spark interest in its intelligent, clearly written essays—this time, my favorite essays were on a post-post structuralist approach to feminism in Simone de Beauvoir’s writings by Sonia Kruks and a study of beauty pageants relations to college life by Karen W. Tice. Continue reading “Feminist Studies – 2005”
As a beginning instructor, I invested a few days reading into College Literature, and I cannot say I regretted one second. Continue reading “College Literature – Spring 2005”
If you don’t already know, Thema is a journal whose every issue is based on a different premise, upon which the poetry, fiction, and photography reflect. This issue’s theme is “Hey, Watch This!” Continue reading “THEMA – Summer 2005”
An impressive 30th anniversary issue featuring many prolific and well established writers, including Dorianne Laux, Lucia Perillo, Sharon Olds, William Gass, Molly Peacock, Louis Simpson, Richard Burgin, and Robert Finch, among others, as well as many accomplished, but lesser known talents, including Alison Pelegrin, Marcela Sulak, Allen C. Fischer, and Jacbo M. Appel. Continue reading “River Styx – 2005”
Published by the creative writing department of San Francisco State University, Fourteen Hills might just as aptly be titled “Fourteen Styles,” such a broad spectrum of approaches to narrative and poetics does it present, at least in this summer/fall issue. In the realm of fiction I found myself very taken with the short story “Three Girls” by Anne Clifford, which so deftly utilizes first, second, and third person perspectives, shifting from one to another and back with a spot-on rhythmic agility. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Summer/Fall 2005”
The poets of West Branch have something to say, and though the imagery may be beautiful and the lines carefully crafted, there is nothing excessive, artsy, or difficult for difficulty’s sake. This observation hit me as I read Yona Harvey’s wonderful “Turquoise,” in which the poet bluntly tells a young female student that “wearing turquoise jewelry & Frida Kahlo skirts / doesn’t make women artists.“ Continue reading “West Branch – Spring/Summer 2005”
Eric Pankey and Jim Daniels, John Kinsella and Denise Duhamel — there’s no formula here, no template — the breadth of poems in Smartish Pace is one of its key attractions. Forty-two poets as different from each other as forty-two poets can be. There is a pleasing balance here, too, of stars (Bob Hicock and Lola Haskins, not to mention Rimbaud, Italian poet Giovanii Pascoli, and Polish poet Jerzy Kronhold, in addition to the aforementioned) and newcomers. I am sure I would have found Darren Jackson’s poem, “Pain Rents a Room Off Bourbon Street,” one of his first to be published, powerful had I read it last week or last year, but from here forward, of course, it becomes an entirely new experience: Continue reading “Smartish Pace – 2005”
“To dig one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?” So muses Beverley Nichols in Down the Garden Path. An excerpt of this 1932 gardener’s delight, along with a variety of inspirational and humorous stories for the green-thumbed, appear in this issue of Green Prints. Continue reading “GreenPrints – Autumn 2005”
This issue is dedicated to the theme, “Scars,” as evidenced from the dramatic black and white cover photograph of a man whose chest becomes a screen on which is projected several black birds in flight, their wings like the feathery reminders of what the body endures. While a theme dedicated to the visceral remnant of physical and emotional wounds could have solicited writing that was affected, tedious, or even cliché, this issue illustrates anything but. Instead, we read of the subtleties of pain, the nuances of grief, the faint reminders of loss or dejection, though many of these authors left me feeling hopeful — that glimmer of possibility that encircles our aches like a silvery light. Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2005”
Published by the University of South Dakota since 1963, this issue of South Dakota Review contains many fine stories including James Jay Egan’s “The Hand of God,” in which things go terribly wrong, Robert J. Nelson’s graceful memoir “The Music Teacher,” Katherine L. Holmes lyrical “Eggs in a Basket,” and Christine Sneed’s “Furious Weather.” Continue reading “South Dakota Review – Winter 2004”
It’s the fifth anniversary for this Charlotte magazine and the focus is simple: less talk, more poems. For one thing, that means no contributors’ notes: after you close the book, you’re on your own. At least one contributor who needs no such notes is R.T. Smith, from whom “Parade at VMI” is a breath of wisdom. Smith meddles in war and history but settles for no easy targets: his model is a bridge at Antietam Creek whose erection proved to be unnecessary during the bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War. Continue reading “Iodine Poetry Journal – Spring/Summer 2005”
A concentration of metaphors, word play, and unconventional thinking binds together the five line poems in American Tanka. From the world of subtle nuances and concrete images, I constantly had the sense of reliving a moment that had never before belonged to me. Yet through my communion with each poem, the shared joy, sadness, different perspective, that Aha feeling, I was assured that the moment was in part my own. Several authors are memorable, out of which only a few can be mentioned here. Cindy Tebo’s “old lime kiln,” the first line in her poem, is haunting. The sudden image of the kiln suggests travel, perhaps an old country road. Merely driving by, the traveler pauses in a chance meeting of past and present. The kiln “in the shadows / of a cold afternoon” emphasizes the passing, of the kiln? the traveler? Like Leonard D. Moore’s powerful seven stanza sequence “To Find My Way Home,” Tebo adds additional layers to her poem through careful word choice, placement of lines, absence of punctuation, and juxtaposition. Tim W. Younce’s repetition of the line “folds and unfolds” creates the feeling of nervousness from the perspective of a soldier “at the airport / camo clad,” holding his “boarding pass.” For a moment this soldier can stop time, fold it in his palms. We are all three connected, author, soldier, reader — through a shared awareness of both our power and powerlessness. These poems are for readers who do not want to be told what to think, for those who enjoy connecting the threads. We must compare images and/or ideas and draw conclusions using hints the author provides and our own resources. Because of the relationship we establish in the process, the poems have the potential to live on. [American Tanka, P.O. Box 120-024, Staten Island, NY 10312. Email: [email protected]. Single issue $12 www.americantanka.com] —Donna Everhart Continue reading “American Tanka – 2005”
The second issue of Swivel is a wry collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and yes, even the occasional comic strip, all written by women. “This time,” says editor Brangien Davis, “the zeitgeist is littered with beasts,” meaning that thematically, this issue seems inexplicably connected by animals — including giraffes. Continue reading “Swivel – 2005”
If I were to dare make a blanket statement about New Jersey poets, I’d say they’re a tough, witty lot with good stories to tell. There is little frippery in this journal’s pages. Continue reading “Journal of New Jersey Poets – 2005”
The Gihon River Review’s spring 2005 issue offers a bountiful selection of stories and poems. Allan Peterson’s poem “Slight of Hands” I appreciate for his use of detail and personification, and fresh way in which Peterson reveals a sense of frustration: “The clock is holding its head in its hands,” he writes in the third stanza. Introducing the fourth, in which that sense of frustration seems to have ended when a “gnat burns itself crazy on the bulb.” Continue reading “Gihon River Review – Spring 2005”
“A job is like / Being without a shadow,” goes the first line in “Being Without.” A little further on, in alleyways with children there is “More purpose and meaning to their play / Than you with your wheelbarrow.” Meaningless spreads endlessly in poems, essays, oral histories, discussing life without work. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Spring 2005”
Usually, I take a week to read a good literary magazine, parceling out the pieces over long evenings sitting on my porch or during my thrice-weekly ride on the stationary bike. It’s a sign of respect that I don’t read it all in one sitting. Now I have a new magazine to add to my weekly ritual: Gulf Coast. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Winter/Spring 2005”
Nik Hospodor’s “sophisticated flourenscentism” visual work, featured in “Landscape,” captures attention on Kaleidoscope’s front cover with a magical, surrealistic, fairytale world. Equally captivating is artist SylviAnn Murray’s “surreal -expressive” style. Continue reading “Kaleidoscope – Winter/Spring 2005”
There is even a collaborative review of a collaborative book in this fascinating issue of work conceived and produced in collaboration (Mary Austin Speaker and Sara Jane Stoner review Phoebe 2002. Continue reading “Indiana Review – Summer 2005”
If you pick up this issue of Lilies and Cannonballs Review, I encourage you to read the last essay, Arthur Saltzman’s “In Praise of Pointlessness,” first. Continue reading “Lilies and Cannonballs Review – Spring/Summer 2005”
The preference in Main Street Rag is for transparency, work with plain, strong language and a clear point of view — Scott C. Holstad’s “I Want It All,” for example (“Fuck the sweats, / I want the world. / No rhyming for me, / no structured / bullshit, I want / to spread out, / feel the bullets / whistle past.”); or Nicole Lynskey’s “Talker at the Café” (“The extrovert-talker / could be a pit-bull on a cell-phone / for all that her dark-haired friend / is allowed to speak, / in her ‘this-funny-anecdote’, / ‘that-divorced-couple’ conversation…”); or Glen Chestnut’s “The Pickup” (“Sometime in the 1950’s / A construction site / somewhere in the jungles of Colombia. / Work had stopped for the day. / The mountains to the west / had swallowed up the last rays of sun.”) Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Summer 2005”
A good publication to consult for fine contemporary poetry, The Manhattan Review here offers a special double issue for the 2005 Winter/Spring volume. Continue reading “The Manhattan Review – Winter/Spring 2005”
Though the editors of Make magazine cite Chicago literary patriarch Nelsen Algren as their inspiration, you don’t have to be a Chicagoan to be in Make’s debut issue. Continue reading “MAKE – 2005”
The Massachusetts Review is the perfect antidote to beach reading, a cultural exploration that enriches us and at the same time reminds us that we are all connected to and responsible for the world we inhabit. Continue reading “The Massachusetts Review – Summer 2005”
Montreal-based poet Robyn Sarah served as guest editor for what is called a “small anthology” of poems featured in this issue. Sarah also contributes an essay on poetics in which she defines a good poem: “it should transcend its own particulars; it should be built to bear weight; it should have lift.” The nearly four dozen poets she’s selected offer up work Sarah finds “attentive to language, memorable, ponderable, convincing.” Sarah clearly favors plain diction, narrative impulses, strong, authentic voices, and emotional integrity. Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Summer 2005”
Rare is the poem that combines senses, emotions, and intellect, that contains ability to ease in and out of natural worlds, both internal and external. Continue reading “The Midwest Quarterly – Spring 2005”
There are literary magazines that you read and enjoy, but end up piled in your closet amongst back issues of other magazines. Then there are literary magazines that are so lovingly put together and carefully designed that they demand prominent placement on your bookshelf or coffee table. Ninth Letter is one of the latter. This University of Illinois based publication seeks to reinvent the literary magazine by infusing it with design and art. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Spring/Summer 2005”
I always enjoy uncovering a journal with a history that I had never known existed before. Pearl has a history (34 volumes now) that includes an impressive devotion to special issues. This all-fiction issue marks the eighth time Pearl has committed itself to the genre, and it doesn’t disappoint. Of the 19 stories included, most are under 1,500 words and immediately accessible; they can be tried on by all sizes to see which fit the best. Continue reading “Pearl – Spring/Summer 2005”
“What reader,” says Maureen D. Mack, “does not search for a happy ending at the end of a love story? How many of us yearn for a better ending to a human conflict or loss that we have suffered in our lives?” Continue reading “Open Minds Quarterly – Summer 2005”
The limestone formations rise up out of the bay like… How a dragon legend was ever connected with them, I can easily understand. They inspire, thanks to Stephen Buel, who provided the image on the cover of Red Hills Review, a drop of the mouth reaction, similar to the one a dragon might inspire (I have to say might because I’ve not yet seen a dragon). Safely past the red paperback cover, drop of the mouth is also fitting when discussing more than thirty days of reading material, poetry, fiction, memoir, and essay. I have to admit, though, that my main attraction before receiving the journal was Light on the Northern Shore: Homage to Noam Chomsky, a theorist whose work I’ve only partially understood. I wanted a deeper understanding of the theorist, and I came to one with the assistance of David Baker. Continue reading “Red Hills Review – Spring 2005”
Art “lives on long after wars have ended and townspeople have mended their ravaged homes and gone on with their lives…” says the editor of Other Voices. Each of the 16 stories in the spring/summer issue contains the suggestion of crossing a boundary, whether psychological, physical, social or national. Continue reading “Other Voices – Spring/Summer 2005”
Experimental poetry can be a challenge: of the pieces you enjoy, it’s difficult to say what moved you so. Of the pieces you don’t like, you want to ask why nobody’s telling the emperor to put some damn pants on. The poetry of 580 Split left me feeling a bit of both, but is sure to be enjoyed by those who appreciate avant-garde literature. Continue reading “580 Split – 2005”
If it has ever occurred to you to wonder where exactly one might draw the line between poetry and prose, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself engrossed by Sentence, amongst whose litany of stated objectives you’ll find: “to explore the gray areas around the prose poem,” and to “publish work that extends our perception of what the ‘prose poem’ is or can be.” And even if it’s never occurred to you to worry about “the distinction between the prose poem and poetic prose,” you’ll still find yourself engrossed—I can practically promise. Continue reading “Sentence – 2004”
I have never been disappointed by an issue of Pilgrimage. In a world that is exceedingly desperate, both on and off the page, this exquisite little journal never fails to soothe and stimulate in equal measure, with intelligence, grace, and authenticity. This issue’s theme is “borderlands.” Continue reading “Pilgrimage – 2005”
“The Weight of Bones” I read first because the short story jumped out at me, or rather the skull did, the skull being the main character Ellen finds in her “charred garage.” All I will say is that Ellen took me by surprise from the first moment we met. Then came the nonfiction and equally engaging “My Wild Ride” that taught me how to welcome an unwelcome surprise. To summarize, the mother of two little girls under the age of five receives news that her life is about to change on more than one level. The eight poems are quietly seductive. As I was experiencing their power, I allowed the words time to soak in, take up a life, a meaning of their own. Continue reading “The Baltimore Review – Summer 2005”
Officially this country’s most time-tested literary quarterly (it was founded in 1892), The Sewanee Review is one in that very small number of old-school American journals that just can’t be messed with, the kind of publication that can successfully sport an antiquated, unembellished cardstock cover without seeming quaint or stodgy. A reviewer feels, while reading a publication whose founding date stands more than a century back, that any inspired high praise will seem inordinately past its deadline. Continue reading “The Sewanee Review – Winter 2005”
Do lawyers write poetry? Well, if a tribute to lawyers who write appears in the summer 2005 issue of Rattle, the answer is a resounding yes: lawyers do write poetry. Lawyer poems can often be just as sad, angry, or serious as non-lawyer poems. They can even be humorous, like these lines taken from ‘“What Is Your Idle Job?’” by Ace Bogess: “Then it’s back to the office for coffee / tasting like gasoline, maybe a doughnut on the sly” he writes. “If my boss pops over, checking my progress, / I greet him with a good-natured pat on the back / to wipe the sticky glaze from my fingertips.” Continue reading “Rattle – Summer 2005”
The Carolina Quarterly has great short fiction going for it; I expect to remember at least four of the seven stories here long after I’ve put this issue on the shelf. I was most impressed by Jean Colgan Gould’s “The Queen of October,” in which a woman on the verge of 70 shoots hoops in her driveway. She’s recently had a showdown with neighbors who didn’t appreciate the basketball noise and suggested she ought to do everyone a favor and move out of her big, empty house, sparking her anger and a determination not to be forced to while away the rest of her days in “a nice condo.” Excellent! Continue reading “The Carolina Quarterly – January 2005”
Southern Humanities Review has respect for the questions of moral fabric that challenge a classical, essentialist universe, but it is not strictly a religious journal. Continue reading “Southern Humanities Review – Spring 2005”
Penelope Shuttle admits that she is a bookworm while she talks (writes) about the importance of reading aloud, a common activity of the past, less common in the present. She attends author readings, the most memorable of which she describes. “It was Pablo Neruda who made the very deepest impression on me. Continue reading “The Reader – Summer 2005”
This is an attractive journal with the death images one would expect of the title on the slick cover. Nevertheless, Absinthe 4’s prose and poetry present fresh and unfamiliar prose rhythms from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, and Turkey. Continue reading “Absinthe – 2005”
There seems to be a resurgence of interest for comics in the literary world from acclaimed McSweeney’s comic issue and Chris Ware’s award winning Jimmy Corrigan to the recent works by Michael Chabon. Backwards City Review adds their voice with five comics here, including a delightful except from Kenneth Koch’s forthcoming book of comics. There is also a beautifully drawn and haunting anti-war comic by Nate Powell (a very underrated comic artist). Backwards City Review in general takes a humorous approach to their magazine (as evidenced by titles such as “Hockey Haiku” and “Constructive Criticism of Bathroom Wall Scribbling”). Continue reading “Backwards City Review – Spring 2005”
There are many magazines that claim to be eclectic, but The Canary is one of the few I’ve read that is truly deserving of the title. A five page free-form poem might be followed by a rhymed couplet, which might be followed by a narrative driven prose-poem. If it is going on in modern poetry, you can probably find it represented here. This all-poetry magazine has no art, non-fiction or even an editor’s introduction. Continue reading “The Canary – 2005”
This slim slick-paged journal contains, along with stories and poems, the interesting “On Writing, Stubbornness, and Food: An Interview with Leslie Pietrzyk.” Continue reading “Folio – Winter 2005”
In his editor’s note, David Lynn bemoans the Atlantic Monthly’s decision to discontinue publishing fiction and reaffirms his journal’s commitment to literary short fiction. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Summer 2005”
Excellent fiction. Those two words sum up everything that Night Train is about. There is no poetry and only two pieces of non-fiction here, an Amy Bloom interview and a segment on the city of Petaluma, California. Otherwise we have eighteen solid short stories that work with a range of styles and topics. Continue reading “Night Train – 2005”
Smack dab in the center of the issue is a portfolio of Marion Ettlinger’s extraordinary portraits of writers, sixteen powerful photographs that, like the work featured in this issue, suggest an intriguing variety of ways of interacting with the world—head on, sideways, with resignation, with appreciation. The issue is evenly divided between fiction and poetry (9 fiction writers, 9 poets) and concludes with the volume’s single piece of nonfiction writing, a beautifully composed family memoir by Amanda Bass Cagle, “On the Banks of the Bogue Chitto.” The 2004 Cooper Prize winning story, “Gone” by Glen Pourciau and stories by finalists Patricia Stiles and Karen Lorene are especially strong. While quite different from each other, they have in common an appealing emotional intensity. Wonderful poems by Reginald Gibbons, too, like Ettlinger’s photos and the prize-winning stories, inspire a range of emotions. Here are the final lines from his work “On Sad Suburban Afternoons”: Continue reading “Ontario Review – Spring/Summer 2005”
If you haven’t used all your vacation time yet this year, you might want to consider taking a few days off just to read this issue of Parnassus—it’s that good. Don’t plan to travel with it, at 470 pages it’s nearly too big to fit in a carry-on bag. But, if care about intelligent writing and about poetry, however you do it, make room in your life for this issue. Continue reading “Parnassus – 2005”
One of the standards, Prairie Schooner has published worthy prose and poetry for seventy-seven years, and this issue’s four stories, five reviews, and work by thirty-eight poets may be so described. The highlight for me is Ron Hansen’s “Wilde in Omaha,” in which the narrator, a local reporter, spends a few hours in Wilde’s witty, but taxing, company and experiences the truth (at least, for his lectures) of the Punch pronouncement: “The poet is Wilde. But his poetry’s tame.” There are poems and stories here of which Wilde would approve; not half bad—Rita Mae Reese’s “My Summer in Vulcan,” on catching the eye of an older sister’s boyfriend; Lon Otto’s “What Is Son?” – the question to ask if learning to dance on a rooftop in Havana; and a story of bitter betrayal, “Wooden Fish” by Matt Freidson. Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Summer 2005”
