NewPages Blog :: Magazines

It might behoove the honorable editors of North Dakota Quarterly to realize that this magazine too closely resembles a college catalog from the outside. (It probably doesn’t help that one can open up and find a registrar-esque listing of grad school dissertations!) Continue reading “North Dakota Quarterly – Fall 2004”

Southwest Review is already one of the most established journals in the U.S., but this issue receives a commemorative boost with the recent passing of the great Arthur Miller: “The Turpentine Still,” one of his last works, is included here. Through the eyes of Levin, a 1950’s ex-radical, the novella ventures into the pine mountains of Haiti around one American’s quixotic dreams of industrializing the country. Continue reading “Southwest Review – Spring 2004”

StoryQuarterly magazine is neither a quarterly nor really a magazine. Rather, it is an annually published tome of fiction. Issue 40 clocks in at 563 pages, almost triple the average lit mag length and about the same price. You might assume that with so much fiction it couldn’t fail to have enough good work to justify the price, and you would be correct. There are several good short-shorts here such as Nathan Alling Long’s somber “Between” about a son who only knows his father through the prison bars when he visits once a month. Steve Almond has an interesting one titled “At Age 91, Anna Smolz of the Gmersh Unit Speaks.” This issue also includes a great group of color photos all taken in the Midwest as well as a long interview between Tom Stoppard and Charlie Rose. However, my favorite piece in StoryQuarterly 40 was Rebecca Curtis’ idiosyncratic, pseudo-fairy tale, “The Wolf at the Door.” Here is a snippet to catch your interest: Continue reading “StoryQuarterly – 2004”

I wish there were more “international journals” and am pleased to see that this one has survived another year to bring us a fresh new issue. An eclectic and generous editorial vision brings together spectacular photographs of Palenque on the Atlantic coast of Colombia by Oscar Frasser with a respectful view of the “precarious and disadvantageous conditions” of the region, a previously unpublished interview with Paul Bowles (who died in 1999) conducted by Ramon Singh, a journalist, fiction writer, and teacher of American literature who currently lives in Greece, elegant, powerful drawings of the human form by award-winning artist Jeffrey Barrera of Madrid, as well as poems, prose poems, stories, a scholarly essay, a political manifesto, and other offerings in the “galería del arte.” Continue reading “Terra Incognita – 2004/2005”

Interviewers Amanda Rachelle Warren and Roy Seeger ask terrific questions of Mary Ruefle whose terrific answers include this characterization of a writer’s work: “…an artist…is on a very personal journey in an extremely un-personal world.” Fortunately, the sixteen poets, seven fiction writers, and three creative nonfiction contributors represented here know how to link the personal and “un-personal” to bring us work that is both fresh (as in honest and authentic) and refreshingly free of gimmicks and empty rhetorical devices. Continue reading “Third Coast – Spring 2005”

“I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole / of the rest of the earth,”—could any “dead poet” be more, for lack of a better word, relevant? It’s not hard to understand why VQR has devoted a whole (glorious and gorgeous) issue to honor Walt Whitman on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass. The issue includes essays of various styles, lengths, and intents from twenty-five American poets and writers and five beautifully reproduced sets of photos of Whitman with commentary by Ed Folsom, adapted from the gallery section of the Walt Whitman Archive. Continue reading “Virginia Quarterly Review – Spring 2005”

An incredibly strong awards issue with work that is funny, moving, surprising, and memorable, and, though I mean this in the most positive way imaginable…strange. If you’re tired of coming-of-age poems or skeptical about poems that work to be humorous, Christopher Bursk’s “E Pluribus Unum” (chosen by Lucia Perillo for the 49th Parallel Poetry Award) will forever alter your view of poems about adolescence and the use of humor in poetry. Creative Nonfiction Judge Paul Lisicky says Bonnie J. Rough’s winning essay, “Slaughter: A Meditation Wherein the Narrator Explores Death and the Afterlife as Her Spiritual Beliefs Evolve,” “shines with its fusion of gravity and wackiness.” Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Spring 2005”

When a magazine reaches its fourth issue, it’s safe to say that the editors have learned how to bridge their own literary vision with a corresponding body of work. Continue reading “Cranky / January 2005”

I realize that, as far as profits go, lit mags are like lemonade stands among the blue chips of the publishing industry, but I’m no better than the next guy: I don’t think twice about a 60-page booklet with a seven-dollar price tag. Continue reading “Fine Madness – 2005”

The New England Review is a larger-than-usual 7”X10” magazine, and with good reason: you’re likely holding in your hands one of the half-dozen best quarterlies out there. I don’t know where to begin with my impressions. I could take the international perspective: an interview with filmmaker Lars von Trier, a study of Orwell’s personal library, a zany around-the-world short story on the intellect by Gregory Blake Smith. Continue reading “New England Review – 2005”

This glossy black-and-white journal of poetry, prose and art work showcased some fantastic photography of human female subjects in Old Havana, Cuba, by Karen Keating (especially moving: a portrait called “Fidel’s Granddaughter,” a wide-eyed toddler with her hand on her hip, and “Teenager on Cuba Street,” a pensive girl in a tight, revealing outfit) as well as literary work of equal merit. Particularly interesting was a non-fiction piece on the tragic life of Modigiliani’s final mistress by Jacqueline Kolosov, “Seule: The Story of Jeanne Hebuterne, Modigliani’s Last Mistress.” Continue reading “So to Speak – Winter/Spring 2005”

Yes, after sixty issues, AGNI is still going strong, but more importantly it’s still finding new ways to reinvent itself. The theme here is “reading at the limit,” inspired by Katherine Jackson’s rendering of written text into “liminal” (i.e. at the surface) visual art. If you want to test the limits at the reading level, there’s no going wrong with Robert Olen Butler’s “four pieces of Severance,” a group of concept sketches best defined as “beheading monologues” that you’ll have to read for yourself to truly appreciate. Among the poetry, I enjoyed the account of innocence lost in Richard Hoffman’s “Gold Star Road”: “Ignorant // as goldfish in a plastic bag, / as mayflies mistaking the road for the river, / we assured one another, // keeping up our spirits / as we had long been taught.” The fiction has something for everyone, but the nonfiction has the most room to challenge our notions of limits and categorization. Joshua Harmon, in “The Annotated Mix-Tape,” weaves an eclectic music review of the Scud Mountain Boys’ “Massachusetts” with his own memories of his native Bay State. I was quite amused by his treatment of my native Pennsylvania as foreign to his New England sensibilities. (Full disclosure: Harmon taught at Bucknell University while I was a student there.) Needless to say, AGNI is strangely exotic to my own eyes; it knows how to skew the current times while demanding to be re-read through the backdrop of future ages. And even when rereading, as Jackson says, “aren’t we always reading everything for the first time?” Continue reading “AGNI – Number 60”

Ah, Portland. Village on the Willamette. Microbrewery capital of the world. Stumptown. Rip City. And, of course, the Rose Garden—and what an intriguing assortment of roses to be picked. Taking a trip through the latest issue of eye~rhyme is like having an impatient child pull you through a circus of kerosene-doused cannibals at a Sunday stroll’s pace. Continue reading “eye~rhyme – 2004”

Gargoyle 48 confuses me. The cover is entirely taken up by a photo of two women in low cut shirts looking like they want to punch me. On the back, I see names such as E. Ethelbert Miller. The first page is a long political quote from Gore Vidal. The non-fiction reads like fiction, the poetry reads like prose and prose reads like poetry. I think Gargoyle would be pleased with this review. They seem to strive to be surprising and fresh. Their website explains that issues have been published on cassette tapes and that others have featured writers from Charles Bukowski to Rita Dove. Continue reading “Gargoyle – Number 48”

It’s probably redundant to elaborate on a short story titled “Death Is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way.” Forgive me for trying: I can’t get enough of this meditative piece by Yiyun Li, a memoir of life in a Chinese commune in the 1970s, and the plight of an educated man rendered useless by the Cultural Revolution, as witnessed by the narrator as a child. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Spring 2005”

At a time when many of its academic colleagues are revamping themselves with colorful up-to-date looks, The Hudson Review remains the same monochrome-cover journal with solid helpings of criticism and literature from the high establishment. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Winter 2005”

“Tell me about loneliness,” begins Peter Selgin’s arresting short story, “Color of the Sea.” Continue reading “The Missouri Review – 2004”

As far as fiction goes, this issue of The New Quarterly is in a class of its own. The prose was consistently precise and original, the stories themselves well-crafted and well-developed. In fact, as I read these stories in a chronological order from front to back, it repeatedly seemed as if the following story far outshone the previous, as if the magazine simply surged forward with an ever increasing and ever impressive quality. Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Fall 2004/Winter 2005”

I found this volume of Room of One’s Own to be a fifty-fifty combination of really good and then really disappointing poetry and prose. The good stuff was so good that I would be doing a great disservice not to recommend the magazine, but the bad stuff was so predictable and bland that I have to temper my recommendation with reservations. Continue reading “Room of One’s Own – 2005”

The interviews (sometimes a dull spot in literary magazines) are a highlight of this issue of Columbia. In Mary Phillips-Sandy’s talk with culture critic Camille Paglia, high priestess of free associaters (think female, literary Robin Williams), Paglia offers an energetic mix of liberal, conservative, and crackpot views—the dead giveaway of an open mind at work. She compares Stephen King to Edgar Allan Poe, to the glory of both; takes a passing whack at Joyce Carol Oates’ prose style (“I can’t believe she just throws that stuff out there!”); and is a great proponent of the Web, for which she began writing “early on,” but admits to composing her first drafts “by hand with a real pen on real paper.” Continue reading “Columbia – 2004”

Twenty-four prose poems and one interview in a handsome, elegant little volume—CUE is a find. In editor Morgan Lucas Schuldt’s e-mail interview with award-winning poet Karen Volkman, Volkman writes: “…poetry should make us more conscious of how we think and structure our experiences and sensations, and provide new possibilities.” Continue reading “CUE – Winter 2005”

This is the annual creative non-fiction awards issue, but every issue of Event is a winner from what I’ve seen. Continue reading “Event – Spring 2005”

What makes this issue of Green Mountains Review especially appealing is the range of styles and tones represented here. Maureen Seaton is as quirky, irreverent, playful, and original as ever in several pieces that defy classification. Erick Pankey is as solemn and soulful as we know him to be in three self-portraits composed of exacting, carefully calculated language. Lola Haskins is, as we expect her to be, both lyrical and sharp-tongued in “Parsing Mother” (“You’re the twig that slashed my eye as I pushed through the branches. / Why I see cracks, faults, flaws, in every vase and daughter. O / Mother how declensions abound: nominative sun accusative moon.”). The fiction follows suit, with solid, conventional short stories by Jenna Terry and Daisy Tsui; a lyrical folk-tale style offering by Christopher White; and stories I am tempted to categorize as “sudden fiction” or “short shorts” by Francine White. Among the many memorable and noteworthy pieces in this issue is one I simply cannot refrain from mentioning— Eamon Grennan’s marvelous poem “From the Road,” which begins: Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – 2004”

The cover means to draw us in by announcing work from Jorie Graham, André Aciman, Honor Moore, Kenneth Burke and theirs is certainly worthwhile. One of the most gifted writers on place, Aciman never disappoints, and I loved this essay on New York. Moore’s piece on Lowell is marvelous—she is such a fine essayist I would read her on any subject, but she is especially satisfying when writing about other poets. Continue reading “Harvard Review – 2004”

Now this is a great magazine. Short, quirky writing that takes itself seriously but is not without a sense of humor. Think of it as a McSweeney’s for very short fiction (most of the stories here are between two and six pages). Perhaps the similarities are due to guest editor Ryan Boudinot, a McSweeney’s contributor who includes two excellent Icelandic authors in this issue who also appear in the new McSweeney’s. Continue reading “Hobart – Winter 2004-2005”

If you are like me, the multitude of literary reviews named after universities or geographic locations tend to blend together in your mind. However, for me, the Indiana Review just ceased to be one of them. Indiana Review is one of the only university affiliated magazines I’ve read that publishes great edgy and risky writing. Continue reading “Indiana Review – Winter 2004”

With two traditionally constructed short stories, a meta-fictional batch of autobiographical “contributor’s notes” by writer Michael Martone, and a nonfiction piece excerpted from the personal notebook of author M.V. Clayton, this issue of The Journal is slim on its prose offerings, leaning almost entirely toward poetry. Continue reading “The Journal – Autumn/Winter 2004”

Entitled “Politics & Religion,” this issue of the Mississippi Review might just as aptly be named the “Stand on the Rooftop and Shout Yes, Yes, Yes!” issue. Continue reading “Mississippi Review – Fall 2004”

New England Review continues to uphold its reputation for publishing extraordinary, enduring work. Jane Hirshfield’s wise and compassionate poem “In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs” is a distillation of the overlarge experience of being human into a few simple-seeming sentences that tell our grief and fear and anger, yet leave open “A door through which time / changer of everything / can enter.” Richard Wollman’s fiercely affecting “Paper in Autumn” resurrects one family from the fire of the Holocaust. Continue reading “New England Review – 2004”

One of the only literary magazines in the United States to resemble in physical format a standard mainstream magazine, North American Review cannot be found on any newsstands, but is sold entirely by mail order. That the magazine simultaneously happens to be the oldest of its kind in the nation speaks impressively to the emphatic approval of a devoted subscription base. The back cover of this issue bears a facsimile of a handwritten note by Thomas Jefferson, regarding payment arrangements for his subscription for the year 1825. This issue contains 4 short stories, 4 nonfiction pieces, 3 reviews, and 21 poems. Continue reading “North American Review – November/December 2004”

A long-time reader of Poetry, I have a confession to make. I read Poetry for the reviews. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the poetry, of course—what, in this issue, Wislawa Szymborska describes, along with the work of Plato, as “litter scattered by the breeze from under statues / scraps from that great Silence up on high…”—but what inspires and angers and thrills me, above all, is what is found under the heading “comment.” Continue reading “Poetry – February 2005”

What really drives my exploratory urges through the realm of literary magazines is the chance of finding one journal or another which seems in every way a representation of a real America. Appalachian Heritage is just that kind of publication. The journal’s handsome, down-to-earth appearance alone is a refreshing contrast to the often overly cerebral or academic format of so many American literary magazines. And the work featured here has a wonderfully unassuming quality about it: short stories, memoirs, poetry and photographs all unified by a down-home style that authenticates the journal’s eponymous claim to represent a bona fide heritage. In three short stories—by Lee Maynard, Patty Crow, and Sharyn McCrumb—the reader finds a lively, earnest narrative style that holds so faithfully to the clean, basic arcs of classic storytelling that it hearkens back to the rural oral tradition upon which so much of America’s contemporary literature is based, in whatever deviating forms. This issue’s featured author Sharon McCrumb (paraphrased by editor George Brosi) speaks to the very heritage alluded to in the journal’s title: “…[There is] a split between the ‘folk’ and the ‘fine,’ but there is no reason that our ‘folk’ traditions should have any less literary merit than those of Homer, the first epic poet…” This comment met with my emphatic underlining, so aptly did it express the reason for my own appreciation of Appalachian Heritage. Not often while reading literary journals do you get the feeling that you’ve happened upon a publication completely free of the corrosions of pretense, completely at ease with itself, and completely authentic. Appalachian Heritage is the real thing. Read it and find yourself relieved at the incontrovertible evidence it offers that, though big-money publishing may run the roost, the center of the literary universe is not characterized by The New Yorker.  Continue reading “Appalachian Heritage – Fall 2004”

In this issue, Clarissa T. Sligh writes movingly of the unspeakable: how her mother’s twelve-year-old brother was killed by racists, his body dumped on the ground in front of the house. “Her parents were still in the fields. Not able to accept that her brother was dead, she cradled his lifeless body in her lap and rocked him back and forth.” Sligh’s grandparents, needing to work in the fields but desperately afraid for their other sons, resorted to hanging them high in the trees in burlap sacks so they couldn’t wander away from the farm. Carla Panciera’s gently incisive “Darcy Didn’t Want to Be Home” tells the story of a wandering cow, a sentient being wanting more than her allotted life, from the perspective of a daughter caught between her father’s view of the animal as a product, and her own, more intuitive understanding of the world’s ways. Potomac Review, though not a religious publication, generously makes room for several offerings touching on the life of the spirit, such as Viva Hammer’s essay “Our Yarmulka” which quietly demonstrates how even a simple article of clothing, seen in the light of history, can become an article of faith, and the wearing of it, a way of keeping faith with those who are lost to time. If there is an overriding theme to the Potomac Review, it is the bonds of relationship—the sometimes excruciating sacrifices they ask of us, and the best of ourselves they give us in return. [Potomac Review, 51 Mannakee St., Rockville, MD 20850. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $10. www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/] – Ann Stapleton Continue reading “Potomac Review – Fall/Winter 2004-05”

The debut of a new literary journal always causes me a small pang in the breast. It can be such a vicious world for these little literary nestlings. A trim, handsome journal out of Greensboro, North Carolina makes its debut with this Fall 2004 issue, and if Volume 1 Number 1 is any indication, the folks behind Backwards City Review should be assured that, whatever perils await them on the road of financing, distribution, sales, etc., they’re well ahead of the game in the editorial department. This inaugural issue is happily modest, but by no means meager, in its offerings: 4 short stories, 1 nonfiction piece, 26 poems, 3 fascinating comics, and as a delightful bonus: a facsimile of a hilariously pungent dispatch from the famous Kurt Vonnegut, answering the query: “Where do you get your ideas from?” Michael Parker’s story “Results for Novice Males” pictures in restrained (but never constrained) prose, the sticky relationship between two fledgling triathlon competitors, each struggling through dysfunction from opposite poles of class, and takes its thematic cue from the compelling idea of “junk miles”—“the mileage one accumulates without actually getting better, stronger, faster.” Alix Ohlin’s “Local News,” concerns a TV reporter who dreams of a better, happier, more successful life, and finds herself dramatically subject to the maxim of her journalism teacher: “When you…break all the rules I’ve taught you, then you’ll know you’re working in news.” And Adam Berlin’s unique story “Speeding Away” portrays the mean-spirited machinations of two bachelor protagonists as they wriggle their way out of a promise to drive an annoying friend of a friend home to New York from an Indiana wedding.  Continue reading “Backwards City Review – Fall 2004”

“It is the age of noon / when all the hours are sleeping / and you remain awake, for this / is where the poem begins…”—the young German poet Matthias Göeritz (translation by Susan Bernofsky) captures the essence of the entire glorious endeavor of poetry, waking us from sleep, from the stultifying trance of a hot, uncomfortable day—a “metamorphosis” as the poem’s title announces. Continue reading “Smartish Pace – 2004”

For those still Stone Age enough to think of Texas poetry as an oxymoron, welcome to Austin. Alex Grant’s “Vespers” offers home and peace and space and the beautiful old word quieten. Kelle Groom’s poems find the soul of things and help us hear the faint but heartfelt dialogue between the living and the dead: “I wonder / If they are always talking behind the glass, / Full of joy for us, if they are in the trees, swinging, / Smiling, saying live, live, live, & on this side / We hear birds, / Songs from far away.” Brenda Ladd’s photo series gives us lost-(or perhaps found) in-performance soul glimpses of the likes of B.B. King, Abbey Lincoln, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. (A white light shot of a joyful Ray Charles graces the issue’s cover.) Weston Cutter’s wondrous strange, down on all fours and calling “Same Animal” reminds us that evolution of the human kind can be a tricky proposition. To delight you even as it makes you weep that we’ve all but lost to computers the handwritten record of our writers’ painstaking choices is the manuscript page of Walt Whitman’s lovely “unpublished, undated, and perhaps unfinished fragment” “In Western Texas”: Continue reading “Borderlands – Fall/Winter 2004”

Don’t be constrained by the name—Southwest Review, a cosmopolitan literary journal with a strong sense of the past (and thus, a keen understanding of where we might be headed), surely isn’t. Fearlessly fascinated by the inner life, The Review showcases the essay form, with offerings on the painter Tintoretto, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, now recognized as “the great-aunt of punk” (“‘Cars and bicycles have taillights. Why not I?’ she quipped when asked to explain the battery-operated taillight tacked to the bustle of her dress.”) Chris Arthur’s “Getting Fit” offers a breathtaking description of the simultaneity of life, how, weird or wonderful as it may seem, everything everywhere—birth and death and whatever we can find to squeeze in between—is somehow happening all at once: Continue reading “Southwest Review – Fall 2004”

Two engaging personal essays, one by newcomer David Harris-Gershon and the other by award-winning essayist Floyd Skloot land side-by-side and are emblematic of the issue as a whole—expertly crafted work by new and more established writers who know how to link their personal stories or perspective to the larger world. Even work poetry editor Donald Revell labels as an unexpected revision of the confessional mode, Jenny Mueller’s “Lyric,” reaches beyond the confines of experiment or solipsistic musing to offer a broad, surprising, and accessible world: “The cicada orgasms / sing, cease. A knock and a bruise / is this afternoon, its approaches // by lapses. A blast at the sills: it’s the earth, wanting in, heat-zonked / and spoiling, prodigal.” Continue reading “Colorado Review – Spring 2005”

A press release from Vallum: contemporary magazine announces the magazine is “dedicated to exploring reality in all its warped and beautiful aspects” and that this issue is the journal’s first theme-based effort. The theme is “reality checks,” featuring “‘snapshots of things real and unreal.” Continue reading “Vallum – 2005”

This was a special 10th Anniversary issue called The Best of The Asheville Poetry Review, a retrospective of the work the journal has published since 1994, including in its 250 pages a surprisingly diverse set of writers – from Robert Bly, Joy Harjo, to translations of Baudelaire, Celan and Lorca, to Eaven Boland, Virgil Suarez, Gary Snyder Sherman Alexie and R.T. Smith. It’s hard to pick out from such a large, myriad cast a “typical” poem, but there were many meditations on natural themes, and many of the poems felt restrained, although again, there were prose poems and experimental work among the traditional narratives and even some formal verse. Along with the poems, there were critical essays, book reviews, and interviews, including a long interview with William Matthews. Scott C. Holstad defended Carl Sandburg’s poetry and his focus on the American working class in the essay “Sandburg’s Chicago Poems: The Inscription of American Ideology.” When’s the last time I read anything that defended Carl Sandburg? I applaud Holstad for his courage in recognizing what was good in the work of this long-maligned American poet. I loved Joy Harjo’s “The Flood” and Cathy Gibbon’s “Dumb Blonde,” as well as the clever “Terzanelle of the Insomniac Dreamer” by Tom C. Hunley. Kudos also for the beautiful cover art work, and the high production values of this glossy journal, as well as the resistance to the usual tyranny of “big names” in anniversary issues. Neither did the editor succumb to the regionalism one might expect from a journal called “Asheville Poetry Review” – the editor chose just as many poems from new or little-known authors as he did from recognized writers, which shows courage, and opened the doors of his journal to writers not only of other states, but other countries as well.  – JHG Continue reading “Asheville Poetry Review – 2004”

I always enjoy reading Atlanta Review’s poetry; the work is typically approachable, emotionally invested, and refreshingly direct. Many of the poems in this issue even seem to follow the whole “emotion recalled in tranquility” rule of poetry – the speakers are trapped in between occasions, reflecting on the past or future – at concerts, diagnoses, at movies, in the kitchen. This issue featured poems from the Atlanta Review’s 2004 International Poetry Competition, as well as an interview with the always-lively, acclaimed poet-teacher-extraordinaire Marvin Bell. There were a couple of wonderful food-oriented poems in this issue, including “Basmati” by Amy Dengler, and a great poem by Marian Wilson called “Frump Femme Fatale” about a librarian action figure gone wild. One of the other poems I particularly liked in this issue was Alicia Ostriker’s “What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know,” which appears to be written to a daughter or granddaughter. I have to admit I immediately forwarded the poem to both my mother and grandmother. But don’t mistake this for any kind of easy, sentimental verse. Here’s a quote from the poem: Continue reading “Atlanta Review – Fall/Winter 2004”

A wild little journal of “innovative writing and art: collaborations, interviews, collage, poetry, poetics, long poems, reviews, graphs, charts, non-fiction, cross genre…” not to mention the marvelous pasted-on-the-page-as-separate-slips-of-paper reproductions of photos and artwork. Does somebody do this by hand? Now, that’s innovative! Innovative is one of those tricky words that confuses me, even though I confess I often use it to describe work that is risky or unusual or odd or curious and there’s all of that and more in Birddog. There are excerpts from Mark Tardi’s divided-columns poem “Chopin’s Feet,” where every other page is divided graphically with a straight vertical line and the verses are like Chopin’s complicated music moving from dense rhythms to lighter ones and back again. There’s Heidi Peppermint’s poem, “The Gulf Streams,” whose diction wavers between the utterly familiar and ordinary (“Boy, those days we’ve talked about are here! / pamper yourself with daily maid service”), to a playfulness that veers toward the arcane (“Boy, those sways wave tangent about arrant! / Boy, those swerves as stranger about arsy-varsy!”). There are excerpts from Bob Harrison’s poem “Counter Daemons—4D,” incorporating concepts from computer programming, as well as from the “counting coups” of the Plains Indians. There are Brigitte Byrd’s prose poems whose fate, we hope, will not be the same as this title: “Comparative Obscurity”: “If there is estrangement what is the difference between speaking to the dead and speaking to the living.” If you’re open to Birddog’s innovation, you’ll know the answer to that question. Continue reading “Birddog – 2004”

Hayden’s Ferry Review is, as always, an enjoyable mingle of poems, prose, art, interviews and essays. This issue has interviews with esteemed experimental poet C.D. Wright, acclaimed visual artist James Turrell, whose pieces explore the actions of light (several representations of his work are included with the interview, which I appreciated), as well as poet David St. John, whose poems also explore the nature of light. Continue reading “Hayden’s Ferry Review – Spring/Summer 2004”

When I finished this annual journal of Upstate Medical University, The Healing Muse, I felt I had been on a journey of discovery. Through fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and photography, health care givers and patients explore and express their feelings and thoughts about the roles and relationships they have with each other as well as with illness and disease. The complexity of the works presented reflects the complexity of the personal dramas from each side of bed. Steven Katz in his poem, “The Cathedral,” eloquently describes the situation: “Thrown together in a whirlwind / by hurricane Cancer / Surgeon and patient twist about / With all the awkwardness / Of new dance partners / Having to learn subtle nuances / Indelibly intertwined like sides of a spiral staircase / Vaulting up the bell tower of humanity.” Continue reading “The Healing Muse – 2004”

I hadn’t read this journal or the work of interview subject, fiction writer Kathleen Hill until now, but I’ll read both again. The interview (conducted by Barbara Brooks) is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered. Continue reading “Inkwell – Fall 2004”

Although the holiday season is over, there were several times while reading Night Train that I wanted to jump up and shout, “Joy to the World!” The fiction is just that good. Both editors and writers are to be congratulated for this impressive reading experience. Continue reading “Night Train – 2004”

The second issue of the newly relaunched journal out of Emerson College in Boston includes poetry, fiction, interviews, art, and a fistful of short book reviews. One of the highlights of this issue was the interview with the always-entertaining Nancy Pearl, my own hometown’s (Seattle) celebrity librarian who has her own action figure! Her wit and passion for books are palpable. Continue reading “Redivider – 2004”

“While I was reading your poems, my tailbone went numb many times. I’m afraid, my dear friend, that you’re a poet and nothing can be done about it. I’m expressing my immense sympathy.” That’s a quote from Zbigniew Herbert in a letter to poet Janusz Szuber which he reads, at her request, to interviewer/translator Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough. Tailbone numbing writing is a perfect description of the superb work collected in Absinthe. A dozen poets and fiction writers from 11 countries appear here in expert translations (with the exception of poems by the British poet Fiona Sampson whose work, obviously, appears in the original English). What distinguishes this journal overall is that there is nothing occasional here, not a single piece that seems remotely casual in intent or outcome. What numbs the tailbone is not merely the exquisite control demonstrated by each of these authors, but the overwhelming sense of responsibility this control suggests—every word, no, every syllable, counts in poetry and prose alike. While there is much variety in the subject matter treated and the style of the pieces collected here, what they have in common is a particular seriousness or authority that seems, to put it bluntly, unmistakably not-American. These are accomplished and successful artists, widely published and recognized in their own languages and countries. They deserve a wide and grateful audience in English, as well. Continue reading “Absinthe – 2004”

With edgy poetry and quirky short shorts, Stray Dog is fun—really, really fun. This issue starts off with a prose poem—usually not the first selection in a journal—about a man writing prose poems. Michael Cocchiarale’s short short, “Other Side of the Bed,” is wildly entertaining, describing a man looking over his wife’s side of the bed for the first time in thirty years and discovering another man—and his apartment. Continue reading “Stray Dog – 2004”

This Magazine is a delightfully eclectic little glossy out of Toronto that has been in publication since the 1960’s. The magazine has recently seen some format changes, as it attempts, in the words of editor Patricia D’Souza, to define what it “means to be a magazine of alternative culture in a time when alternative culture has become a mainstream concept.” This will no longer run single-theme centered issues, choosing instead to “adop[t] a storytelling approach that is more responsive to current events.”  Continue reading “This Magazine – 2004”