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Carpe Articulum – October 2009-January 2010

Volume 2 Issue 4

October 2009-January 2010

Quarterly

Sima Rabinowitz

Carpe Articulum defines itself “the original magazine of its kind,” its kind being a “cross-genre international literary review that embraces all of the peripheral literary arts, including non-fiction, interviews with accomplished writers, novellas, short fiction, scientific papers, and even photography, understanding that a great photo is in fact, worth a thousand words.” The journal is not “barred from timely issues” or to “hundreds of pages of colourless excavations.” It’s also as heavy as a globe. Printed on glossy stock with a thick perfect binding, oversized (probably 9 x13 or so), photos that bleed across the page with poems printed in the foreground, and ads that look like feature pages and feature pages that look like ads, the journal is, indeed, one of a kind.

Carpe Articulum defines itself “the original magazine of its kind,” its kind being a “cross-genre international literary review that embraces all of the peripheral literary arts, including non-fiction, interviews with accomplished writers, novellas, short fiction, scientific papers, and even photography, understanding that a great photo is in fact, worth a thousand words.” The journal is not “barred from timely issues” or to “hundreds of pages of colourless excavations.” It’s also as heavy as a globe. Printed on glossy stock with a thick perfect binding, oversized (probably 9 x13 or so), photos that bleed across the page with poems printed in the foreground, and ads that look like feature pages and feature pages that look like ads, the journal is, indeed, one of a kind.

Editor-in-Chief Hadassah Broscova is right to categorize the journal’s content – this issue’s theme is “longing” – as encompassing an extremely wide range of material and perspectives, from interviews with such commercially popular writers as Nicholas Sparks, to articles on the craft and business of writing (Ted Hoffman’s “To Self Publish or Not to Self Publish – That is the Question”), to a Holocaust-themed novella by Carol K. Howell, to an interview by the editor-in-chief with a fifteen-year old opera star, to a number of poems, including Broscova’s long poem, “The Death of Promise,” which begins: “You name is Promise / Have I kept mine? Oh how the mighty have fallen!”

I wish there were more opportunities for writers to publish novellas and for readers to encounter them. Including novellas in the publishing mix is, without a doubt, the magazine’s most significant contribution to the world of literary magazines.

The journal runs many contests for writers and photographers and this issue features the John and Eva Keener Photography Award winners. Bold, colorful, and larger than life, the photos are impressive, and it must be satisfying for a photographer to see his or her work in such a large format. Gabor Ruff’s photos of animals are so vivid, I thought I could simply reach out and stroke these creatures’ heads.
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