The latest issue of Southern Humanities Review features a set of four flash fictions by Judith Ortiz Cofer, a good sampling of the rest of the writing inside the issue: “My Mother Comes Back from the Dead,” “Eleven,” “Thirteen,” and “Sen-Sen.” Themes of family, self, and gender appear repeatedly in these four, posthumously published pieces, bound together by a common voice. I imagined the same narrator speaking throughout the pieces.

The cover of SLICE Issue 23 is a confluence of great design choices, from the gorgeous, slightly menacing artwork of Teagan White to the title itself, which sits, top-trimmed, like a visual onomatopoeia. The cover is glossy, the text is bright and easy to read, and the issue is slim but still substantial. The magazine exudes a contagious confidence, a sense that this, here, is everything a lit mag should be.

Fiction carries the day in Saw Palm 12, and the editors begin the issue with the genre via John Brandon’s smooth and seemingly unassuming “Hillsborough County Crime Report.” This was my first encounter with Brandon’s work—a fiction writer out of Florida who’s published almost exclusively through McSweeney’s. His story invites the reader into a side of Florida life captured often in film: the apparent world of organized crime. In this tale we meet The Driver and a chatty New Guy who was recently released from prison and is assigned to work with The Driver to tail a Subject.

Available open access online with the ability to order quality print copy, reading Star 82 Review is like walking through an old home and discovering all kinds of cool nooks and crannies. It is filled with imagination and smart and searing perspectives succinctly conveyed in poetry and prose, including Word + Image, art, and erasure text. Each issue is identified by an erasure poem featured on the front cover. This issue: “applying for worlds of compromises and empathy.”

Sheila-Na-Gig and I share a couple things in common, I recently discovered. We both came into the world in 1990, and neither of us can get enough poetry. The journal has grown and adapted in the past twenty-eight years, now an online magazine with quarterly contests for poets. The latest issue of Sheila-Na-Gig online features two poems by the latest winner, Rebecca Dettorre, as well as work by eighteen additional poets.

There is something unusual about Sugar House Review. With its glossy paper and curious formatting, this magazine not only stands out among others but also delivers aesthetic pleasure to its readers. The Fall/Winter 2017 issue features simple yet bold design which, I am sure, will charm anyone holding it in their hands. In addition to its appealing design, Sugar House Review offers a great number of pieces that will excite attentive readers. This issue features poetry, “sugar astrology,” and an interview with Kevin McLellan whose poems appear on the earlier pages of the issue. Always curious to know about a poet’s process, I was delighted to see the inclusion of an interview that asks all of the indispensable questions giving a sneak peak into Kevin McLellan’s creative process.

The image that greets readers at Split Rock Review’s Spring 2018 issue is a photograph of forest that takes up the entire computer screen. Leaves blanket the floor and climb up trees, a perfect visual companion for mid-summer reading. It’s the pieces that resonate with this image of nature that spoke to me the loudest this issue, fully immersing myself in the greens of summer.

Salamander is a diverse and interesting literary publication that includes poetry, fiction, reviews, and even portfolios of artwork. This magazine is produced by the Suffolk University’s Department of English, and they certainly delivered many amazing pieces in Issue #45.

The Winter 2017 issue of subTerrain provides a change of perspective through its Canadian west coast view of fiction, poetry, commentary, art, and book reviews. The subtitle, “Strong Words for a Polite Nation,” piques the reader’s interest, but it may depend on where the reader is sitting. As a Michigander, I can vouch for the politeness of our Canadian neighbors. And, yes, some of this most recent issue will offend some readers, but aside from an opinion writer who believes four-letter words add shock value, there is only a poetry collection that might take someone aback.

Founded last year at Florida Atlantic University, Swamp Ape Review has just dropped its second online issue. Issues are split into two sections, one featuring work by writers from South Florida, and the other featuring work from elsewhere. With the name Swamp Ape Review, one can’t help thinking of the weird and wild, and the editors don’t disappoint with their choices.

In the “About Us” section of The Slag Review, the editors describe how the journal is “a little off-kilter,” and how the work they “accept will reflect that.” Readers can be thankful that the credo really shines forth in the Fall 2017 issue of the journal. There’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and they all, in their own ways, exhibit an off-kilter and unique sensibility.

When is a treat too rich? The Summer/Fall 2017 issue of The Southampton Review is an overwhelming collection of multi-genre pieces, and it is definitely no exaggeration that it is hard to find a starting point. This tenth anniversary edition is a fine tribute to the vision and efforts of its editors.

Still Point Arts Quarterly recently announced their switch from print issues to free, online issues delivered directly to readers’ email inboxes. The Fall 2017 issue is the first readers can access online, the current exhibition feature containing works based on “The Art of Structure.”

The Autumn/Winter 2016 issue of Structo offers readers a fun read while bringing global voices together in one publication.

With a plethora of online magazines at our fingertips, it’s hard to know where to begin reading. Sometimes it’s best to go with something small and easy to digest, something like the quarterly Spartan magazine. Publishing works only 1500 words or less, and only three pieces per issue, Spartan offers readers engaging writing without requiring tons of commitment.

shufPoetry’s logo represents the work the magazine brings to its audience: colorful graffiti splashed across a computer screen. The Fall 2016 issue brings together a collection of visual and audio work that draws the reader’s eye (and ear) and keeps interest through flashes of color and creative formats.

In this issue of Southern Humanities Review, the editors include a selection of poetry from the 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry contest, held in honor of Jake Adam York. In addition to other poems and short stories, this issue features poems from the winner, the first and second runners-up, and the nine finalists. Each of these poems shares a witness’s perspective on issues like race relations, poverty, and humanity in honor of Jake Adam York, an award-winning poet that focused on the triumphs and tragedies of the Civil Rights movement.

If I were to give this issue of Southern Poetry Review a title, it might be “Profound Perspectives” or “Meaning in the Moment.” The poems in this issue find moments of awe in life events and transport them from the mundane through reflection to the place where art lives in all its weighty insightfulness and magic. The poets accomplish this with rich imagery, carefully controlled lines and stanzas, and an attention to the natural rhythm of language.

While reading the summer issue of The Sewanee Review, I decided to poke into some historical trivia. It was founded in 1892 and devoted to book reviews, theology, political science, literature and such. Poetry didn’t appear until 1920, and the Winter 1966 issue, at almost 1,000 pages, was devoted to T. S. Eliot.

The cover of the Summer 2016 issue of The Stinging Fly keeps the waning spirit of summer alive for a little while longer with art by Lizzy Stewart. A bright blue background is adorned by a three-piece cross-section of a girl’s face in profile, the pink insides of her head packed with lush, green plants.

If you’ve not yet been introduced to Saranac Review, consider this your opportunity. Published by the Department of English and its Writing Arts Program of SUNY College at Plattsburgh, I’m not sure what preconceived notions that might give writers and readers, but my first response after reading a good chunk of it was ‘surprising variety.’ Many of the works were surprising—either as non-traditional in their form or in leaving me pleasantly surprised by the feeling of satisfaction at the close of my reading.

An exceptional collection as is typical of this attractively presented journal.

A theme-based literary magazine from Vancouver, the fiction, poetry, commentary, memoir, and photography in the current issue of subTerrain explore the idea of “neighborhoods,” both fictional and real. Much of the work is vivid, raw, and gritty (poems Christopher Shoust and John Roberts, stories by Hungarian writer Grant Shipway and Katherine Cameron). Given the edginess of so much of the work, Diana E. Leung’s commentary, “Buying-in-Security: Safe Zones and Sanitized Living” about the culture of fear in which we live and the building of crime-free zones in Toronto seems appropriate, and given the times in which we live, it is satisfying to find a thoughtful commentary about these issues in a literary magazine.

Sonic Boom is a journal “for writing that explodes.” Even the cover art of the April 2016 issue explodes with rich colored graffiti, a photograph by Kyle Hemmings. Issues start out in the Poetry Shack, then move on to Paper Lanterns—a section for haiku, tanka, senryu, and other Japanese forms—before continuing on to prose, art, and an interview, with 64 total contributors found in this issue alone.

Civil war buffs will particularly enjoy this Fall 2003 issue of Shenandoah as it features a portfolio of twenty-three poems about the Civil War. It also showcases non-fiction, short fiction, poetry, and book reviews; many of the pieces have in common a sense of restraint, almost an old-fashioned polite reserve. Work here is on the formal rather than the experimental side. I enjoyed Paul Zimmer’s amusing non-fiction piece “The Commissioner of Paper Football” and Mark Doty’s lyrical poem “Fire to Fire,” which begins:  “All smolder and oxblood, / these flowerheads, / flames of August: / …the paired goldfinches / come swerving quick / on the branching towers, // so the blooms / sway with the heft / of hungers…” Overall a satisfying read, especially those who like Southern regional flavor; there were quite a few contributors from the state of Virginia and its environs. One note for fans: the editor writes that this journal will now be appearing three times a year instead of four. [Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University, Troubadour Theater, 2nd Floor, Box W, Lexington, VA, 24450-0303. shenandoahliterary.org/index.html] – JHG

In the “Route 66” issue, River Styx succeeds in its “homage to that lingering spirit of the road” with poems (by Gaylord Brewer, Walt McDonald, Nancy Krygowski, Rafael Campo, among others), short fiction, essays, illustrations and photography. These lively pieces concentrate on the vast subject matter encountered during automobile travel around the United States. 

South 85 Journal lets readers and writers know that they’re especially interested in writing with a strong voice and/or a strong sense of setting, and the writing in the Fall/Winter 2015 issue demonstrates this preference, with just enough selections in each genre to keep a reader interested without being overwhelmed. There’s no padding here, no skimming of pieces, no skipping anything over. Each piece begs to be fully consumed.

I Wanted to Write a Poem, William Carlos Williams explained why he reduced a five line stanza so that it would match a four line stanza: “See how much better it conforms to the page, how much better it looks?” Unsurprisingly, this same attention to form–form for form’s sake, as an aesthetic consideration, perhaps even more than a literary one–characterizes much of the work of the fifteen writers Seneca Review features in their Spring 2005 edition “New Lyric Essayists.”

Everything expected of a journal co-founded by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks is here in an issue commemorating Warren's 10oth birthday with his own fine prose (three letters to friends) and six memoirs—including the delightful "Places: A Memoir" by his daughter, poet Rosanna Warren. In a season in which rereading All the King's Men for dominant themes seems ever more relevant, the brilliant short stories in this issue touch upon war in "Hot Coffee, Summer" by Christine Grillo, in John Lee's perfect, first-published story "Fires"—"[. . .] a thin blaze over the northern horizon, and we heard that Seoul was about to fall when the pyobom, the leopard, began to appear in the valley," and in Asako Serizawa's memorable study of Alzheimer's Disease "Flight," astonishingly also a first publication.

This slim but vivacious lit mag out of the University of South Dakota is bristling with content: eight short stories, twenty-eight poems, and two essays.

Always been a fan of E.E. Cummings? Then Spring is the journal for you – nothing for 234 pages but essays about Cummings, poetry influenced by Cummings, and critical examinations of his life and work, with titles like “Hermetism in the Poetry of E.E. Cummings: An Analysis of Three Obscure Poems” and “Squaring the Self: Versions of Transcendentalism in The Enormous Room.” You may see how these kinds of pieces may appeal mainly to scholars of the late poet’s work, but even amateur fans of Cummings can appreciate the playful poems, like this one by Tony Quagliano called “ON BLY ON POETRY”:

The Seattle Review's lovely cover photograph belies the region's mountainous nature by offering not a hint of near—or distant—mountains while providing the merest glimpse of Lake Washington; and from a locale often thought stubbornly regional, this issue's surprising highlight is Kathleen Wiegner's interview of M. Scott Momaday: "Some of my students sometimes say to me, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if you wrote in Kiowa?' My answer is, well, in the first place, you can't. There's no written language.

This issue of Santa Monica Review is an extraordinary collection of memorable short stories and novel excerpts. Editor Andrew Tonkovich has selected outstanding first-person narrations with the theme of morality, as well as religion, appearing in most and uniting them in surprising ways. From the amusing dangers of “Daily Evangelism," by James D. Houston to Paul Eggers's moving "A Thinly Veiled Autobiography Regarding My Reasons for Giving Up Chess," moral concerns rank high. In Roberto Ontiveros's "The Fight for Space," the narrator—meshing his mundane job and intellectual super-hero obsessions with Batman's fictional universe—comes down hard on the comic-book icon: "Batman's trophy room pisses me off the most; it's like our hero does not want to find peace."

Produced by the students of creative writing and web design at Arizona State University, the online Superstition Review showcases a great selection of writing and art, all easily accessible from a cell phone.

This magazine is short and pleasant, about 150 pages. Within its covers, the reader will find stories, an interview, pictures, and lots of poetry. Many of the stories and poems in this issue seem to center around parent-child relationships. There are several Jewish stories and poems and a Latin American story. Another story focused on a young girl’s reaction to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, filled with emotion and poignancy.

I read this literary magazine from cover to cover. (Well, OK, this is a bilingual publication. I did NOT read the Italian translations of stories, just the English.) Every story in it was fabulous, every interview with the author of the published stories interesting. From Joyce Carol Oates’s exploration of a young girl’s disappearance in a New Jersey town to Massimo Lolli’s description of a dance hall where strangers meet for a few minutes for sex and intimacy, the four stories collected in this volume were stunning. However, my favorite part of Storie is the section near the end where they include a short paragraph critiquing the stories that they rejected for this issue. Witty, kind, but also critical, these paragraphs seem a unique service to the writer: a mention of the story and its merits but also its shortcomings. [Storie,Via Suor Celestina Donati 13/E, 00167 Rome, ITALY. E-mail: . Single issue $10. http://www.storie.it/contenuti/english.HTM] - JP

Reading Still Point Arts Quarterly is like being able to go into your local art gallery, all in the comfort of your favorite pair of pajamas. With selections from the Still Point Arts Gallery, each issue is a peek through the gallery’s windows, the Winter 2015 issue featuring selections from the exhibition: Simplicity.

A lot of originality is packed into a smart little anthology called Studio One. Take a look at the bright cover art, “Old Lady with the Black Eye” by multi-talented Ernest Williamson, greeting readers. Williamson has an additional painting within the volume, “Artist Delving into Her Craft,” which on the one hand I can’t quite figure out, and on the other hand I find impossible to stop looking at. Also outstanding is a portfolio of five luminous scenes by Colorado photographer Rita Thomas. “Pixie Forest,” which appears to be frost-covered trees by moonlight, is most stunning.

In 1981, I spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union. Every city was a highlight, but the most breathtaking destination was Peter the Great’s summer palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The garden fountains were fun, yet I found the dazzlingly golden statues most extraordinary. Those recollections piqued my interest in reading an issue of St. Petersburg Review.

Story publishes pieces following a particular theme, and the Monsters issue is as haunting as the title suggests. Stephen T. Asma writes in his essay, “Monsters and the Moral Imagination,” “Good monster stories can transmit moral truths to us by showing us examples of dignity and depravity without preaching or proselytizing.” The pieces chosen for this issue do exactly that, ranging from things that go bump in the night to memories that haunt individuals each day.

Storm Cellar is a slim little lit mag, just the right size to slip into my already-near-bursting tote bag. It’s the perfect magazine to keep on hand when readers have a few moments to spare before bed or while drinking their morning coffee.

Time Magazine once labeled The Southern Review as “superior to any other journal in the English language.” The latest edition published on the campus of the Louisiana State University lives up to the high standards that their readers love and have come to expect since the magazine’s inception in 1935. You will not regret reading this cover to cover.

Jumping into Stoneboat, this issue is kicked off by CL Bledsoe’s poem, “The Squeaky Wheel Has Been Anesthetized.” At the end of the poem the speaker says, “[ . . . ] upsetting. I know we’re all dying at our own pace, / just trying to find a comfortable place to lie down.” The ending of the poem links back to the title’s anesthetization, as well as showcases the poem’s buried rhymes, while working as a good opener for this issue.

Editor in Chief Jake Lans challenges readers to disagree with what this issue of Santa Clara Review “says” in its presentation of diverse content. “It would be so boring if you didn’t,” he prods. Would if I could, but because I appreciate the variety of what’s published here, even if not all of it suits me, I can only agree with Lans. Diversity of content in any publication is essential—it would be so boring if it wasn’t!

What stuck out to me the most in this issue of the South Dakota Review was the poetry section, not only because I am a poet by nature, but because of the depth and breadth of range from ghostly lines to historical narratives. The poetry section begins with “Black Tigers” by Angela Penaredondo. Borrowing its epigraph from Wole Soyinka’s “Civilian and Soldier,” “Black Tigers” follows the life of a young female civilian soldier and the everyday preparations of dying. In the poem, she “shall be severed. Spread with voracity, / then refined to seeds and meat. / This land. All hunger girls.”

Syracuse, New York was the center of a major salt-mining industry in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, such that it acquired the nickname “Salt City.” This fact may explain the name of the literary magazine Salt Hill, which bears the logo of a little glass salt shaker. The magazine itself only says: “Salt Hill is published by a group of writers affiliated with the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.”

Lovers of poetry, readers, and writers alike, will find much to swoon over in the Winter issue of Spoon River Poetry Review (SRPR). The issue opens with the winner, the runners-up, and the honorable mentions of the Editors' Prize for 2014. I suggest that readers take in the prize winners and all of the poems in the issue as if drinking quality wine and measure each poem for the appropriate acid, body, and finish it exhibits, for each has the right structure, power, and lingering aftertaste that makes reading poetry so satisfying.

The current issue of Salamander is chock-full of human experience. One might think a large role of all literature is to capture such experience, and I believe this to be true, but the poems and stories in this issue provide experience in the purest way. Our lives are lived through fragments even though time feels linear. The work published in this issue show us fragmented living.

The title Skidrow Penthouse evokes images of grit. A cover photo featuring bird heads and faceless, female nudes immediately confronts readers with the promise of grit. The 200+ pages of varied writing paired with black and white art neither disappoint, nor fall short of those gritty suggestions. The entire volume is a pleasure to navigate, but the words are not always nice.

One thing to be said about Sweet’s publications is the creative “cover” of each online issue, making the issue even more of an experience. With this issue, it’s all about the autumn treats: the table of contents is set up like a tray of blueberry pie, the section titles powdered with sugar. And each slice, each piece of writing, is a delicious treat. Courtney Kersten’s very short essays are easily relatable and allow the metaphors to provide all of the insight. For example, in “My Father in Wisconsin,” her father experiences a tragic event, and as a result of it, he has large scars from the gashes: “When I was younger, I would watch him shirtless and swearing and lugging things around the front yard unable to fathom how such deep gashes were able to heal.”

Rust, dust, lust is the three-pronged theme carried in the pages of this year's Slipstream. Poems start on page 5 of this issue and continue, unrelentingly in all the right ways through page 92. That's 87 consecutive pages of notable work! Janet Warman and Margo Davis do an absolutely amazing job, separately, in weaving a compelling link between all three themes in a short space. Warman's poem “Tin Man” uses familiar subject matter for the most part and left me cringing in anticipation. School plays, for their derision among parents, foster a necessity for creative ingenuity and a waypoint for future childhood memories. The lines "She made us rust, / and I was to grab his legs / as he told his Beautiful story." showcase this perfectly.

This issue of Sixth Finch begins with the line “You wish for a moon,” from Elizabeth Barnett’s “Between Two Houses,” which ends, “if sometimes / a house hurts you, // you still walk toward it / in the dark.” So tread forward into this issue; you may be wishing for a moon—beautiful turns of lines—and you’re most certainly walking in the dark, not sure what you’ll find, but I promise it won’t hurt you.

This issue of Southern Women’s Review has a “Bust” theme and is full and broad in exciting and enriching literature including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As I was traveling at the time of reading this issue, I took special note of Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s piece in which the narrator is in China teaching English but is feeling isolated and very much an outsider. Although she wants to learn her own way into the culture, she can’t seem to and retreats back to English literature to find her own comfort.

You could try cocaine, or you could read subTerrain. This Vancouver-based magazine is rough around the edges but compensates with winning, dark intense fiction and warm, intelligent nonfiction and poems. The piece I can’t stop talking about in this issue is “The Shark Tumour Collection,” a short story by Jill Connell. An 18-year-old pet store employee with cancer decides sharks, an animal made entirely of cartilage, would be the perfect anti-cancer talismans.

In the introduction to the seventeenth installment of the “Writing in the South” series, Editor Bret Lott questions the past, present and future of Southern literature through the lens of Walter Sullivan’s essay in the original “Writing in the South” issue, thirty-nine years ago. Sullivan wrote, “[…] the new Southern writer must be something other than Southern: his faith and vision must be fixed somewhere beyond the Southern experience: he must find his own source.

It’s fitting that the journal whose health T.S. Eliot once lauded as an indicator of the world of periodicals should publish such an issue. The Sewanee Review’s issue comes subtitled “A Salute to British and American Poetry.” The opening pages are a list of books reviewed, including Wendell Berry’s Given, W.D. Snodgrass’s Not for the Specialists: New and Selected Poems, and the much lauded Adam Kirsch volume, The Wounded Surgeon. There’s a menagerie of material here.

I was surprised when I realized that Subtropics was barely more than five years old. Of course the issue number is right there, announcing itself on the front cover, but I don’t think it’s entirely my fault for forgetting: published out of the University of Florida,Subtropics has the look, feel, and quality of a journal that’s been around for much longer. And if my word isn’t enough, you can check the records: last year alone, the journal had fiction chosen to appear in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 and Best American Short Stories 2014.

The epigraph at the beginning of this issue of The Sierra Nevada Review comes from Aimé Césaire: “What presides over the poem is not the most lucid intelligence, or the most acute sensibility, but an entire experience: all the women loved, all the desires experienced, all the dreams dreamed, all the images received or grasped, the whole weight of the body, the whole weight of the mind.” This epigraph couldn’t fit more perfectly as each piece within this issue asks the question “What happens when a body (or person) enters a foreign place, what is the experience?”

The Sow's Ear Poetry Review does better than many literary magazines at integrating poetry and visual arts. In fact, marrying the two genres is the express intention of its "Crossover" section, which features the 8 x 10-inch digital mixed-media selections Wholeness and Eternity by Jing Zhou. Part of a series called "Ch'an Mind; Zen Mind," these black-and-white pieces demand repeat "readings," as does Sandra Kohler's nine-part poem cycle "The Unveiling." With its elliptical structure, recurrent imagery, and timeless theme, this poem amply rewards the reader who peels back the layers of craft and meaning. More direct but no less moving are Christine Leche's "Three-Minute Egg" and "Eye of the Storm," and upon reading Kelly Jean White's "I Cannot Say How Deep the Snow," I felt a chime of recognition. I would have positioned "The Drowning Man" by Nick Conrad as the issue's finale poem, for its haunting quality will linger with readers long after they have set the journal aside.

I confess I missed the first eight issues, but now that I’ve become acquainted with this unconventional journal, I’d recommend it, especially to readers who prefer a great, big messy read of a review to more slender volumes. Everything about this magazine is big from its oxymoronic title, to the type size of its 300 pages, to the startling amount of space devoted to this issue’s “featured poet,” Anthony Seidman – a whopping 60 pages. I’d venture to say that Seidman is the most widely published writer in the issue, though it would be impossible to judge based on credentials.

As a group, the titles will tell you a lot: “Little Incisions,” “From God’s Notebook,” “In My Version of the Afterlife Grandma is Riding an Elephant,” “When Dada Ordered Chinese,” “Apparatus for the Inscription of a Falling Body,” “Scar Art,” “Six Whole Ducks in the Belly of an Ounce I Once Killed,” “The Middle-Class Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild.” Was Seneca Review always this, well, edgy? Is edgy the right word? Inventive? Out of the ordinary? Provocative, that’s it!

Could there be a better moment for a re-examination of the very notion of “America?” With a translation from the French of noted French art historian, essayist, and poet Yves Bonnefoy’s story, “America” (translated by Hoyt Rogers), essays on white poverty in the south (Wayne Flight), and on modernism and democratic pluralism, with a focus on John Dewey (Allen Dunn), and fiction that considers American family life (Brigitte McCray), I am tempted to say that the editors of this issue of Southern Humanities Review (SHR) predicted, months ago, our need to explore what is at the essence of American identity during the current time of turmoil and transition.

This all fiction issue of SMR is jam-packed with quality prose. From traditional storytelling to more experimental fiction, this issue covers the gamut. I was also pleased to see among the contributors a first time publication for a writer.

The Straddler is a journal that hungers to challenge the mind of its readers by publishing a diverse and heady collection of literature whether it is poetry, fiction, essay, movie review or criticism. In one of their introductory pieces, “An Editor Has Her Say,” by Elizabeth Murphy, they break down their philosophy to its core elements: “Put even more simply, our hope is to provide a venue for work that understands the importance of its context. That is, without tossing the rinds and skating away.” So, do not cower in an intellectual stupor because you are scared of the truth. Here, the truth is something to be embraced, stimulated and coaxed into being because it is potent and intoxicating.

SWAMP is an online magazine that exists to feature the writing from postgraduate creative writing students. Edited by postgraduate writers, it is a great community for these students.

Star 82 Review puts forth its first issue, filled with sections titled “Shorts,” “Postcard Lit,” “Art Post,” “Erasure Text,” and “Hidden Gems.” I wish this magazine well, because they are already publishing great work.

Spry is a new literary journal that claims to be a place “for people who excel at taking risks.” And certainly, even in their very first issue, they have succeeded with this.

Enter Shadowbox’s site and you’ll see a shadowbox filled will several objects. Clicking on the image of the flowers will bring up this issue’s featured writing. It brings up a spice rack, each bottle containing a spice of life, if you will. Dedicated entirely to all forms of creative nonfiction, Shadowbox presents a collection worth reading. Some pieces are in the traditional essay form, while others stray quite a bit, opening up new ways to see creative nonfiction.

The title intrigued me. As I took my Pandora-esque peek between the pages of Sinister Wisdom, I was caught in a whirlwind of shadows, hope, despair, courage and fire. There is no complacency here, folks, so if that’s what you came for, you’ve come to the wrong place. These essays, poetry and art by lesbians who experienced the “coming out” times of the 60’s and 70’s force the reader’s eyes open, shines a light into them—a light that is sometimes too bright, too painful. You want to look away, but don’t. There is much here that you should not miss.

For all the hoopla and sage editorial paragraphs regarding work grounded in location and place on the submission pages of many, many journals, few magazines can come close to the South Dakota Review’s incredibly grounded, sure, located/locatable collection in this, their 40th anniversary issue. As E.I. Pruitt writes to begin his poem “Corn”: “You can’t live in this part of the world for long / without developing a personal relationship with corn.”

Since this is an annual publication—despite title—the short story's continuing evolution may be visible—although not yet deciphered—over even the one short year of this stellar 528-page collection.

American folk music enthusiasts will want to check out this issue devoted to traditional music of the Appalachian region. It includes interviews with Janette Carter and Mike Seeger, whose families have long performed and preserved mountain music and culture. Other essays highlight the careers of fiddlers J.P. Fraley and Tommy Jarrell, as well as guitarist and singer Elizabeth Cotten. Among the poems in this volume, several honor particular performers (Jeffrey Harrison’s “Homage to Roscoe Holcomb” and Ron Rash’s “Elegy for Merle Watson”), while others evoke the songs themselves (Candice Ward’s “Ballad Child” and George Scarbrough’s “The Old Man”), or explore their power over listeners (Judy Klass’ “Conundrum and Fiddle” and “The Tao of Twang” and John Casteen’s “Insomnia”). An excerpt from the novel Fiddler’s Dream (SMU Press, 2006), about a young musician who wants to play bluegrass and find his missing musician father, amply demonstrates Gregory Spatz’s ability to write lyrically about music and music makers.

This non-fiction issue of Salmagundi includes, along with much else, Richard Howard's response to disdain for works older than one's self—"A Lecture on a Certain Mistrust of the Past among Young Writers"—and "The Women of Whitechapel: Two Poems" by Nancy Schoenberger, whose second victim, remarkably perceptive under the circumstances, comments: "[. . .] a gentleman's a man where darkness lurks until it's sprung by some medicinal." Linda Simon's curious title, "What Lies Beneath," is a review of Virginia Blum's Flesh Wounds, the search for redemption via cosmetic surgery. From David Bosworth's "Auguries of Decadence – American Television in the Age of Empire": "If the rude yoking of the picayune to the profound is a feature of the post modern [. . .]," his brilliant 50-page rumination on TV's spectacles of pain and folly—weeping Kurdish women, Extreme Makeover's cosmetic-surgery desperadoes—is postmodern, indeed; and also a hard-hitting indictment of the Bush administration. "D. H. Lawrence, Comedian" by Jeffrey Meyers must concede the humor of Lawrence may be easily mistaken for misogyny, as in this example: "[. . .] I feel such a profound hatred of myself, of the human race, I almost know what it is to be a Jew." Informative and entertaining as all this is, one expects no less from a journal claiming Russell Banks, Carolyn Forche, and Mario Vargas Llosa among its regular contributors.

A dormant but beautifully ominous volcano sets the mood for this compelling issue of Southern Humanities Review (SHR). From the Japanese art on the cover, to the final poem “Resurrection: Ivorybill,” by Ashley Mace Havird, an undertone of imminent eruption, and the realms that will be, are, or have been downstream from the event, pervades each piece. This is not to say that every piece is dark and looming; rather, whether fissures of perception, or pyroclastic flows of meaning and connection, this issue conveys that the effects of earth-shattering change are worthy of being felt, remembered, and revered.

Always surprising and unconventional, this issue of Salt Hill is even edgier than usual, with Thom Ward's "imaginary" scholar Dr. Arnold Schnagel and Schnagel's parody of reviews and critiques (like this one!) of the work of "imaginary poet" Jan DeKeerk whose very real poetry is translated here (from Flemish) by Schnagel; and Steve Almond's interview with novelist and screenwriter Tom Perotta ("Q: But you don't behave badly?" A: Well, I'm a fiction writer"); and Denise Duhamel's poem "Lost Bra," thirty-four couplets, every line of which ends with the words "Maidenform Bra." G. C. Waldrep contributes three poems with his signature merger of the sacred and the profane (as it happens, a story about Waldrep's conversion to the Amish is featured in the latest issue of Poets & Writers and provides a context for his work). Poet Miles Waggener contributes excellent translations from the Spanish of three poems by Jaime Siles — poems that at moments sound as raw as Peter Cooley, who also has a poem in this issue, and a verse or two later as erudite as Jorge Luis Borges: "Hace que deulen hasta los pronombres/It hurts right to the very pronouns." There's never a dull moment at Salt Hill. [Salt Hill,  Syracuse University, English Department, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: . Single issue $8. http://students.syr.edu/salthill/] - SR

At first glance, Sycamore Review seems a typical literary journal, divided into the usual blocks: poetry, fiction, interview, review. A deeper look reveals an eclectic and engaging selection of work. Smart but not obtuse, the poetry is well-crafted with diverse subject matter - mortality, refugee camps, a child’s collection of pets - but my favorites are the witty pieces. One standout is Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s “On Being Asked by a Student How You Know When a Poem Is Done” (“I say, when you’ve given up searching / for something to rhyme with orange because / you’ve eaten the orange.”)

Size and shape matter — literally and metaphorically. And because they do, Sentence is off to a great start with this inaugural issue. The journal has an inordinately pleasing size and shape, both literally and metaphorically. With an announced bias for work that does not veer toward sudden fiction, editor Brian Clements describes the journal's purpose as "a full-service forum for readers, writers, critics, and scholars of the prose poem tradition…critical and scholarly essays, translations, occasional interviews, a bibliography of recent criticism…and our 'Views and Reviews' section where you can vent your most dearly held opinions…Sentence will have the widest scope."

The Southern Review is one in that clutch of legendary literary journals, which in many decades of existence have unfailingly proffered the work of America’s finest writers.

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:

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.

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.”

My favorite section of this issue was the interviews: Theresa D. Smith interviews the poet Adam Zagajewski, and Mehdi Okasi interviews the novelist Lan Samantha Chang. Zagajewski discusses how he writes poetry, why he writes poetry and themes in his work. “The empirical world is less luminous than our favorite books of poetry,” he concludes. Chang talks about her craft process and how reading other contemporary novelists has challenged her to write differently than she originally intended. These mini Paris Review-like interviews are both informative and inspiring.

Slice Magazine is definitely slick. To begin with, it has a nice shape, slightly more square than rectangular, bigger than the typical paperback book – its very size lending itself more to the coffee table display than the random misplacement on an overstuffed bookshelf. Page by page, the design by Amy Sly and Amanda Ice is hip and pleasing to the eye; this issue is embellished throughout with a color I want to name “pumpkin,” the only additional color enhancing the requisite black and white. Titles are rewarded with their very own pages, the type large, unique, inviting, accompanied by a thematically appropriate illustration or photograph. Even the white spaces between sections of prose are uniquely addressed; while one story is divided by three pumpkin colored X’s, the next is divided by a series of pumpkin colored asterisks, the next by a pair of slightly staggered lines. The cover illustration by Jessica Gomez is immediately followed by an equally appealing cover photograph by Patrick Schlichtenmyer, as if the burden of narrowing in on a single cover layout was simply too much to bear. Teetering somewhere between an art/lit magazine or a lit/art magazine, the overall design and presentation of Slice is definitely exemplary.

South Loop Review is the creative nonfiction and art annual published by the English Department of Columbia College Chicago, and though said to “give greater emphasis to non-linear narratives and blended genres,” I would say the publication as a whole is fairly balanced in its variety. It might be more accurate to say the non-linear and blended genres are the stronger and more lasting pieces in this issue.

Only three writers have ever published plays in The Sewanee Review, including William Hoffman, whose drama in this issue, “The Spirit in Me,” based on a story of the same title, appeared in the Review twenty-five years ago. The play takes place in a southern West Virginia coal town (Hoffman’s father, incidentally, owned a coal mine) in the sweltering summer of 1936 and is an exploration of race and class issues which unfold inside the framework of a love story, shaped by the strong arm of the law and the church. The dialogue is fast-paced, despite the sluggish, heavy heat, and the voices clear and true and particular. It’s easy to imagine a production of this short play, with its spicy, clipped dialogue, finely etched characters, enormous imaginative opportunities for a set, and historical importance.

You can hold Sentence in one hand. It’s fat, but also squat, and just the right size for a one-fisted read, so you can hold a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, in one hand and hold up the journal in the other. But, wait – you won’t need the caffeine or the booze. Sentence provides its own special and particular high. I have loved it from the first issue, and this one is easy to love, too.

This thin, yet surprisingly full journal is a collection of poems far more diverse than their numbers might suggest. It was a wonder reading all these lovely pieces, and I’m hoping that there are many more issues of Supermachine to follow.

“I can sometimes almost read the inscriptions on brick walls, in doorways, between/ the wing blades of pigeons.” So writes Yvonne C. Murphy, in her poem “Avenue of the Strongest.” Slipstream No. 25, a journal, as always, consisting solely of poetry, is rife with equal allusions to both the body and to the written word, both in crude and refined forms. At first this seems a strange set of motifs to underline a journal. But a second look finds body and text not altogether removed, and, in fact, a relatively popular contemporary discussion.

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.

StoryQuarterly, an annual lit mag out of Chicago, is a tome of pure fiction that, if somewhat uneven, is never dissatisfying.

The Sewanee Review, for those of you not familiar, is one of the bastions, along with the Southern Review, of regional literary culture in the South and one of the reasons people talk about “Southern writers.” I always read the essays in the Sewanee Review with as much interest as the featured poetry and fiction because they stand out as vibrant and gripping.

Reliably excellent, Shenandoah delivers in this issue all that you expect – big names, solid writing, earnest essays – an overall package flavored with its slight regional tang. However, let it not be said that Shenandoah clings to the “merely” regional, as writers from farther afield – including, in this issue, Marvin Bell, David Wagoner, and Mary Oliver – crop up on a regular basis. In this issue, besides the usual offerings, you’ll find the AWP Intro Journals Project Award winners in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

My background for loving art is completely pop-music based, so of course some aspect of me is eternally High Fidelity bound to rank and list and award and order all that I read. It is in this vein that I have to be completely, over-the-top hyperbolic and reverent and honest: Swink is certainly the best new literary magazine of the year, and if the last few years hadn’t been so great (One Story, Land-Grant College Review, further back to McSweeneys and Tin House) this journal would take the prize for best in a few years.

Reviewing Sixfold is an entirely different game due to the way submissions are selected. Instead of being voted on by a judge or editors of the magazine, submissions are voted on by other writers that submit, working their way up the ranks until the top 3 are selected for prizes and others are selected for inclusion into the issue.

As usual there are great poems and stories in the latest issue of Shenandoah, though I must say that the two essays, Jeffrey Hammond’s engaging “My Father’s Hats, and a wrenching must-read by Shari Wagner, “Camels, Cowries & A Poem for Aisha,” about harrowing conditions in Somalia, are stand-outs. Set within the frame of a memoir, Jeffrey Hammond’s essay, “My Father’s Hats,” is an entertaining history of the hat, beginning with the snug pilos, the Greek name for a common, helmet-shaped cap made of felt. I sat at my computer as I read, Googling the names of hats as Hammond’s prose moved through the centuries.

Oh Sally Bingham and William Wenthe! Oh John DeCaire and Kathryn Ma! Of the 28 authors with work in this journal, the sighing, huge vowel and exclamation could be used on just about any of them. The Southwest Review comes out of Dallas, Texas and while its cover trumpets nothing so much as a mature, almost National Affairs-esque sobriety (the lower half of the cover is a list of the work inside, and maybe it’s just me, but I’d take a cover like Tin House and get my ingredient list from the table of contents), the work within wanders different trails.

I wonder what Abraham Lincoln (yes, that Abraham Lincoln), whose poems with their broad metaphoric strokes and plain, but competent rhymes conclude this issue (“And here’s an object more of dread, / Than ought the grave contains – / A human-form, with reason fled, / While wretched life remains.”), would make of Martha Carlson-Bradley’s objects: “Locked in the past, insistent, / someone knocks on the door/midmorning – // as metal trays in the freezer / trap their half-formed ice / and sanitary napkins hide, / wrapped like mummies / in the trash.”

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.

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."

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: