You shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but it doesn’t mean the cover can’t be appealing. Here are a few magazines that came in this week that made me stop to think, say “wow,” or simply announce to my coworkers, “Hey, check out this cover!”

Here’s this week’s picks:

Iron Horse Literary Review

Jubilat

Cold Mountain Review

On the back of the current issue of 32 Poems is a playful list of “32 Things We Really Should Apologize For,” written by Aaron Alford and Lauri Anderson Alford. Here are some of the best lines:

2. Touching the belly of a pregnant woman who was not pregnant
4. Watching so many kitten videos on YouTube [Though if you ask me, you don’t have to apologize]
7. Texting something mean about Liz and accidentally sending it to Liz.
19. That time we got on WebMD and diagnosed you with six different diseases.
23. Telling Liz, “It’s fine. No one can tell you’re not wearing a bra.”
29. Standing too close in the supermarket and judging your groceries.
32. Creating an eHarmony profile for Liz without telling her.

All I have to say is, poor Liz.

The rest of the issue features “Chad Davidson, Anna Journey, Amit Majmudar, Caki Wilkinson and nearly two-dozen other poets as fine as you’ll find anywhere.”

Summer is the perfect time to become a Broadsided Vector!

Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.

Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.

The resulting letter-sized pdf is designed to be downloaded and printed by anyone with a computer and printer. The goal is to create something both gorgeous and cheap, to put words and art on the streets.

The site contains a gallery of past broadsides, a map of cities/state/countries that have been broadsided (and where you can add yours), and links to other broadside sites.

Staple guns and duct tape to the ready – time to get your city on the map!

[Pictured: June 2013 “The Glass Images” – Broadsided’s Official 100th Publication! Poem by Ladan Osman; Art by Meghan Keane.]

The twelfth issue of Burnside Review, admits Editor Sid Miller, “marks a departure for the journal,” but this isn’t bad news. “It still feels like a Burnside Review,” Miller writes. “My hope is that it reads like one too.”

So what’s the change? Previous Poetry Editor Bill Bogart transferred to work the new book department, and John Pursley III stepped into the role. “John came into the mix because I like and respect his work,” Miller says. “I suppose John rooted for poems that Bill would not have. I suppose Bill would have rooted for others.” Additionally, this is the first issue with Adam O’Connor Rodriguez as fiction editor. “He too shares our sensibility and has made a big impact on the issue,” Miller says. And in the end, Miller thanks everyone for their hard work, claiming that they are the ones “who make this thing work.”

So what’s in the actual issue? Pieces from Matthew Lippman, Sandra Kohler, Rae Armantrout, Brooklyn Copeland, Melinda Wilson, A.M. O’Malley, Jennifer Chapis, Andrew Michael Roberts, Lauren Hilger, Donald Dunbar, Marlys West, Joseph Mackin, and more.

The June 2013 issue of Poetry is special; it is entirely devoted to landays, “oral folk couplets that have been composed by and circulated among Afghan women for centuries.” In her introduction to the issue, Guest Editor Eliza Griswold writes that a landay is “an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Here is an example, published on the back cover of the issue:

Seperation, you set fire
in the heart and home of every lover.

Griswold explains that landays are made up of twenty-two syllables in two lines, nine syllables on the first and thirteen on the second. “The poem ends with the sound ‘ma’ or ‘na.’ Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not.” She then goes into a deep history of landays and how they are used today. The issue is worth getting if even for the introduction alone. But I wouldn’t stop reading there; the rest of the issue is filled with moving landays and photographs. It is certainly an issue to have in your collection.

Volume 58 marks the 40th Anniversary Issue for U.S. 1 Worksheets and is dedicated to Elizabeth Anne Socolow, “a founding member and friend.” In her editor’s note, Nancy Scott revels over the countless hours that volunteers have put in over the last forty years to make U.S. 1 Worksheets the publication it is today.

“Over time we’ve changed the look of the journal,” she writes, “from the early tabloid to the perfect bound edition today. With each issue we welcome the best writing that comes our way from Cooperative members and from other poets across the country and beyond. As the Cooperative has grown so has the number of poets whom we publish. For the first time we have instituted a membership drive in order to raise the necessary funds to continue U.S. 1 Worksheets as a print publication for another 40 years.”

Cactus Heart, an online magazine reviewed on Screen Reading, has just put out their first print issue, featuring work by Carley Besl, Hannah Baker-Siroty, Erica Bodwell, Merina Canyon, Teresa De La Cruz, Pippa Anais Gaubert, Theodosia Henney, Peycho Kanev, Jay Logan Lance, Victoria G. Martinez, Michael Metivier, Anne Britting Oleson, Jenny Qi, Stephen V. Ramey, Alison Reed, Eboni Sade’, Karissa Knox Sorrell, Yong Takahashi, Sylvain Verstricht, Eric Werner, and Matthew Woodman.

Induction (2001-2002) Image courtesy of http://www.stillpointartgallery.com/

Artist Julie A. Struck writes, “So, why are you compelled to make art, she asks, and I shock myself by quite honestly answering—because my mother never wanted me to.” She goes on to say that although her mother was an artist herself, she never praised Struck for her artistic skills: “I always felt that art was an avenue forbidden to me because it was exclusively hers.” But this only pushes her forward.

In a piece in the current issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly, Struck writes about her struggles with her family and pursuit for an education in art. “My family, especially my mother, continue to function as endless subject matter for my creative productions,” she says. “It is the only support my mother ever gave me, along with passing on her innate artistic talent. However, not one of y eight siblings, let alone my mother, ever asks me about my artwork or my long, difficult career in teaching art at the college level. It doesn’t stop me from making art, or teaching, however. In fact, without the familiar familial opposition, especially my mother’s, I suspect i would never make any art. Or write this.”

Struck’s art also appears in this issue, honoring her with the award for Best Three-Dimensional or Mixed-Media Artwork. Also included in this issue of Still Point are portfolios by Gary Enge, Ronnj Medini, Leslie Parke, and Jill Valliere; features by Monica Nawrocki, Laurie Schreiber, and Christina Tang-Bernas; and poetry by Lilace Mellin Guignard, Margôt Maddison-MacFadyen, and Judith Sornberger.

The current issue of Copper Nickel is being dedicated to Jake Adam York, the founding and managing editor of the magazine that passed away suddenly in December of 2012 at the age of forty. “Copper Nickel was a confluence of Jake’s talents as a poet, teacher, and editor,” write the editors. “As a poet, Jake cherished the persistence of the human voice, especially in times of great duress and crisis. One could say that the journal, for Jake, was a physical manifestation of a chorus of voices, all singing different songs, sometimes in wildly different tempos and styles, but all in the name of literary art. As a teacher, Jake lived to inspire others, and he loved to watch the steady build of enthusiasm as a student discovered the unique gifts and responsibilities of the work of the literary editor. Jake’s own editorial work in particular clearly brought him profound joy. Whenever an issue gradually began to take shape, his excitement at the prospect of bringing a carefully-curated collection of writing into the world was palpable . . . We miss him dearly.”

The issue features the work of Laura Adamczyk, Margaret Bashaar, Sean Thomas Dougherty, James Flaherty, Roxane Gay, Meredith Herndon, W. Todd Kaneko, Sandy Longhorn, Natalie Mesnard, Jason Myers, Rebecca Nison, Kate Reed, Austin Segrest, Siolo Thompson, and many more.

Tiferet Talk, the blogtalk radio show for TIFERET: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, seeks to aid the journal’s mission of promoting peace in the individual and in the world through writing. Their monthly program interviews writers and religious and spiritual leaders about topics relevant to these goals. The host for this program is Melissa Studdard, contributing editor of TIFERET.

Tiferet Talk interviews of 2013 include Judith Hanson Lasater, Julie Maloney, Natalie Goldberg, Helene Cardona and John FitzGerald, Molly Peacock, and upcoming shows Jane Hirshfield 6/17, Doug Anderson 7/29, Ann Hood 8/19, Andrea Polard 9/30, Alfred Corn 10/21, Jim Hanson 11/25, Kanta Bosniak 12/16.

All episodes are available live (times for each show on the site) and past shows are available for free on iTunes.

Conjunction‘s 60th issue features a special section of three previously untranslated “dramolets” by Robert Walser. “Walter, who personally knew more than most about loss and absence,” writes Bradford Morrow, “is seen here in a fresh light thanks to Daniele Pantano and James Reidel’s deft translations . . . I believe that readers who already admire Walser’s vision and achievement will find his remarkable plays a cause for celebration.”

The issue, titled “In Absentia,” is all about “Things Gone Missing. People vanished or changed beyond recognition. A once-bedrock belief now so alien as not to seem believable anymore. A woman’s threat of suicide. A man’s phantom limb. Another who comes home from prison only to find that home is no longer what it was, friends no longer who they were. Love gained, love lost. A promise forgotten. A couple gone off the grid into the woods and ghost-plagued madness. An exceptionally ill-timed death…”

The issue features the work of Joyce Carol Oates, Lucy Ives, Brian Evenson, Yannick Murphy, G. C. Waldrep, Robert Olen Butler, Miranda Mellis, Robert Coover, and many more.

All Write Already! is a “completely unpretentious” literary podcast hosted by Karen Shimmin and Willy Nast, with episodes posted on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month and available free on iTunes.

Each 30-40 minutes episode features a reading and interview with a guest writer. Past guests have included Shannon Cason, Stephen Markley, Alyson Lyon, David Stuart MacLean, Samantha Irby, Adam McOmber, Claire Zulkey, Christine Sneed, Randy Richardson, Jen Bosworth, Patricia Ann McNair, Keith Ecker, James Finn Garner, Amina Gautier, J.W. Basilo, Samula Park, and Rebecca Makkai.

Each episode also includes topical discussions, such as The Secrets of Successful Blogs, The People Who Actually Read Your Query Letters, The Return of Short Story Collections, The View from the Slush Pile, Your Brain on Paper vs. Screen and lots more.

“All Write Already!” says Nast, “is for writers, readers, or anyone who likes a good story.”

Nimrod International Journal‘s current issue is dedicated to writers that are ages 57 and older and is called “Lasting Matters.” Francine Ringold writes in her editor’s note, “Good words are always lasting, so are good people. They last in our memory and on the page. But why 57? Amazing as it may seem to those who know the typical history of ‘lit mags’ (2 to 10 years at most), this fall 2013 Nimrod International Journal will be celebrating its 57th year of continuous publication. With the guidance and dedication of our advisory and editorial boards, Nimrod promises to last another 57 years or more.

The issue features poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by Ted Kooser, Stephen Dunn, Lorna Crozier, Ron Wallace, Jennifer Compton, Ivy Dempsey, Harry Humes, Jean Esteve, Jeff Gundy, Roberta Murphy, CJ Muchhala, Vince Sgambati, Lee Sharkey, Anita Skeen, Lilvia Soto, Mary Lee Wladrom, Jack Wolfteich, and more.

“I believe women are human beings. Pretty radical, that. I don’t believe women are angels, or that every woman is morally superior to every man . . . Women come in as many different varieties as men do, and are as subject to circumstance.” This writes Margaret Atwood in an interview with Elissa Schappell featured in the summer issue of Tin House. This was in response to Shrappell’s question, “Do you consider yourself a feminist writer? Is it possible to be a writer and a feminist, without being a feminist writer?” Atwood says that when using terms such as “Christian writer” or “Communist writer” or “feminist writer,” people often “flounder around” for an answer as to what the terms mean. “So how can you put up your hand for something that is so fuzzy in the minds of those who are asking the question?”

In the interview, Atwood discusses female characters, speculative fiction, political bias, writer’s “moral obligation to society,” and her forthcoming book MaddAdam as the third book in a trilogy.

The Summer Reading issue of Tin House also includes a new story by Stephen King, two new poems by Tom Sleigh, pieces by Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Jennifer Gilmore, and Jodi Angel, and more.

Because 2013 marks Carolina Quarterly‘s 65th year publishing, the editors decided it was time for a (minor) makeover. With the Spring 2013 issue, the magazine has a “crisp interior layout and sharp new cover.” Instead of an image taking up the whole background of the cover, the new cover features an image in the top third of the cover with a lot more white space on the bottom. It also features a short blurb about “In this issue.” The inside has a new attractive font and some of the masthead and table of contents page vary a little, but the same general layout applies.

In this particular issue you will find “Celestial bodies and infected minds, Mountains and sinkholes, plus Light, lunacy, and possums.” Featured writers include Carolina R. Antich, Rebecca Bagget, Marc Berley, John F. Buckley, Sarah Carey, Jack Christian, Eli Connaughton, Matthew Gavin Frank, Krystin Gollihue, Aaron Hamburger, Suzanne Marie Hopcroft, Mary Karr, Dale Roche-Lebrec, Michael Martin, Amyisla McCombie, Corrina Rosendhal, Elliot Sanders, Russel Swensen, Leonid Tishkov, Gemini Wahhaj, and more.

Canadian radio reporter David Gutnick has put together both a radio report and web story on 28-year-old Sarah McNally, whose parents founded McNally-Robinson, one of Canada’s largest independent bookstores. Sarah McNally opened The McNally-Jackson Store in New York, a store that supplies home businesses with “Goods for The Study.” This is McNally’s second business venture, her first a bookstore in Soho. Gutnick interviews McNally and a number of customers and employees in his 19-minute radio documentary: Sarah McNally, “Another Hipster In The Business: God Help Me.” It’s wonderful to hear McNally’s perspective on “the reading life,” how she started her bookstore in the wake of many other indie closings, and how she doesn’t feel Amazon is her competitor since what she offers is the human experience we can’t get online. The hipster quote, by the way, is  from McNally herself.

The online magazine Steel Toe Review has just put out volume 2 of their print series. Some of the best work they published online in 2012 is featured in this issue. It also features never-before-published illustrations. “Our mission has evolved over time, and it may seem contradictory to an outsider,” writes M. David Hornbuckle in the editor’s note. “We call ourselves a journal of contemporary Southern arts and literature, but what we publish often extends well beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Ideally, we think of ourselves as a bridge to connect the established with the new, the traditional with the experimental, and the Southern with (not just the Northern, but) the world without borders. Our home is Birmingham, Alabama, in a sense, but it is also the internet, and in every literal and metaphorical sense, the internet is about making connections. And so that is what we do.”

The current issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review contains a short interview with Jake Adam York, author of Persons Unknown which contributes “to the dialogue surrounding the development, and launch, of the Civil Rights Movement.” Jake Adler had interviewed in in November 2012 as part of a class assignment through email. And in his introduction to the interview, Adler states, “Dr. York commemorates, and pays homage to, the tragic lives which suffered at the hands of ignorance and oppression by highlighting the simple and preposterous cause for all of the hate and violence that has endured: race. It doesn’t matter who writes this poetry, I learned, but that they write it in the first place. . . Dr. York was one of those rare, champion poets who knew what his voice was, what it needed to say and how it needed [to] say it. . . He deserves the utmost recognition and marked celebration.” In five questions, the interview discusses York’s writings, his choices in writing, and his inspirations for beginning work on Persons Unknown.

In an introduction to a portfolio showcasing the poet Marie Ponsot who won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Poetry Editor Christian Wiman starts, “Marie Ponsot wrote many of the poems for which she will be remembered while raising seven children all by herself.” He goes on to say that, “If that sentence alone doesn’t cause you to pause in awe for a moment, then I’d wager you haven’t experienced the demands and decibels of the little darlings. Ponsot herself knew all to well the cost . . . The wonder is that she knew . . . the wonder.”

Here is a sampling, the first stanza of Ponsot’s “A Visit”:

Come for duty’s sake (as girls do) we watch
The sly very old woman wile away from her pious
And stagger-blind friend, their daily split of gin.
She pours big drinks. We think of what
Has crumpled, folded, slumped her flesh in
And muddied her once tumbling blood that, young,
Sped her, threaded with brave power: a Tower,
Now Babel, then of ivory, of the Shulamite,
Collapsed to this keen dame moving among
Herself. She hums, she plays with used bright
Ghosts, makes real dolls, and drinking sings Come here
My child, and feel it, dear. A crooking finger
Shows how hot the oven is.

Read the full poem and portfolio in Poetry‘s May 2013 issue.

Aurora Antonovic, Editor-in-Chief of Magnapoets was surprised to come back from a year-long hiatus to find that Magnapoets had been running in her absence by someone she had once trusted who had stolen her identity. Antonovic wants to set the record right in her May 7 post about the incident, assuring writers and readers that she maintains claim to Magnapoets, past and future. NewPages has updated all of our links and contacts to this publication and urge our readers who may have had prior contact to do the same.

Assistant to The Georgia Review editors C. J. Bartunek had the opportunity to talk with Coleman Barks in his home in Athens in January 2013. The Georgia Review offers Bartunek’s comments on the experience as well as two audio recordings – one of the interview and one of Barks reading from his own  work as well as Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, lines from which Barks included in his long poem “The VOICE inside WATER.” Bartunek notes that this reading is a rare opportunity for listeners “because in one of the poem’s copious footnotes [Barks] writes that ‘Most likely. . . I will never bring this poem and its notes to a reading. Too long, too willful in its wandering.'”

The interview begins with Barks: “I’ve never tried to think systematically about these long poems that I write or to justify them with any kind of poetic or rationale. Steve keeps trying to make me think more consciously about what I’m doing, but I don’t like that. I resist that. I just finished this poem and felt that it was a whole thing, somehow, and I felt good about it. But now I’ve been rereading it and justify it, and see what questions you might ask, and I wrote down nine purposes that I have in this poem, if I were going to teach it, I guess.”

The Glimmer Train Bulletin (available free) features craft and commentary essays by writers whose works have recently been published in Glimmer Train Stories. The most recent monthly issue (#76) includes Ella Mei Yon [pictured], Finding a Way In; Benjamin Percy, Method Writing; Michelle Richmond, On the Joys of Not Finishing What You Started; Daniel Wallace, Notes Toward Future Works; and Lance Weller, Gut. Or, Never Knowing the Next Word.

To My Mother
by Christina Rossetti

To-day’s your natal day;
Sweet flowers I bring:
Mother, accept, I pray
My offering.

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.