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Beloit Poetry Journal – Fall 2005

Volume 56 Number 1

Fall 2005

Quarterly

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Beloit Poetry Journal threw me for a loop with this issue, by including not one, or two, but seven poems by Mary Molinary at the beginning of the journal—and in a slim journal such as this one (48 pages total) this makes quite an impact. The upside of having so many poems by a single artist is that you get a good solid idea of that artist’s work. Molinary’s seven poems are seven lyric, existential takes on the time 8:38—in a style more post-avant-garde/experimental than you might expect from this journal. Does this signal a shift in editorial preference? I await the next issue to find out.

Beloit Poetry Journal threw me for a loop with this issue, by including not one, or two, but seven poems by Mary Molinary at the beginning of the journal—and in a slim journal such as this one (48 pages total) this makes quite an impact. The upside of having so many poems by a single artist is that you get a good solid idea of that artist’s work. Molinary’s seven poems are seven lyric, existential takes on the time 8:38—in a style more post-avant-garde/experimental than you might expect from this journal. Does this signal a shift in editorial preference? I await the next issue to find out. The issue also features four poems by Albert Goldbarth. Of course, most of us are already familiar with Goldbarth’s body of work – in the poems here, he is exploring with typical expansiveness and whimsy the secular worship of objects. With her poem “Things I Would Do for You,” Lee Ann Roripaugh charmed me with me her meditation on love and beetles, among other insects: “I would capture dragonflies, boil them with / ginger, garlic, chili pepper, onions, and coconut / milk, serve them with an herbed coconut soup / drizzled with red ant eggs, like caviar…” Marion K. Stocking, in the review section, takes on (with her usual intellectual vitality) poetry in translation again, this time a sweeping glance at Scandinavian, Germanic, and Slavic poetry. [Beloit Poetry Journal, P.O. Box 151, Farmington, ME 04938. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $5. www.bpj.org] —Jeannine Hall Gailey

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