Literary Magazine Reviews
Posted May 15, 2013
Absinthe
New European Writing
Number 18
2012
Biannual
Reviewed by Sarah Gorman
Published out of Farmington Hills, Michigan, Absinthe identifies its contributors with the help of more than 40 editorial advisors, including Aleksandar Hemon, Adam J. Sorkin, and Sonja Lehner. These advisors, themselves writers and translators, along with Absinthe’s editors, have selected for this issue a preponderance of Eastern European works, including contributions from Romania, Moldova, the Czech Republic, and Croatia, as well as Spain, France, and Scandinavia...
[Read full review]
top of page
Arc Poetry Magazine
Volume 70
Winter 2013
Triannual
Review by Karen Rigby
The seventieth issue of Arc, an annual journal published in Ottawa, Canada, features an email interview with poet Elizabeth Bachinsky,
in which she writes: “We really are living in hybrid times.” A
fitting remark both for the “cultural capital” writers find
themselves living with and for this intelligently edited gathering,
which takes as its theme “Reuse and Recycle: Finding Poetry in
Canada.” Poetry editor Shane Rhodes contributes the titular essay,
considering reuse and recycling in the context of found poetry: its
background in Canada, its shifting motivations, and its
internet-driven permutations...
[Read full review]
top of page
Aufgabe
Number 11
2012
Annual
Review by Sherra Wong
Aufgabe is a tome. It weighs 1.5 pounds on my bathroom scale, and that’s a paperback without any glossy pages. The journal publishes once a year, and the 2012 issue contains American poetry, a section of poems by poets from El Salvador in the original and in translation edited by Christian Nagler, other poems in translation, essays, reviews, and “notes.” The heft of the physical journal extends to its contents. Aufgabe
is not an easy read; it is a lot of work. You read it because you’ve
made up your mind to educate yourself…
[Read full review]
top of page
Big Muddy
A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley
Volume 12 Issue 2
2013
Biannual
Review by David R. Matteri
The Mississippi River holds a special place in American literature. Mark Twain wrote extensively about it in his memoir, “Life on the Mississippi”: “The Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.” Big Muddy,
a literary journal published by the Southeast Missouri State
University Press, is as remarkable as the mighty river it is named
after. This journal delivers stories, poems, and essays related to
the Mississippi River Basin and its bordering ten-state area, but
you don’t have to live in this area of the United States…
[Read full review]
top of page
Court Green
Number 10
2013
Annual
Review by John Palen
Court Green devotes a big chunk of every issue to a dossier on a special topic or theme. This year it’s sex. There are many fine poems here, but before I get to them, I want to make an observation based on reading so many poems about sex in one bunch.
Writing about sex with the intention of recreating the experience
poses an unusual challenge. Unlike writing about food, travel, art,
music, and cinema, writing about sex is difficult to make anywhere
near as good as the real thing. Catalogs, bragging, and lists of
shocking activity get boring…
[Read full review]
top of page
Fjords
Volume 2 Issue 1
2013
Biannual
Review by Mary Florio
The experience of a minute occurs differently on a train, in sixty parts, rather than the measurable clattering of east coast winter hellos, vowels in mini-seconds through the incisors. Traveling by rail has been the essential inorganic character of thousands of recollections of the Western canon. Like the prospects of vaudeville and print journalism, it was meant to last forever. And thanks to a moving, technically masterful essay by Barbara Hass in the current issue of
Fjords, it does. Her essay, “This Wilderness We Can’t Contain,”
is imaginative…
[Read full review]
top of page
Kaleidoscope
Number 66
Winter/Spring 2013
Biannual
Review by Cara Bigony
“Accept the changes, Celebrate the advantages, Find Purposes.” This quote from Mike Shirk, a disabled artist featured in Kaleidoscope, exemplifies the humanity, humility, and honesty you’ll find in the issue. A magazine dedicated to discussing disabilities through art, fiction, poetry, and personal essays, Kaleidoscope is inspiring. This “Significant Relationship” issue (the last print issue before they transition to a digital model) offers comfort to caregivers, understanding to outsiders, and hope to the disabled. Kaleidoscope
is different than almost every other literary magazine I’ve read…
[Read full review]
top of page
The Long Story
Number 31
2013
Annual
Review by Julie Nichols
Reading a long short story is a special process somewhere between starting up slow and circling around for the long haul, as you do for a novel, and nabbing on the fly the conflict and character quirks thrown out by the early paragraphs of a short story which are swiftly brought to some end. So I respect and admire the unique mission of The Long Story:
to publish stories of eight to twenty thousand words (most between
eight and twelve thousand) and let the reader develop a relationship
with the ideas and people unfolding between the first and
twenty-thousandth words…
[Read full review]
top of page
Mānoa
Volume 24 Number 2
Winter 2012
Biannual
Review by Sherra Wong
In the United States, the word freedom is talismanic, introduced from kindergarten as the American creation myth and held up by politicians and news commentators, rightly or not, as the premier American export. We own the idea—so the subtext goes—and the rest of the world struggles to become like us. So when I hold in my hand the Winter 2012 issue of Mānoa, called On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State,
I wonder how each piece and photograph defines freedom: does the
definition conform or aspire to the American definition, and is it
first and foremost political…
[Read full review]
top of page
Poetry
Volume 202 Number 1
April 2013
Monthly
Review by Anne Graue
If any magazine could create a mythology in one edition it would be Poetry. To accomplish this in one issue is next to miraculous, but this is what they have done in the April 2013 issue. Christian Winman and a small cast of editors make their work look effortless, the selections of work by established poets speaking for a larger humanity. The inside cover features a poem by Anslem Hollo
(1934–2013). First published in the longstanding journal in January
of 1969, the untitled, nine-line poem reminds us that poetry is
timeless and always relevant. It also sets a tone…
[Read full review]
top of page
Potomac Review
Issue 52
Winter 2013
Biannual
Review by David R. Matteri
The Potomac Review publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from a wide selection of established and emerging authors. From the homepage of their website: “Our philosophy welcomes variety, and through it, we create an organic flow of ideas to contribute to the literary conversation.” The conversation in this issue is definitely worth checking out.
I was impressed by the selection of strong fiction in this journal.
“A Cliffside Home” by Tyler Evans, for example, is a funny ghost
story with a tragic center…
[Read full review]
top of page
REAL
Volume 36 Number 2
Fall/Winter 2012
Biannual
Review by Mary Florio
In REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters, Billy Longino interviews Stewart O’Nan and extracts the following prescription: “I found that in a lot of the plotted fiction the plot was getting in the way of what I thought the novel does best: create depth and use time to illuminate character.” The interview explores O’Nan’s
literary theory in compelling insight. Hearing the analysis also
informs a reading of the rest of the journal, in which writers
succeed in illuminating character…
[Read full review]
top of page
Windhover
A Journal of Christian Literature
Volume 17
Spring 2013
Annual
Review by Julie Nichols
Take note of the subtitle of Windhover. If you’re not a
Christian, or if you don’t entertain at least a little curiosity
about the claims of the Christian world regarding the salvific
message and death-into-life of what Brian Doyle calls “that gaunt
rabbi from Jerusalem two thousand years ago,” this may not be the
journal for you. Every poem (there are thirty), prose piece (three,
and two reviews) and work of art (several color reproductions by
each of two impressive visual artists) requires at least some
familiarity with the Biblical and cultural roots of Christian
thought…
[Read full review]
top of page
Zymbol
Issue 1
Spring/Summer 2013
Biannual
Review by Cara Bigony
Zymbol is steeped in summer. A journal of surrealist fiction and poetry, this issue’s transcendence—occasionally incorporating the grotesque—appears with a tinge of nostalgia for warm days that have slipped away. With this nostalgia comes a feeling of loneliness, and an issue filled with introverted voices trying to find a connection to the world around them. Lost in a moment, Ben Nardolilli’s
“The Latter Time” savors a brief escape from linear time. Taking a
full breath of summer, his poem teases us to escape…
[Read full review]
top of page