Literary Magazine Reviews

Alaska Quarterly Review

Volume 27 Numbers 1&2

Spring/Summer 2010

Biannual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Guest editor Amy Hempel selected the work of 21 writers for the issue’s special “Innovative Fiction” focus. She looked for work that was “new,” but also new to the author (poets writing fiction; fiction writers experimenting with memoir forms). And she sought work “that was visceral and visual, that joins nerve and insight, that is darkly funny, that does not back away from compassion…and that amplifies the possibilities of what a story can be” . . .
[Read full review here]

 

The Asian American Literary Review

Volume 1 Issue 1

Spring 2010

Biannual

Review by Karen Rigby

The inaugural issue of The Asian American Literary Review – whose mission is to form “a space for writers who consider the designation ‘Asian American’ a fruitful starting point for artistic vision and community” – features an interview with Karen Tei Yamashita; three book reviews; poetry; and prose that often concerns individuals confronted by personal shortcomings . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Blue Earth Review

Volume 8 Issue 2

Spring 2010

Biannual

Review by Lesley Dame

Published by Minnesota State University at Mankato, Blue Earth Review is a stellar compilation of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. This happy threesome is fresh and enjoyable. There’s no niche. No artwork other than the cover. No crazy long commentaries by editors. Therefore, why go on and on about this journal’s vision? No reason as far as I can see. Let’s jump right in . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Bombay Gin

Volume 36 Number 1

2010

Biannual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

This issue is dedicated – in a trend that is becoming increasingly (happily) noticeable in literary magazines of all kinds – to translation, and reflects the editors’ efforts to “sharpen Bombay Gin’s focus.” The Translation Portfolio includes versions from the Navajo of Frank Mitchell’s “17 Horse Songs” by Jerome Rothenberg and an accompanying essay; an interview with Zhang Er, followed by poems of hers translated from the Chinese . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Carpe Articulum

Volume 3 Issue 2

Summer 2010

Quarterly

Review by Terri Denton

This hefty issue of Carpe Articulum begins with an account of David Hoffman’s Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, from the author, himself a writer for the Washington Post, and an interviewer. There are so many secrets detailed in this issue that one can imagine just how explosive the book itself is. As Ted Hoffman relates, both from the book and from his interviewee . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Fringe

Issues 20, 21, 22

Fall 2009, Winter 2010, Spring 2010

Online Quarterly

Review by Henry F. Tonn

This lit mag has a manifesto: “We worry about the state of modern literature. We worry that it’s too realist, monolithic, corporate, print-bound and locked in its own bubble…We think literature is a place to safely explore controversial and unpleasant topics and unfamiliar points of view.” Online magazine websites are vastly different in structure, and I found this one a bit difficult to negotiate in the beginning, but there are many gems to be discovered . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Gargoyle

55

2009

Annual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Gargoyle is a fat annual published in Arlington, Virginia. At nearly four hundred pages, this large volume of work is surprisingly consistent in tone, which, for the most part, tends toward the sardonic and distanced, rich in contemporary imagery, with edgy and provocative openings, and social, political, and cultural implications to varying degrees. This issue presents the work of nearly 70 poets, 5 nonfiction writers, two and a half dozen fiction writers, and two photographers . . .
[Read full review here]

 

get born

the uncensored voice of motherhood

Spring 2010

Quarterly

Review by Lesley Dame

As a woman entering an age in life when motherhood is a main area of interest and concern, I was excited and intrigued by the idea of a magazine titled get born and dedicated to “the uncensored voice of motherhood.” The title of this magazine alone is reminiscent of certain phrases like get lost and get bent. I must say, I was very hopeful. get born is a motherhood magazine with attitude. If you’re looking for a goo-goo ga-ga read about the glories and exultations of motherhood, move on . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Glimmer Train

Issue 75

Summer 2010

Quarterly

Review by Terri Denton

In this issue of Glimmer Train, there is an interview with Andrew Porter by Trevor Gore. Porter is the author of The Theory of Light and Matter, a collection of short stories, recently published by Vintage/Knopf that won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction. He’s also won far too many accolades for me to mention here, except to say that he’s a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, which put him up a notch in my view . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Literal

Latin American Voices

Volume 20

Spring 2010

Triannual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Literal is a bilingual journal published three times a year in Houston, Texas. It’s a large-format, glossy, visually impressive publication of political reflection, artwork, fiction, scholarly essays, book reviews, interviews, poetry, and commentary. The current issue is dedicated to the intellectual as a “contemporary pensive figure.” The exploration begins with the cover photo of a sculpture by Mexican artist Victor Rodríguez, “White Head, 2005,” the head of a man lying on its side, eyes closed . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Lumina

Volume 9

2010

Annual

Review by Terri Denton

This issue begins with a simple question, but Susan Nisenbaum Becker’s “What If?” is a complex amalgamation of blessings that might just change everything, but that ends with a rather sobering wondering. For instance, she writes, "What if you stood on the beach / and blessed all the dead, especially / the bloated seal at your feet // held out your arms like a conductor, / blessed the luscious air covering you like a robe, / shouted over the great orchestral exhalations and inhalations" . . .
[Read full review here]

 

The New Quarterly

Canadian Writers and Writing

Number 114

Spring 2010

Quarterly

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Why I adored this issue of the New Quarterly:

1. It’s composed entirely of list poems (“To List is Human” is the theme).

2. Guest editor Diane Schoemperlen’s cover art (a glorious collage) and her prose and collage/images of images, “222 Brief Notes on the Study of Nature, Human and Otherwise,” are exemplary specimens of a list’s power in the service of art-making . . .
[Read full review here]

 

The Orange Coast Review

2009

Annual

Review By Molly Horan

Small and unassuming, The Orange Coast Review, an annual put out by Orange Coast College, is visually dazzling, for the cover art to the glossy midsection gallery. Including far more artwork than most journals, the 2009 issue features the work of fifteen different artists, several contributing multiple works. The most arresting pieces include Barbara Higgins’s photographs of mod-clad mannequins at a glitzy Laundromat, Jonathan Fletcher’s series of pin-hole photos . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Oyez Review

Volume 37

Spring 2010

Annual

Review by Kenneth Nichols

Though lamentably thin for an annual journal, Oyez Review still provides the reader with tremendous value and represents a pleasant afternoon of reading. Considered as a whole, the editors selected fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art with a European feel. The work traffics in easily accessible themes, but refuses to offer easy, unfulfilling answers to important questions . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Quiddity

Volume 3 Number 1

Spring/Summer 2010

Biannual

Review by Terri Denton

This issue of Quiddity is simply delightful. Beginning with Fani Papageorgiou’s poem “The Welder,” it goes about its business of entertaining the masses of literary fandom: "A lifetime is never long enough for us to be consoled. / It is in childhood that we suspect / It’s only dreams we do not die. / Yet there is comfort Relief found in glue, paper, and chapped lips / Wet hair and muscle pain, / Rusty cargo steamers cluttered with sodden leaves" . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Salmagundi

Numbers 166-167

Spring-Summer 2010

Quarterly

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Almost nothing can excite me more on the cover of a magazine than these five words “a novella by Andrea Barrett.” Barrett is a terrific storyteller and a master of the form. Novellas are hard to find (so few journals publish them). And Salmagundi is always great, so finding the combination Barrett/novella/Salmagundi signals good reading ahead. And both Barrett and the journal deliver . . .
[Read full review here]

 

Sentence

a Journal of Prose Poetics

Number 7

2009

Annual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, a publication of Firewheel Editions is, in my not-always-so-humble-opinion, one of the most exciting and satisfying journals being published today. Editor Brian Clements favors work that is provocative (but not ceaselessly edgy) and often inventive, but nonetheless solidly grounded. There is seldom anything superfluous or ostentatious; never anything crude; nothing designed to shock or surprise for the mere fact of surprising. The work tends to be highly original and idiosyncratic . . .
[Read full review here] 

 

Stone Canoe

A Journal of Arts and Ideas from Upstate New York

Number 4

Spring 2010

Annual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

This issue is dedicated to Hayden Carruth who taught at Syracuse University where the journal is produced. “It has never been our intention,” say the editors’ notes, “to explicitly define ‘upstateness’ in so many words…but it does seem to be true, in a purely ostensive way…that our editors in each issue have helped communicate a vision of our region that is more vital than perhaps even those of us who live here would suspect.” Upstate is, in fact, they conclude “a state of mind” . . .
[Read full review here]

 

West Wind Review

2010

Annual

Review by Sima Rabinowitz

"Let me tangle // Tangent / Tangible." “Let me tangle” (from “Noli Me,” a long poem by Nathan Austin) would be a great tagline for West Wind Review. This “poetry and fiction anthology” from Southern Oregon University, is one wild tangle of words. Rather than worry about what it all means, I just got into the spirit of the endeavor, two hundred pages of tangles and tangents . . .
[Read full review here]