Reviewers (see
Contributors page):
EN - Eric Nolan; GK -
Gina Kokes; JG - Jamey Gallagher;
JHG -
Jeannine Hall Gailey;
SR - Sima Rabinowitz; TD -
Terri Denton
Edited by Denise
Hill
Shenandoah
– Strongly Spent, 50 Years of Poetry
Volume 53, Numbers 1-2
Spring/Summer 2003
If almost every issue of Shenandoah has a table of
contents judiciously sprinkled with well-known famous poets, this
special double-length, 50-year anniversary issue reads like a
who’s-who of literary stars - Rita Dove, Robert Lowell, Maxine Kumin,
W.H. Auden, Carolyn Kizer. I’d be surprised if they could squeeze
any more award-winning poets in here. I loved the witty
juxtapositions throughout, like Andrew Hudgins’ “The Gospel
Villanelle” across the page from Langston Hughes’ “Ballad of the Two
Thieves” – evidence that someone was paying attention to the
smallest details of layout. Even works by less famous contemporaries
sparkle in this collection. This is a great cross-section of
contemporary American poetry, worth special-ordering (for the
special, double-issue price of $16) even if you don’t read this
review regularly. The 200-plus pages of poetry are sandwiched by two
essays, Richard Wilbur’s “Poetry and Happiness” and R.T. Smith’s “Afterword,”
which was full of fond memories of the poems and poets in this
issue. It was hard to pick my favorite single quote out of so many
wonderful poems, but I liked the following lines from “Poem” by e.e.
cummings: “when are we never,but forever now / (hosts of
eternity;not guests of seem) / believe me,dear,clocks have enough to
do / without confusing timelessness and time.” [Shenandoah,
Washington and Lee University, Troubadour Theater, 2nd Floor, Box W,
Lexington, VA 24450-0303.
shenandoah.wlu.edu/index.html]
― JHG
Ploughshares
Volume 29, Number 1
Spring 2003
This issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by accomplished
poet Carl Phillips, features diverse works of poetry and short
fiction that are drawn together by emotional intensity. For
instance, these lines from Peter Gordon’s “Birds of Paradise”
illustrate the tense melancholy that epitomizes the story: “They
shot him en masse, the air crackling and popping, the skinny birds
pecking at the dirt flying in all directions like confetti. // A few
days after this story was relayed in a letter from Rita’s cousin
Gloria, Oscar started appearing in Rita’s dreams, always acting out
the same scene, showing up at our back door wearing a
blood-spattered white shirt and holding a bouquet of birds of
paradise. The not-quite fresh flowers jut out from the cylindrical
newspaper wrapping like baby bird heads, their pointy beaks and
orange-yellow markings making them look almost predatory.” Other
notable pieces include Lise Haines’ story, “A Glue-Related Problem,”
Rita Dove’s poem “Bolero,” and Jennifer Kronovet’s poem, “Her
Version, with Interruptions.” [Ploughshares, Emerson College, 120
Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116. Email: pshares@emerson.edu
Single copy $9.95.
www.pshares.org/index.cfm] ―
JHG
The Journal
Volume 27.1
Spring/Summer 2003
The Journal, produced by Ohio State University, celebrates
its thirty-year anniversary with a mix of poetry and short prose
pieces. Nothing too experimental here, but you can expect satisfying
and solid writing throughout. I particularly liked Carol Potter’s
poems, with startling lines like these from “If You Could Call It
God” – “If you could call it God, you could make a map of it. /
Elements combining with elements. The comfort / of molecules.” - as
well as these from “Tantrum Girl” – “One might envy the body of a
child. / That fresh skin. Those limber limbs. / Bend this way and
that so smoothly.” Miriam Gershow’s story “Little Girl,” the winner
of the AWP Intro Journals project, made for a riveting read as well.
[The Journal, Dept of English, Ohio State University, 164 W 17th
Ave, Columbus, Ohio 43210. E-mail: thejournal@osu.edu. Single
issue $7.00.
www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/english/journals/the_journal]
― JHG
Grain Magazine
Volume 31, Number 1
Summer 2003
With this issue, established Canadian literary magazine Grain
celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, and displays a diversity of
voice in the pages of poetry, fiction, and prose. Poems range from
highly experimental to formal, and the short stories have almost
nothing in common except a certain confidence of voice. This edition
was a pleasure to read, and as an American, it was welcome exposure
to mesmerizing Canadian voices like Bert Almon, Michael Hetherton,
Lorna Crozier and Aviva Luria. Luria’s poem, “Concrete,” has almost
song-like lyricism: “his mother plucks shards of glass / from the
wounds / like pits from the flesh of fruit. / she touches the earth,
desiring,” while Michael Hetherton’s short fiction piece,
“Fatherland,” has a rapturous plainness in the terse descriptions of
landscape and characters. [Grain Magazine, PO Box 67, Saskatoon, SK,
Canada, S7K 3K1. Email: grainmag@sasktel.net. Single issue
$9.95.
www.grainmagazine.ca] ― JHG
Crab
Creek Review
Spring/Summer 2003
This slim review showcases new voices from all over, but many
from the Pacific Northwest. I like the ambition of this issue, even
if some pieces lean slightly towards the unintelligible in their
reach towards the experimental – as these lines from “idiot i” by
A.K Allin may indicate: “by prodding out / someone’s soil / unto
nevernothingness /selling goods/ to wherever town / is
everlastingless.” Sometimes the experimental succeeds in being
whimsical and thought-provoking, like Tom Chandler’s poem “Progress
Reports.” If you like more down-to-earth, narrative pieces, make
sure to read Nile Lanning’s story “Counting” and the poems “A Night
So Pure the Love of God Seemed Real” by Fernard Roqueplan and “One
Kind Boy" by Kevin Miller, the following from which I really
enjoyed: "He remembers all the Sharons...sure he will be there when
a sudden wind / makes them shudder, when betrayal / leaves them
leaning towards the part of him / he's worked to scar with cuts of
his own." [Crab Creek Review, P.O. Box 840, Vashon, WA 98070.
E-mail: editor@crabcreekreview.org. Single issue $6.00.
www.crabcreekreview.org] ―
JHG
Gulf Coast
Volume 15, Number 2
Summer/Fall 2003
This luxuriously sizeable journal held interesting reviews,
interviews, stories, poems and artwork, but one thing that I noticed
that set it apart from other journals was that almost every single
contributor had more than a page or two devoted to them - poets had
three or four poems apiece, and the short stories and interview were
long enough to be substantial. Especially with poets, this extended
treatment of the writer’s work helps the reader get beneath the
surface of their writing, and adds to our overall comprehension of
the poems. So kudos to Gulf Coast
for this practice! Another thing that surprised me was that although
this review has a regional name and hails from Texas, it had an
international flavor, with poets and writers from places as diverse
as Alaska, Cuba, and Krakow. In addition to the creative works, I
enjoyed the fascinating interview with poet Czeslaw Milosz, who
spoke at length about the influences of communism and World-War
II-era French intellectuals such as Camus and Sartre in his work.
Also provocative were the photographs in the center of the issue,
reminiscent of bio lab 101, which juxtapose sensual colors and
textures with the cold scientific subject matter. [Gulf Coast,
University of Houston, Department of English, Houston, TX
77204-3012. Email: editors@gulfcoast.org. Single
copy $7.00.
www.gulfcoastmag.org] ― JHG
Glimmer
Train
Number 25
Summer 2003
If you only plan to read a few fiction journals this summer, be
sure to include this one. Every story is worth your time. In this
issue's interview, a regular Glimmer Train
feature, Melissa Pritchard tells Leslie A. Wooten "stories repose
deep within our flesh." These stories certainly got under my skin –
original, beautifully composed, and for the most part ambitious, at
least in terms of their subject matter. The most impressive work:
three stories by relative newcomers (meaning, no-book-yet) N.S.
Koenings, Chieh Chieng, and Laurence de Looze, all, coincidentally,
set abroad, in Tanzania, Malaysia, and Argentina. This issue's
international component also includes another regular feature, a
column by Siobhan Dowd, member of the PEN Writer's-in-Prison
Committee in London, writing about jailed "cyberdissident" Zouhair
Yahaoui in Tunisia. Every piece here has something to recommend it,
the engaging and wholly credible voice of the young narrator in
"Midnight Bowling" by Quinn Dalton, or the impossibly tender,
controlled, but never sloppy emotion in Lisa Graley's story of an
old man's losses, one of the finest stories about aging I've seen.
Nevertheless, this issue would be worth reading, if not owning, for
the first story alone, N.S. Koening's "The Accident, or, The
Embrace." Nearly every sentence is as masterful and original
as the first: "By the time Gilbert Turner's wife had seen that the
walnut-colored, scarlet-stripped log her daughter Agatha sat
stroking on the banks of India Street was no log, but a leg which
had come loose from its owner, it was too late for her to scream."
According to the bio notes, this story is also the opening chapter
of Koening's novel-in-progress. One of the pleasures of reading
journals like Glimmer Train is discovering new writers, and
there isn't a writer here I wouldn't welcome finding in any table of
contents again soon. [Glimmer Train, 710 SW Madison Street, Suite
504, Portland, Oregon 97205-0837. Single issue $9.95.
www.glimmertrain.com]
― SR
Seneca
Review
Volume XXXIII, Number 1
Spring 2003
Eclecticism is a highlight of this issue, which features work by
more than twenty poets, including several translations, and several
lyric essays, a hybrid genre for which the
Seneca Review is known. From informal and conversational
("I have been staring down the newspaper weather map / for at least
a coffee drip's diameter now," from a poem by Jasper Bernes), to the
more abstract and lyrical ("I speak spark to the sun" from a poem by
Joshua Corey), there are some fine poems here. Among my favorites
are poems as wildly different as Lynn Sermin Meskill's classically
themed pieces "Lion-Gate at Mycenae" and "The Son of the Last
Otroman" and Jasper Bernes' "Possum Gambit" – "Best worse days the
depressives play chess, / refreshed by fenced-in celebration."
Nothing compares, however, to the translations of work by Claudia
Lars, Fan Chengda, Carlos Edmundo de Ory, and Yehuda Amichai –
extraordinary, memorable poems, beautifully translated. The
translated poems represent, deliberately it would seem, the same
variety in tone I find in the rest of the issue, de Ory's "machine
built for pain" balanced by Chengada's "peach trees and plum with
nothing to say." [Seneca Review, Hobart and William Smith College,
Geneva, New York 14456. Single issue $7.00.
www.hws.edu/senecareview/]―
SR
American Literary Review
Volume XIV, Number 1
Spring 2003
It's hard to imagine two more unlikely pieces together– Neela
Vasawni's powerfully quiet story of war, exile, and music, "Bolero,"
and Tracee Lee's aggressively brilliant "New York Amnesia." What
they have in common – mad, poetic images of New York and their
appearance in this somewhat uneven issue of American Literary
Review. Vasawni's exceptional story, with a delightful poem
embedded in it, is the best of five stories here, though Julia
Ridley Smith's "Mrs. West" is also extremely fine. It's hard not to
appreciate the skill it takes to pull off writing as pleasing as
this about a subject (taking care of a parent with Alzheimer's) that
sometimes seems all too familiar these days: "Her world was a
perpetual summer, apparently, which sure was nice for her, but here,
in the real world, where was Mrs. West supposed to get a perfectly
ripe garden tomato every day of the year?" In addition to Lee's
tense, noisy, crowded, exquisite couplets about New York, this issue
features the work of fifteen other solid poets, most fairly well
established, including Virgil Suárez and Mark Irwin. "The Hunger
Artist," by Joanne Jacobson is a well written, if predictable, essay
about finding if not comfort, then refuge in an obsession with food.
A review of Joan Frank's Boys Keep Being Born is so
entertaining as to make me wish there were more than one review
here. [American Literary Review, P.O. Box 311307, University of
North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203-1307. Single issue $5.00.
www.engl.unt.edu/alr/]―
SR
The Antioch Review
Volume 61, Number 2
Spring 2003
This issue's theme is "In Search of Memory" which, writes editor
Robert S. Fogarty, "plays a defining role for both our essayists and
storytellers as they rework the past to make memory speak." These
substantial pieces by highly credentialed writers hardly need much
introduction, though, and are consistent with this journal's
reputation for showcasing quality and talent. Nonfiction and fiction
prose by such writers as Floyd Skoot, Joseph Goetz, Geoffrey Becker,
Aimee Bender, and Rick DeMarinis, is followed by the poetry of such
poets as Angela Ball, Eamon Grennan, and Alan Michael Parker, among
others, and a half-dozen illuminating reviews. I was particularly
taken with Karl Iagnemma's lighthearted but skillful story,
"Kingdom, Order, Species" about a female forestry student who finds
a way to meet her long-time idol, the outmoded writer of her
favorite botany textbook. This issue also introduces Russian poet
and writer Viktor Sosnora who is relatively unknown outside of his
own country, despite his prestige there, and whose clever and
sardonic voice is worth getting to know. And an essay by Gordon Lish,
deceptively humorous, dazzles and disarms: "Don't you see what art
is – and how it is, for all our sakes, all there is?" [The Antioch
Review, Antioch University, 150 E. South Chicago St., Yellow
Springs, Ohio 45387. Single issue $7.00.
www.Antioch.edu/review]―
SR
Red Rock Review
Spring 2003
"Those readers who would like to enjoy our literary selections,
please skip immediately to our table of contents," advises the
"Disclaimer" that precedes associate editor Todd Moffett's long
editorial about "Baseball Reform." I took the advice and proceeded
directly to the "literary selections" which include eight stories,
poems by three dozen poets, and several reviews by editor Richard
Logsdon. I found the poetry more memorable than the fiction here. My
judgment must coincide with the editors who printed one the finest
poems in the issue on the back cover, "Shattered Ruby" by Christine
Boyka Kluge: "They have her cornered, / not knowing / diamonds and
pearls are sewn / to the ribs of her ivory corset." The titles of
many of the poems in this issue, oddly enough, are as evocative and
original, if not more so, than many of the poems: "When My Haiku Was
Accepted by Haikus Unlimited, the Editor Asked for a Brief Biography
to Put in the Contributors Notes" (James Doyle), "Afterwards, Baby
Blue" (Laurie Byro), "Certainly in Los Angeles" (Rich Furman),
"Starting with a Line in a Room with Picassos." [Red Rock Review,
Department of English J2A, Community College of Southern Nevada,
3200 East Cheyenne Avenue, North Las Vegas, Nevada 89030. Single
issue $5.50.
www.ccsn.nevada.edu/english/redrockreview/default.html]―
SR
Room
of One's Own
Volume 26, Number 1
2003
One of Canada's oldest literary magazines,
Room of One's Own publishes "short stories, poems, art, and
reviews by, for, and about women." "Worth Living" is this
issue's theme, which editorial collective member Zoya Harris
explains in her introduction is as much about choices as it is about
circumstances. Every piece here feels necessary, and many feel
urgent. A few are deeply moving, including Jalina Mhyana's poem,
"August 6, 1946": "Women who wore kimonos on August 6, 1945 / still
have the flowered designs of the cloth / photographed onto their
aged flesh- / cherry blossoms that never fade or fall, / a promise
of eternal springtime / branding them as Japanese." There is joy,
too, "worth living" among these difficult, pressing, themes, as
fundamental and urgent, in its own way, as the darker subjects. And
humor, too: "Her chronic need to tell jokes / is a personality
trait. / But that was before my grandmother announced / to a table
full of dinner guests / that my mother wore a padded bra. / After
that it was called a disorder." ("Don't Ask My Grandmother for
Advice" by Sherry MacDonald) I was surprised to find reviews
principally about mainstream books, reviewed in dozens of
publications, and would have liked to see more reviews on books from
small presses. On the other hand, these are straightforward, honest
reviews that inspired me to read a few books I'd ignored or
overlooked, including Nadine Gordimer's novel The Pickup.
[Room of One's Own, P.O. Box 46160, Station D, Vancouver, BC.,
Canada V6J5G5. Single issue $7.00.
www.roommagazine.com]―
SR
Pleiades
Volume 23, Number 2
2003
When you pick up this one, give yourself plenty of time – it's an
exciting issue with a terrific mix of newer and more established
writers and numerous insightful, deftly composed reviews. The
writing throughout is sophisticated, savvy, skillful. A
relatively new feature of the journal is the introduction of
lesser-known poets by better known writers. My favorite is Dan
Bellm's choice of Helen Wickes, who needn't worry about the
mediocrity she bemoans in "The Chaperone:" "My mediocrity
accompanies me to the café / coughing gently when I think or speak."
Much, though not all of the poetry in this issue is edgy, ostensibly
casual, conversational. Yet, none of it is predictable or trite, and
there are some truly breathtaking moments, for example, "To Examine
a Dead Thing" by Rusty Morrison: "Follow the expenditures of gray,
limitless in each strewn / feather. Travel the small pain behind
your ear. / Concede to an invasive, perhaps usable, / dismay." There
isn't a poem among the several dozen here I don't want to read again
and again. There is nothing stale or tired or trivial. This issue is
heavier on poetry than prose, though the prose, several pieces of
short fiction and three substantial essays, is of equal interest and
caliber. Particularly noteworthy is an essay by Geoff Bent
"Fabricating History: The Paradigm That Ruined 20th
Century Art." Whether one agrees with him or not about what creates
"lasting appeal," it is a pleasure to find serious, thoughtful art
criticism that is also accessible, readable. [Pleiades,
Department of English and Philosophy, Central Missouri State
University, Warrensburg, Missouri 64093. E-mail:
kdp8106@cmsu2.cmsu.edu. Single issue $6.00.
www.cmsu.edu/englphil/pleiades/]―
SR
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