March 2005
Appalachian
Heritage
Volume 32 Number 4
Fall 2004
What really drives my exploratory urges through
the realm of literary magazines is the chance of finding one journal
or another which seems in every way a representation of a real
America. Appalachian Heritage is just that kind of
publication. The journal’s handsome, down-to-earth appearance alone
is a refreshing contrast to the often overly cerebral or academic
format of so many American literary magazines. And the work featured
here has a wonderfully unassuming quality about it: short stories,
memoirs, poetry and photographs all unified by a down-home style
that authenticates the journal’s eponymous claim to represent a bona
fide heritage. In three short stories—by Lee Maynard, Patty Crow,
and Sharyn McCrumb—the reader finds a lively, earnest narrative
style that holds so faithfully to the clean, basic arcs of classic
storytelling that it hearkens back to the rural oral tradition upon
which so much of America’s contemporary literature is based, in
whatever deviating forms. This issue’s featured author Sharon
McCrumb (paraphrased by editor George Brosi) speaks to the very
heritage alluded to in the journal’s title: “…[There is] a split
between the ‘folk’ and the ‘fine,’ but there is no reason that our
‘folk’ traditions should have any less literary merit than those of
Homer, the first epic poet…” This comment met with my emphatic
underlining, so aptly did it express the reason for my own
appreciation of Appalachian Heritage. Not often while reading
literary journals do you get the feeling that you’ve happened upon a
publication completely free of the corrosions of pretense,
completely at ease with itself, and completely authentic.
Appalachian Heritage is the real thing. Read it and find
yourself relieved at the incontrovertible evidence it offers that,
though big-money publishing may run the roost, the center of the
literary universe is not characterized by The New Yorker.
[Appalachian Heritage, CPO 2166, Berea, KY 40404. E-mail:
george_brosi@berea.edu. Single issue $6.
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/] – Mark Cunningham
Backwards
City Review
Volume 1 Number 1
Fall 2004
The debut of a new literary journal always
causes me a small pang in the breast. It can be such a vicious world
for these little literary nestlings. A trim, handsome journal out of
Greensboro, North Carolina makes its debut with this Fall 2004
issue, and if Volume 1 Number 1 is any indication, the folks behind
Backwards City Review should be assured that, whatever perils
await them on the road of financing, distribution, sales, etc.,
they’re well ahead of the game in the editorial department. This
inaugural issue is happily modest, but by no means meager, in its
offerings: 4 short stories, 1 nonfiction piece, 26 poems, 3
fascinating comics, and as a delightful bonus: a facsimile of a
hilariously pungent dispatch from the famous Kurt Vonnegut,
answering the query: “Where do you get your ideas from?” Michael
Parker’s story “Results for Novice Males” pictures in restrained
(but never constrained) prose, the sticky relationship
between two fledgling triathlon competitors, each struggling through
dysfunction from opposite poles of class, and takes its thematic cue
from the compelling idea of “junk miles”—“the mileage one
accumulates without actually getting better, stronger, faster.” Alix
Ohlin’s “Local News,” concerns a TV reporter who dreams of a better,
happier, more successful life, and finds herself dramatically
subject to the maxim of her journalism teacher: “When you…break all
the rules I’ve taught you, then you’ll know you’re working in news.”
And Adam Berlin’s unique story “Speeding Away” portrays the
mean-spirited machinations of two bachelor protagonists as they
wriggle their way out of a promise to drive an annoying friend of a
friend home to New York from an Indiana wedding. [Backwards City
Review, P.O. Box 41317, Greensboro, NC 27404-1317. E-mail: editors@backwardscity.net.
Single issue $7.
www.backwardscity.net] – Mark Cunningham
Borderlands
Texas Poetry Review
Number 23
Fall/Winter 2004
For those still Stone Age enough to think of
Texas poetry as an oxymoron, welcome to Austin. Alex Grant’s
“Vespers” offers home and peace and space and the beautiful old word
quieten. Kelle Groom’s poems find the soul of things and help
us hear the faint but heartfelt dialogue between the living and the
dead: “I wonder / If they are always talking behind the glass, /
Full of joy for us, if they are in the trees, swinging, / Smiling,
saying live, live, live, & on this side / We hear birds, / Songs
from far away.” Brenda Ladd’s photo series gives us lost-(or perhaps
found) in-performance soul glimpses of the likes of B.B. King,
Abbey Lincoln, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. (A white light shot
of a joyful Ray Charles graces the issue’s cover.) Weston Cutter’s
wondrous strange, down on all fours and calling “Same Animal”
reminds us that evolution of the human kind can be a tricky
proposition. To delight you even as it makes you weep that we’ve all
but lost to computers the handwritten record of our writers’
painstaking choices is the manuscript page of Walt Whitman’s lovely
“unpublished, undated, and perhaps unfinished fragment” “In Western
Texas”:
In Western Texas
mesquit bush
pecan tree
& prickly pear
and the far-stretching spread of the
land carpeted with
flowers
Makes you want to head out for the Borderlands,
the unique territory where poet meets up with that odd, armored
creature herself and Texas rendezvous with elsewhere under stars
you’d swear you could touch.
[Borderlands, P.O. Box 33096, Austin, TX 78764. E-mail:
borderlandspoetry@gbronline.com. Single issue $12.
www.borderlands.org] - Ann Stapleton
Colorado
Review
Volume 32 Number 1
Spring 2005
Two engaging personal essays, one by newcomer
David Harris-Gershon and the other by award-winning essayist Floyd
Skloot land side-by-side and are emblematic of the issue as a
whole—expertly crafted work by new and more established writers who
know how to link their personal stories or perspective to the larger
world. Even work poetry editor Donald Revell labels as an unexpected
revision of the confessional mode, Jenny Mueller's "Lyric," reaches
beyond the confines of experiment or solipsistic musing to offer a
broad, surprising, and accessible world: "The cicada orgasms / sing,
cease. A knock and a bruise / is this afternoon, its approaches //
by lapses. A blast at the sills: it's the earth, wanting in,
heat-zonked / and spoiling, prodigal." Not that there isn't plenty
of invention here, writing that takes risks and moves beyond
convention: an excerpt from Dan Beachy-Quick's "Mulberry," the title
poem from Michelle Mitchell-Foust's forthcoming book "Imago Mundi,"
an excerpt from Christopher Arigo's "Breath Variations." The fiction
is somewhat more conventional, but nonetheless pleasing, with six
thoroughly readable and memorable stories (so good, I think, that
all of their authors deserve mention: Kathleen Lee, Seth Biderman,
Naomi J. Williams, Angie McCullagh, Robin Black). Hats off to the
Colorado Review for offering readers an opportunity to get to
know many talented and exciting new and lesser known writers
(Melanie Figg, Amy Schroeder, Gillian Jerome, along with the
afore-mentioned Harris-Gershon, Williams, and many others).
[Colorado Review, Department of English, Colorado State University,
Fort Collins, CO, 80523. E-mail: creview@colostate.edu. Single
issue $9.50.
http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu] – Sima Rabinowitz
The
Baltimore Review
Volume 9 Number 1
Winter/Spring 2005
There's a bit of
magic in Anh Chi Pham's short story, "Kaleidoscope," in which an old
Vietnamese man (exiled from his family as a child for being deaf and
difficult to raise) finds a shot corpse near his cave and is soon
beset by soldiers. The ugliness of war comes to a temporary halt as
the foreigners discover and are entranced by the man's collection of
beautiful kaleidoscopes he'd made by hand as his grandfather had
taught him. I mention this piece because I wish more of The
Baltimore Review's stories were like it; too many, I think, are
in that vein of contemporary divorce/broken-family-story of which
I've read enough in the past decade. In other areas, the journal is
top-notch: Katie Hearn's "Seeking the Wild" is a wonderful piece of
creative fiction on the writer's adventures in the woods. Hearn
counters the typically "masculine" need for trial by nature with
information on various female explorers from Queen Victoria's maid
of honor to the author's own young daughter. In poetry, Jim Tilley's
"Aluminum Rush" is a crisp reaction to an exhibit on Aluminum et
design. Poems about the difficulty of writing poems can be
tiresome, but Dennis Saleh's "Poem of Many Poems" is just wonderful.
An excerpt: "The brain thought it over, / tried a poem, / but was
fooled. // The eye saw something / better, / and forgot its lines."
[The Baltimore Review, P.O. Box 36418, Towson MD 21286. Single
issue: $8.
http://www.baltimorereview.org] – Jennifer Gomoll
Columbia
A Journal of Literature & Art
Issue 39
2004
The interviews (sometimes a dull spot in
literary magazines) are a highlight of this issue of Columbia. In
Mary Phillips-Sandy’s talk with culture critic Camille Paglia, high
priestess of free associaters (think female, literary Robin
Williams), Paglia offers an energetic mix of liberal, conservative,
and crackpot views—the dead giveaway of an open mind at work. She
compares Stephen King to Edgar Allan Poe, to the glory of both;
takes a passing whack at Joyce Carol Oates’ prose style (“I can’t
believe she just throws that stuff out there!”); and is a great
proponent of the Web, for which she began writing “early on,” but
admits to composing her first drafts “by hand with a real pen on
real paper.” Lytton Smith’s interview with master poet Robert Mezey
is equally refreshing and candid. (“If it’s not a pleasure to read
poetry, what the hell do you do with it?”) And the two poems Mezey
contributes, “Hardy” and “Tea Dance at the Nautilus Hotel (1925),”
are true formalist beauties. Joan Houlihan, poet and penner of
fierce and clear-sighted essays on the state of the art today,
offers “Injury,” a gem of her own that by way of its original
rhythms and its difficult love for the world put me in mind of
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Distinguished short fiction and portraits by
three photographers with divergent conceptions of beauty round out
the issue. Columbia is elegant and bold and unselfconsciously
diverse, and its fascination with the written word and with those
who make it their calling is contagious. [Columbia Journal, 415 Dodge Hall, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY
10027. E-mail: columbiajournal@columbia.edu. Single issue $10.
www.columbia.edu/cu/arts/journal] -
Ann Stapleton
CUE:
A Journal of Prose Poetry
Volume 2 Issue 1
Winter 2005
Twenty-four prose poems and one interview in a
handsome, elegant little volume—CUE is a find. In editor
Morgan Lucas Schuldt's e-mail interview with award-winning poet
Karen Volkman, Volkman writes: "…poetry should make us more
conscious of how we think and structure our experiences and
sensations, and provide new possibilities." Indeed, this issue of
CUE provides us with a sense of the prose poem's vast and
marvelous possibilities, from Rita Dove's speculations on the
difference between prose and poetry ("It's supposed to be prose if
it runs on and on, isn't it?"), to Mathew Thorburn's five acidic
little fruit poems (he extols the virtues of the apple, banana,
lemon, lime, and pear), to Van Jordan's dictionary story (a plot of
love and abandonment structured around and told through the
definitions and uses of the word "to"), to John Levy's dissection of
a painting by Degas ("'The Racehorse, Amateur Jockeys' took more
than 13 years to not complete. Is that the opposite of racing?"), to
Paul Dickey's "The Thought of What America Would Be Like If"
composed of fragments of texts as diverse as jokes by Lily Tomlin,
folksongs, the verse of T.S. Elliot, and supermarket sale signs. If
you love prose poetry (and how can you not?) you'll love CUE.
[CUE, P.O. Box 200, 2509 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ, 85719.
E-mail: cuejournal@yahoo.com. Single issue $6.
www.u.arizona.edu/~mschuldt/CUEhtml] – Sima Rabinowitz
descant
Volume 43
2004
The ten stories of
this issue are eclectic in style and, alas, quality: most are
engaging, many are well-written, and some could use a bit more work. Descant opens with Paul H. Williams' "Seeds in the
Cellar" about a young man who is somewhat embarrassed by his
Cherokee heritage but embraces it in a private moment of mourning
for his dead grandfather. "Good Works," by Vivan Lawry, takes us to
China, where the patriarch of a missionary family loses his leg to
gangrene. Kurt Ayau defies political correctness with "Culture
Clash," in which a librarian complains of the "East Wajooans," a
member of whom he insults, resulting in his having to participate in
a ritual, which he botches. The story is pointed yet humorous,
putting a mirror to our own secret assumptions about Others. My
favorite line of the issue appears in M. Elizabeth Weiser's "The End
of the World," in which a travel writer, suffering the loss of her
husband to suicide, treks to a point in Canada called "the end of
the world" by the Micmac Indians. She is told by a companion that
this place is not an end but a beginning; wryly, she notes, "I came
5000 miles to see a failure of perception." Descant's poems
are short and well-crafted – the one standout, I thought, was
Charles Harper Webb's "Ceci N'est Pas Une Poeme," which takes the
ego, beatniks, and bongos out of the popular conception of poetry,
asks the reader to replace them with beautiful images, then humbly
asks something few poets ever will: "Forget me." [descant,
Department of English, Texas Christian University, TCU Box 297270,
Fort Worth TX 76129.E-mail: descant@tcu.edu. Single issue $12.] –
Jennifer Gomoll
Event
Volume 33 Number 3
Spring 2005
This is the annual creative non-fiction awards
issue, but every issue of Event is a winner from what I've
seen. Canadian magazines continue to impress me with consistently
strong work, an expansive and generous vision, and a satisfying mix
of "new and established writers." Judge Ross Laird's choices for the
contest are exceptional, as is his introduction. He honors some of
the fine entries which did not win the contest by describing their
efforts as texts that blend "the inner and outer worlds, flowing
seamlessly between reflection and description…"—a standard the
winners (Vaia Barkas, Nancy Mauro, and Susan Olding) also achieve.
Mauro is a graduate student at work on her first novel and if "The
Griller's Guide to Love and Loss" is any indication of what we can
expect of her future work, I would order a copy of the novel, even
before she finishes it. Her essay is a masterpiece of what Laird
would call "melodic writing," coupled with insightful and original
thinking, and a unique momentum in the prose that somehow encourages
us to speed up and slow down at the same time. The poetry in this
issue is equally exceptional. Lorna Crozier contributes two poems
that demonstrate why she is one of Canada's premier poets, along
with the work of a dozen other talented poets. [Event, Douglas
College, P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, B.C. V31.5B2.
www.event.douglas.bc.ca. E-mail: event@douglas.bc.ca. Single issue
$8.
http://event.douglas.bc.ca/] – Sima Rabinowitz
Fourteen
Hills
Volume 11 Number 1
Winter/Spring 2005
"Ooh, mail art!"
Such was my glee in flipping through Fourteen Hills, which is
chock full of collages by collaborators Mike Dickau & Jon Held Jr.,
not to mention the inimitable Winston Smith. This issue of the
journal is something of a collage itself, boasting a variety of
talented writers from San Francisco and from around the world.
Binyavanga Wainaina's "Hell is in Bed with Mrs. Peprah" takes the
reader to a beauty shop in Kenya in the late 70s, where a young girl
sits among the hot combs and gossip and listens to the educated,
eccentric, and undeniably strong "Auntie" Peprah defend herself
against naysayers. "Newborn," by Murzban F. Shrof, presents a father
who feels as if he's lost his identity upon the birth of his first
child; though his actions in trying to regain some sense of his
manhood are unconscionable, the story is sincere, unflinching, and
very well done. I loved the imagery of Simone Muench's
"Hydrophobia": "[...] Listen to the river's hiss; metal swallows //
clip the air. Hunters in bright orange vests / approach you as
though you were a ghost deer." Perhaps the most moving piece here is
Paul Kaidy Barrows's "Ou Est-ce Que Madame Bien Voudrait Aller?" in
which a disfigured cabbie's monologue takes a passenger – and the
reader – through a ravaged land, confronting the sheltered with the
hard realities of war. With these great works and many more,
Fourteen Hills is a most remarkable journal. [Fourteen Hills,
c/o the Creative Writing Department, San Francisco State University,
1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco CA 94132-1722. E-mail: hills@sfsu.edu.
Single issue $7.
http://www.14hills.net] – Jennifer Gomoll
Green
Mountains Review
Volume 17 Number 2
2004
What makes this issue of Green Mountains
Review especially appealing is the range of styles and tones
represented here. Maureen Seaton is as quirky, irreverent, playful,
and original as ever in several pieces that defy classification.
Erick Pankey is as solemn and soulful as we know him to be in three
self-portraits composed of exacting, carefully calculated language.
Lola Haskins is, as we expect her to be, both lyrical and
sharp-tongued in "Parsing Mother" ("You're the twig that slashed my
eye as I pushed through the branches. / Why I see cracks, faults,
flaws, in every vase and daughter. O / Mother how declensions
abound: nominative sun accusative moon."). The fiction follows suit,
with solid, conventional short stories by Jenna Terry and Daisy Tsui;
a lyrical folk-tale style offering by Christopher White; and stories
I am tempted to categorize as "sudden fiction" or "short shorts" by
Francine White. Among the many memorable and noteworthy pieces in
this issue is one I simply cannot refrain from mentioning— Eamon
Grennan's marvelous poem "From the Road," which begins:
What stops me is the big indifference
of weather, the remoteness it shows
in all its peremptory gestures.
But then there's Bach coming out
of the air, an equal mystery. Rejoice!
he says, all ye ransomed souls.
[Green Mountains Review, Johnson State College,
Johnson, VT 05656. E-mail: gmr@jsc.vsc.edu. Single issue $8.
http://greenmountainsreview.jsc.vsc.edu] – Sima Rabinowitz
The
Harvard Review
Number 27
2004
The cover means to draw us in by announcing
work from Jorie Graham, André Aciman, Honor Moore, Kenneth Burke and
theirs is certainly worthwhile. One of the most gifted writers on
place, Aciman never disappoints, and I loved this essay on New York.
Moore's piece on Lowell is marvelous—she is such a fine essayist I
would read her on any subject, but she is especially satisfying when
writing about other poets. But, I was equally interested in the work
of writers whose work I hadn't known, but am glad I do now: K.E.
Duffin who contributes several "short shorts" (not quite prose
poems, not really sudden fiction, not essays, but almost); poets Rob
Cook and Sarah White, and fiction writers Reshi P. Reddi and Muriel
Mouton. Benedict Giamo contributes a brief personal essay on Kenneth
Burke, a tender tribute to his teacher and a story of Burke's,
originally published in 1920, is reprinted here. "Graphics" in this
issue include drawings by David Smith, woodcuts from Frans Masereel,
and a fascinating series of photographs by Judith S. Larsen,
"Invisible Alphabet." The photographs are made by projecting
transparencies onto human models and they "reference various
cultural inscriptions, biological patterning, and diagrams made by
visionaries attempting to understand the nature of our humanity and
the universe in which we live." [Harvard Review, Lamont Library,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 01238. E-mail: harvrev@fas.harvard.edu.
Single issue $10.
http://hcl.harvard.edu/harvardreview] –
Sima Rabinowitz
Hobart
Issue 4
Winter 2004-2005
Now this is a great magazine. Short, quirky
writing that takes itself seriously but is not without a sense of
humor. Think of it as a McSweeney’s for very short fiction
(most of the stories here are between two and six pages). Perhaps
the similarities are due to guest editor Ryan Boudinot, a McSweeney’s contributor who includes two excellent Icelandic
authors in this issue who also appear in the new McSweeney’s.
Regardless, the fiction in this issue is first-rate. The cover
image, by Marcel Dzama, is an illustration of two Aimee Bender
stories that which bookend the fiction here about a skeleton and
devil who row naked families across a lake of fire. Absurd and
great. Other highlights include the poetic short-short “The Groom
Smokes” by Rick Moody about a man delaying his wedding as “the dusk
exercises its influence over him” and Tao Lin’s unsettling tale of a
woman deciding to go back to sleep as her house is robbed. I could
continue, but there are too many good stories to discuss in this
short review. Hobart #4 gets my full recommendation. [Hobart,
PO Box 1658, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. Single issue $10.
www.hobartpulp.com] –
Lincoln Michel
Indiana
Review
Volume 26 Number 2
Winter 2004
If you are like me, the multitude of literary
reviews named after universities or geographic locations tend to
blend together in your mind. However, for me, the Indiana Review
just ceased to be one of them. Indiana Review is one of the
only university affiliated magazines I’ve read that publishes great
edgy and risky writing. Take for example the opening line James
Gendron’s prose-poem “Expelled”: “Imagine the boy’s surprise on
discovering that he couldn’t fly despite having been raised by
bats.” Both of Gendron’s prose-poems (I almost want to call them
parables) are excellent, my favorite poems in this issue. The vast
majority of writing is poetry, but the fiction is solid as well. I
really enjoyed Stephen Tuttle’s 2003 fiction prize winning piece
“The Weather Here,” which tells the story of a group of men trapped
under waves of rain and fleas. The tone and style reminds me of
Donald Barthelme, which I mean very much as a compliment. At almost
200 pages of mostly poetry there should be more than enough to
justify your purchase. [Indiana
Review, Ballantine Hall
465, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405-7103. E-mail: inreview@indiana.edu. Single issue $9.
www.indiana.edu/~inreview/] –
Lincoln Michel
The
Journal
Volume 28.2
Autumn/Winter 2004
With two traditionally constructed short
stories, a meta-fictional batch of autobiographical “contributor’s
notes” by writer Michael Martone, and a nonfiction piece excerpted
from the personal notebook of author M.V. Clayton, this issue of
The Journal is slim on its prose offerings, leaning almost
entirely toward poetry. But unlike perhaps every other litmag I’ve
perused, all of the poetry here sparked my complete and
unadulterated enjoyment. Most compelling is a suite of works by
various poets, each concerning the tender, reflective, occasionally
paradoxical moments of parenthood or birthgiving. Chad Chmielowicz’s
“Parable of the Pacifier” is brave and evocative in its attempts to
lyrically combine the mysteries that shape an infant’s experience of
the world and those that shape the concerns of the infant’s parents.
“…People here look like people / from years ago in a different place
/ and I keep mistaking them. To think, this happens / continuously.
The colors you see now / will sharpen into faces and you will track
/ your life in their lines.” Katrina Roberts’ lovely piece
“Postlude: Madrigal” follows, limning the willing self-sacrifices of
motherhood: “…There is no fabric as rich / as the time I spend
watching you sleep, / thought passing across the pond of your face /
as the wind ripples the wheat…”. And Daneen Wardrop’s elegiac poem
“Birthday’s Profile” haunts with thoughts upon a twin who never came
to completion in the mother’s womb: “Before ultrasound she flew. /
You could not tell her running / from her hair flying.” Anthony
Varallo’s story “The Pines,” winner of The Journal’s First
Annual Short Story Prize, is in its own rambling way poetic and
image-driven, and Varallo has a knack for immediate, vivid evocation
even while inventing new twists on the coming-of-age framework of
his narrative. In short, The Journal offers finely chiseled,
artful, and thought-provoking work in both poetry and prose. I
recommend it highly as an anodyne for anyone who tends to shy away
from contemporary poetry: it will restore your faith in the
enjoyment modern poets can afford you. [The Journal, The Ohio State
University, Department of English, 164 W. 17th Ave, Columbus, OH
43210. E-mail: thejournal@osu.edu. Single issue $7.
http://english.osu.edu/journals/the_journal/] – Mark
Cunningham
jubilat
Issue 9
2004
I am heartened by
the interview with John Ashbury, who recalls a rather humorous
meeting with Helen Vendler, who confessed to never writing about
Ashbery's poetry because she didn't understand it. I feel brave
enough to admit there is much in jubilat that I could not
understand; forgive me if I write about it anyway. I enjoyed Aase
Berg's "Open the Voter" (trans. Johannes Goransson); alas, I'm
afraid I'm not smart enough to tell you why. In its entirety:
"Toothed whale / beached whale / open whale / open space / unwhale /
of rubber rooms." Jubilat is unique in that it presents a
variety of texts in translation, ancient and contemporary. Pliny the
Elder's "Natural History" was most fascinating, with its remedies
and medicines far more exciting than anything you'll see in, say, a
Viagra commercial: "aphrodisiac for men [...] are the yolks of five
pigeons' eggs mixed with a denarius by weight of pig fat and
swallowed in honey, sparrows or their eggs in food, or the right
testicle of a cock worn as an amulet in a piece of ram's-skin." Also
worth mentioning is the collection of emails from members of an
Antarctic penguin-research mission, which describe harsh conditions,
shifting icebergs, the difficulty of tagging penguins, and the
beautiful breath of whales. [jubilat, Department of English, 482
Bartlett Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-0510.
E-mail: jubilat@english.umass.edu. Single issue $8.
http://www.jubilat.org] – Jennifer Gomoll
Meridian
Issue 13
Spring/Summer 2004
Sometimes it's the
fiction and poetry that grab you in a literary magazine; sometimes
it's the essays and interviews. Meridian contains some fine stories,
including Morgan McDermott's prize-winning "Lease," in which a man
struggles with the definition of his manhood and thinks, for a while
at least, that killing his wife and her lover might be the right
expression of it. But it's the nonfiction here that addresses some
interesting questions. For those who've ever wondered what
considerations go into compiling a poetry anthology, the interview
with Jahan Ramazani, a Norton Anthology editor, is enlightening.
Paula Speck's "Six Seconds: An Essay" is a thoughtful piece on how
dollar amounts for mental anguish are set when loved ones die in
tragic plane accidents, and raises questions on our society's need
for payout: "Where a medieval man might have been grateful for the
chance to pray and where a Victorian might have choked out a last
word for his family, we sue." The often-controversial Francine
Prose, in interview, has a few harsh words for writing workshops and
organized religion; however, she seems a bit abashed in the wake of
criticism for her 1999 Harper's article attacking high school
English programs where "moralistic" writers like Maya Angelou are
taught: "You always have this stupid idea that people are going to
be grateful because you're saying the thing that everybody knows."
(Guess not.) Meridian has so much going for it, if it only had an
art spread, it would be the perfect journal. [Meridian, University
of Virginia, P.O. Box 400145, Charlottesville VA 22904-4145. E-mail:
meridian@virginia.edu. Single issue $7.
http://www.readmeridian.com] – Jennifer Gomoll
Mississippi
Review
Volume 32 Number 3
Fall 2004
Entitled “Politics & Religion,” this issue of
the Mississippi Review might just as aptly be named the
“Stand on the Rooftop and Shout Yes, Yes, Yes!” issue. I found
myself exclaiming aloud more than once as I sat locked in one
visceral essay after another. As guest editor Gary Percesepe writes
in his dynamite introduction: “The essays, poems, and stories that
have been collected here amount to a prophetic call to reexamine the
foundations of political life.” What most recommends this issue are
the many voices presented in its pages—voices personal, academic,
journalistic, religious, political, poetical—all unified in their
articulation of what exactly needs to change in the corroded
cultural/political fabric of the United States. Bill Moyers gives an
earnest, personal appraisal of the widening class-gap accelerated by
the profiteering policies of a Religious Right. Noam Chomsky’s
detached analysis of the rhetorical and media manipulations used to
support the Bush administration’s yen for invading Iraq is shocking
and nearly impossible to argue down. Best of all, however, is an
essay by Rabbi Michael Lerner entitled “Closed Hearts, Closed
Minds,” which deals very sympathetically with the phenomenon of
radical conservatism, and calls upon liberals and leftists to adopt
a new, whole-hearted perspective with the aim of eventually closing
the divisive political chasms of our nation. “…What the Left fails
to understand are the rational core of needs that are not being
addressed in the larger society which are addressed, albeit
in distorted form, in these communities of meaning [read: right-wing
communities].” With this issue, the Mississippi Review has in
one fell swoop powerfully enriched the essential, indispensable
cultural dialogue of a nation at war with itself. [Mississippi
Review, Center for Writers, The University of Southern Mississippi,
Box 5144, Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5144. E-mail: rief@mississippireview.com.
Single issue $12.
http://www.mississippireview.com/] – Mark Cunningham
New
England Review
Volume 25 Number 4
2004
New England Review continues to uphold
its reputation for publishing extraordinary, enduring work. Jane
Hirshfield’s wise and compassionate poem “In a Room with Five
People, Six Griefs” is a distillation of the overlarge experience of
being human into a few simple-seeming sentences that tell our grief
and fear and anger, yet leave open “A door through which time /
changer of everything / can enter.” Richard Wollman’s fiercely
affecting “Paper in Autumn” resurrects one family from the fire of
the Holocaust. Frederick Brown offers a fascinating, at times
repelling, gorgeously written account of French novelist Gustav
Flaubert’s 1849 trip to Egypt—equal parts libertinism, impression
gathering, and missing Mother. Especially moving is an excerpt from
the selected letters of Ohio poet James Wright, who grapples with
money troubles and the inexorable demon of his depression, even as
he writes his lumberingly graceful, lasting poems. The letters are
also of historical interest as the young Wright corresponds with the
young Robert Bly, who tries to persuade Wright to turn away from
formal verse and rhyme toward the unrhymed free verse that swept
American poetry in the sixties, a more wrenching choice for him than
one might have imagined. Wright reminds us “that poetry is a
terrifyingly difficult and magnificent thing” and expresses his
gladness at having cheered up a lonely, starving poet by showing up
at his furnished room with “(1) two vivacious and pretty girls and
(2) a large bag of fresh bananas.” As Wright puts it, “Yes, we need
one another in deep, strange ways.” [New
England Review, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753. E-mail:
NEReview@middlebury.edu. Single issue $8.
www.middlebury.edu/~nereview] -
Ann Stapleton
North
American Review
Volume 289 Number 6
November-December 2004
One of the only literary magazines in the
United States to resemble in physical format a standard mainstream
magazine, North American Review cannot be found on any
newsstands, but is sold entirely by mail order. That the magazine
simultaneously happens to be the oldest of its kind in the nation
speaks impressively to the emphatic approval of a devoted
subscription base. The back cover of this issue bears a facsimile of
a handwritten note by Thomas Jefferson, regarding payment
arrangements for his subscription for the year 1825. This issue
contains 4 short stories, 4 nonfiction pieces, 3 reviews, and 21
poems. I enjoyed Phillip Gardner’s strange, wickedly funny story
“Chainsaw Putt-Putt.” Narrated by a hopelessly nondescript character
who finds himself forgotten-about just minutes after every social
introduction, the story takes a number of dark but playful turns.
“Me, I take a barstool at The Paradise Lounge, order a drink, and
five minutes later the bartender says, ‘What are you having?’ I’ll
hold up my bourbon and she’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re the guy in the
turtleneck.’” Also engaging was Zachary Zorich’s essay “A Stone to
Build On,” about the author’s experiences as an archeological intern
on a dig at a Neanderthal feeding-site in the Crimean. Zorich’s
inquiry into the palimpsest of epochs is vivid and personal, as when
he turns up a perfectly crafted Neanderthal scraping tool made of
flint. “There is no scientific explanation for why the Neanderthal
might have chosen to shape the tool this way…I think he shaped [it]
according to a sense of beauty that must be similar to the one that
guided me when I picked up the tool to admire it.” Though some of
the work in this issue seems encumbered by implausibility or the
cliché, there is much to enjoy in North American Review. And
for the cost per issue, one can hardly afford to miss a foray
through this American literary tradition. [North American Review,
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0516. E-mail:
vince.gotera@uni.edu. Single issue $4.95.
http://webdelsol.com/NorthAmReview/NAR] – Mark Cunningham
Notre
Dame Review
Number 19
Winter 2005
Notre Dame Review &Now, and Then is this
issue's theme, by which the editors mean: "a larger than-traditional
conception of what counts as literature" based on the premise that
"the world changes" and literature, like painting and music, will
"reflect larger historical changes." &Now plus and Then
is/are literally one/two journals, the front cover of &Now
becomes the back cover of and Then as halfway through one
must flip the journal over and begin again to be reading right side
up. &Now, the editors tell us, is a "festival of new writing"
and somehow the word festival gives me permission to revel in these
"larger than traditional" pieces with largesse. I stop worrying
about what I am supposed to think of this work, how to approach it,
and simply engage with this work, work that defies categorization as
it teases the page, challenges our perceptions of language,
structure, plot, meaning, interpretation, and confuses, surprises,
troubles, angers, and delights us. and Then is, as we might
expect, composed of more traditional pieces, including reviews,
though the work here is also fresh and provocative. "Man and Woman,"
a poem by Mary Jo Bang (a poet we expect to find, of course, in &
Now, though this piece is not particularly unconventional and
could easily have fit in and Then), begins: "To spend most of
a short life living, / that was the aim." If you plan to spend most
of your short life reading, don't skip this startling and
fascinating issue of the Notre Dame Review. [Notre Dame
Review, 840 Flanner Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
46556. E-mail: English.ndreview.1@nd.edu. Single issue $8.
www.nd.edu/~ndr/review.htm] – Sima Rabinowitz
Pebble
Lake Review
Volume 2 Issue 1
Fall 2004
It's nearly
impossible not to pick up this issue of Pebble Lake Review,
with its almost hypnotically vibrant cover photograph of a
sun-dappled graveyard. Fortunately, the contents of this slim,
unassuming journal don't disappoint. The poems tend to be short and
straightforward; no experimental rambles here. Likewise, the fiction
moves quickly, and there is a handful of various art works by seven
different people. I was most impressed by Jill Coupe's "Slipping,"
in which a slick, young suit tries to bully an aging librarian out
of her position using interrogation techniques which remind her (the
librarian) of Pinochet's 1973 power coup. She is a corporate
prisoner as Chilean poet Miguel Jose Santiago was a political one;
she manages to keep her dignity but, probably, not her job. In
poetry, I liked Sarah Sloat's "Winding Down," about resting after a
good run: "It is strange to observe the body / close down, like
letting a clock do its work, / deciding nothing." Yvette
Schnoeker-Shorb presents a wonderful day-after-Halloween meditation
in "Sense of Saints," in which one finds a dead owl and buries it.
This is a mystical experience: "Soil still under your nails, / your
fingers touch the feather / to deep blue morning air, / tracing the
owl's eye moon, / yellow and cradled / by wisps of clouds." It's a
wow moment, one of many to be found in this journal. [Pebble
Lake Review, 15318 Pebble Lake Drive, Houston TX 77095. E-mail:
submissions@pebblelakereview.com. Single issue $6.
http://www.pebblelakereview.com] – Jennifer Gomoll
Plieades
Volume 25 Number 1
2005
I was immediately impressed by the overall
presentation of this issues of Pleiades, beginning with the
cover artwork by Julie Speed and following with the overall heft of
the issue itself. The contents are pretty evenly divided between one
hundred pages of creative writing and one hundred pages of book
reviews. On the creative side there are three pieces of well crafted
fiction, of which I particularly enjoyed the odd, prose poem piece
titled "Scarlie," by Tod Williams, an epigrammatic "essay," an
extremely intriguing interview with the poet Reginald Shepherd, and
various poems from a total of nineteen different poets ranging from
the beautifully simplistic and succinct language of Catherine
Barnett's "Ritual," to the tongue twisting wordplay of Randall
Mann's "The Last Dinner Party." I found the bulk of the poetry in
this issue to be well above the usual standard and the range and
variety of language, style, and approach to be truly refreshing. It
was a pleasure for me to read the following lines from Alex Lemon's
"Juke Joint:" "I am Hi-Fi, all of me is surround / sound. I snap my
fingers & the world / is xylophones. Feel my wrist, / it is a coda
dragging its feet. I click / my teeth like cymbals..." While this
issue of Pleiades was definitely more heavily weighted in the
poetry department, both on the creative side and in the topics for
book review, with only three of the books reviewed being fiction, I
still found it to be a satisfying read due to the superior quality
of the work. [Pleaides: A Journal of New Writing, Department of
English, Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, MO 64093.
E-mail: kdp8106@cmsu2.cmsu.edu. Single issue $5.
www.cmsu.edu/englphil/pleiades/] -
Mary Baken
Poetry
Volume 185 Number 5
February 2005
A long-time reader of Poetry, I have a
confession to make. I read Poetry for the reviews. It's not
that I don't appreciate the poetry, of course—what, in this issue,
Wislawa Szymborska describes, along with the work of Plato, as
"litter scattered by the breeze from under statues / scraps from
that great Silence up on high…"—but what inspires and angers and
thrills me, above all, is what is found under the heading "comment."
So, by all means, read this issue for the latest work of some our
most respected and prolific poets (Sharon Olds, Alice Friman, Carl
Dennis, Kay Ryan, among others). But don't skip Meghan O'Rourke's
review of "under-read" poet Bill Knott or regular reviewer Brian
Phillips's "Ten Takes" and "Et. Al." Philips can be merciless
(he labels one poet's new work "garbled half-lyrics slung in neutral
white space") or generous (he finds one poet's work "only
intermittently interesting" but at the same time concludes "for
sheer human fascination her poems are often very engaging"), but his
reviews teach us as much about poetry's power and its pitfalls as
any manual or workshop and often more than many poems. Of James
Longenbach's The Resistance to Poetry, Philips says, "…he
wants us to enjoy the ways that poems keep us hanging." What I
appreciate, though, about Poetry's reviews is that they
never, ever leave us hanging. [Poetry, 1030 North Clark Street,
Suite 420, Chicago, IL 60610-5412. E-mail:
editors@poetrymagazine.org.
Single issue $3.75.
www.poetrymagazine.org] –
Sima Rabinowitz
Potomac
Review
A Journal of Arts & Humanities
Issue 38
Fall/Winter 2004-05
In this issue, Clarissa T. Sligh writes
movingly of the unspeakable: how her mother’s twelve-year-old
brother was killed by racists, his body dumped on the ground in
front of the house. “Her parents were still in the fields. Not able
to accept that her brother was dead, she cradled his lifeless body
in her lap and rocked him back and forth.” Sligh’s grandparents,
needing to work in the fields but desperately afraid for their other
sons, resorted to hanging them high in the trees in burlap sacks so
they couldn’t wander away from the farm. Carla Panciera’s gently
incisive “Darcy Didn’t Want to Be Home” tells the story of a
wandering cow, a sentient being wanting more than her allotted life,
from the perspective of a daughter caught between her father’s view
of the animal as a product, and her own, more intuitive
understanding of the world’s ways. Potomac Review, though not
a religious publication, generously makes room for several offerings
touching on the life of the spirit, such as Viva Hammer’s essay “Our
Yarmulka” which quietly demonstrates how even a simple article of
clothing, seen in the light of history, can become an article of
faith, and the wearing of it, a way of keeping faith with those who
are lost to time. If there is an overriding theme to the Potomac
Review, it is the bonds of relationship—the sometimes
excruciating sacrifices they ask of us, and the best of ourselves
they give us in return. [Potomac Review,
51 Mannakee St., Rockville, MD 20850. E-mail: judith.gaines@montgomerycollege.edu.
Single issue $10.
www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/]
- Ann Stapleton
small.spiral.notebook
Volume 1 Issue 2
This is the second “best of” collection from
the small.spiral.notebook website and there is a wealth of
excellent fiction here. My favorite piece was “Immersion” by Judy
Budnitz, which manages to deal with issues of race, jealousy and
sisterhood with subtlety and artfulness. Although, who would expect
less from Budnitz? Other fiction highlights include Jill Carroll’s
“How to Be a Good Daughter” and the delightfully twisted short-short
“Oyster” by Ken Foster. The poetry in this issue did not strike me
as much as the fiction, but I enjoyed both of Mark Cunningham’s
prose-poems about confusion and frustration. There are a couple
pieces here that simply miss the mark, but for a second issue
small.spiral.notebook shows plenty of promise. I can only hope
they keep up the good work. [Small Spiral Notebook. E-mail:
editor@smallspiralnotebook.com. Year subscription $12.
http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/] – Lincoln Michel
Smartish
Pace
Issue 11
2004
"It is the age of noon / when all the hours are
sleeping / and you remain awake, for this / is where the poem
begins…"—the young German poet Matthias Göeritz (translation by
Susan Bernofsky) captures the essence of the entire glorious
endeavor of poetry, waking us from sleep, from the stultifying
trance of a hot, uncomfortable day—a "metamorphosis" as the poem's
title announces. This issue contains many poems to wake and
transform its readers, including the winner of the journal's 2004
Erskine J. Poetry Prize ("Second Bearing, 1919" by Claudia Emerson),
a poem that accomplishes an ambitious feat in very few words,
evoking a destructive barn fire with remarkable economy of language;
translations of four German poets (Göeritz, Oleschinski, Sarorius,
Draesner); and new poems by poets as unlike each other in approach
and style as Ted Kooser and Dorothy Barresi, whose "Tijuana Clinic"
is superb ("A cell is a mad situation. / A sidelong glance in a
feathered god's left yet. // An ancient nation / developing.").
Michael Burkard's "Thank You" wakes us to the ways poems manage to
surprise us, constantly re-inventing the form itself. Rae Gouirand
wakes us to the poem's chameleon nature, standing in, for other arts
(and crafts) with "To Scale," a poem that changed my mind about
whether or not it is possible to write a compelling poem about
quilting. [Smartish Pace, P.O. Box 22161, Baltimore, MD 21203.
E-mail: sreichert@smartishpace.com. Single issue $10.
www.smartishpace.com] –
Sima Rabinowitz
Southwest
Review
Volume 89 Numbers 2 & 3
2004
Don’t be constrained by the name—Southwest
Review, a cosmopolitan literary journal with a strong sense of
the past (and thus, a keen understanding of where we might be
headed), surely isn’t. Fearlessly fascinated by the inner life, The
Review showcases the essay form, with offerings on the
painter Tintoretto, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Baroness Elsa Von
Freytag-Loringhoven, now recognized as “the great-aunt of punk”
(“‘Cars and bicycles have taillights. Why not I?’ she quipped when
asked to explain the battery-operated taillight tacked to the bustle
of her dress.”) Chris Arthur’s “Getting Fit” offers a breathtaking
description of the simultaneity of life, how, weird or wonderful as
it may seem, everything everywhere—birth and death and whatever we
can find to squeeze in between—is somehow happening all at once:
Comets traverse the
dark of space, flowers bloom and wither, battles are fought,
a child sees the sea for the first time, a stone falls unnoticed
from a cliff-side,
dislodged from its place as the soft plumage of a seabird gently
corkscrews on its
nest, warming a clutch of eggs towards hatching.
Poet Kim Addonizio’s “Egg,” a graphic yet
touching depiction of a young woman’s coming to terms with her
inability to have a child, sinks its claws into your shoulders early
on but hurts most at the end when it suddenly lets go. And John
Reibetanz’s poem “The Original Human Blockhead,” based on a New
York Times obituary of a sideshow performer, manages, tenderly,
to make “freaks and boneheads of us all." [Southwest Review,
Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750374, Dallas, TX
75275-0374. E-mail: swr@mail.smu.edu. Single issue $7.
www.southwestreview.org]
- Ann Stapleton
Vallum
Issue 3:1
Fall-Winter 2005
A press release from Vallum: contemporary
magazine announces the magazine is "dedicated to exploring
reality in all its warped and beautiful aspects" and that this issue
is the journal's first theme-based effort. The theme is "reality
checks," featuring "'snapshots of things real and unreal." As a
"real" object in my hands, Vallum is glossy, slick, and
"contemporary," by which I mean sharply designed. And the Table of
Contents is equally impressive: an interview with Paul Muldoon,
translations of Baudelaire and Günter Kunert, an essay on Celan, and
new poems by Stephen Dunn, Charles Bernstein, Sophie Cabot Black and
nearly thirty others. There is work here that could well be
classified as experimental both in form and language (Daniel Scott
Tysdale's "1 Epigraph + Five Postcards Addressed by an Admirer to
Walter Benjamin Hanging on the Fridge + a Memo on a Napkin (Not Yet
Sent)"), alongside work that is much quieter, almost painterly
(Stephanie Bolster's "Rattlesnake"). In his long interview with
Joshua Auerbach, Paul Muldoon muses, "I suppose one of the great
things about trying to write poems is that you can sort of hop about
here and there, and imagine what it would have been like to do this
or to have done that…." Vallum helps encourage us to hop,
perhaps even to leap about. [Vallum Magazine, PO Box 48003,
Montreal, Quebec, H2V4S8 Canada. E-mail: vallummag@sympatico.ca.
Single issue $7. www.vallummag.com] –
Sima Rabinowitz
The
Wallace Stevens Journal
Special Conference Issue, Part 1
Volume 28 Number 2
Fall 2004
From the proceedings of a University of
Connecticut conference celebrating the poet Wallace Stevens, this
broad-ranging issue ponders the early Stevens and how his work will
fare in the next fifty years, memory in Stevens, “Stevensian
language,” new perspectives on the poems, and even includes Poetry editor Christian Wiman’s assertion that Stevens’ genius
lacks a strong enough connection to the real world and the flesh and
blood men and women who inhabit it. Especially enlightening is a
section in which practicing poets tell us what they have been given
by the long hours willingly spent reveling in, disagreeing with,
inviting into or trying to debar from their own work the words of
the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company executive who led a
second life as one of America’s great versifiers. Ellen Bryant
Voight, herself an exceptional poet, notes that to speak in terms of
influence is to miss the point that Stevens’ bequest to those who
come after is really “a lifetime of permissions” to follow where
their own muses lead. Perhaps the original “language” poet, Stevens
understood that much of human life is really an interior affair, and
he fearlessly staked a claim for the centrality of the imagination
to any notion we hold of a real world. He knew that any of us, in
the privacy of his own mind’s eye, might be the “old sailor” in his
poem “Disillusionment at Ten O’Clock,” who, though “Drunk and asleep
in his boots, / Catches tigers / In red weather.”
[The Wallace Stevens Journal, Clarkson
University, Box 5750, Potsdam, NY 13699. E-mail: serio@clarkson.edu.
www.wallacestevens.com]
- Ann Stapleton
Reviewers - Contributors
Notes
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
Cumulative Index of Lit Mags Reviewed
P.O. Box 1580