Posted July 30, 2005
AGNI Magazine
Volume 61
2005
Perhaps the best editors are prescient,
equipped with a literary sixth sense that allows them to provide
readers with apt reflections at the right moment. So it was that I
found myself clipping an article on the necessity of craft in memoir
(as opposed to mere emotional regurgitation) by the current editor
of AGNI, Sven Birkerts, out of a recent issue of Poets &
Writers even as I was reading it, so exactly did it articulate
thoughts I’d been having. A similar sensation attended my reading of
an essay by AGNI’s founding editor, Askold Melnyczuk, in the
current issue of the magazine. Seventy pages earlier, I’d been
reading Ben Miller’s “Romancing the Dankerts” and reflecting on what
it was about his prose that made it dense and stunningly lyric, lush
in a way that made me want to taste it (and all this in piece
ostensibly about trash and trashy neighbors who object to the
trash!). And then there was Melnyczuk, ruminating on the same
question: “I’m curious about why certain sentences read quickly, why
others force us to slow down...” and quoting Susan Sontag: “Every
style is a means of insisting on something.” I must insist that
editors of this ilk are the reason AGNI consistently dazzles.
Volume 61 is no different; I starred so many pieces as worth
mentioning that I can’t mention them all. Birkerts may begin this
issue by lamenting that with Sontag’s death, he lost his “ideal
reader,” the person he felt he was editing for, even if she’d never
seen a copy of the magazine, but I have a feeling that even without
her guiding presence, AGNI will continue to deliver what
readers are looking for–even if they don’t know it yet. [AGNI, 236
Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215. Email: agni@bu.edu. Single issue
$10.
www.agnimagazine.org] – Kathe Lison
The
Antioch Review
“Yin/Yang: Duets and Opposites”
Volume 63 Number 2
Spring 2005
In its 63rd year, The Antioch Review is
still a benchmark. Robert S.Fogarty's editorial quote from Claude
Levi-Straus identifies its theme as, "the search for unsuspected
harmonies." In the lead essay—of seven solid essays—Daniel Bell's
"Ethics and Evil: Frameworks for Twenty-First-Century Culture" asks:
"How do we contain wars of faith, and the spread of potent
ideologies while giving people an anchorage for their lives?" while
Alan Cheuse's ''Reflections on Dialogue: How d'yuh get t'Eighteent'
Avenoo and Sixty-Sevent' Street?" addresses the question of the
narrator in "And God said let there be light, and there was light [.
. .]" while tracing the origins of speech and story. Iraj Isaac
Rahmim's autobiographical "Sacrifices" defines poverty: “[. . .]
being poor as a student is not being poor at all; it is simply
getting an education." Work from eleven fine poets (among them: Neil
Azevedo, Michael Demos, and Marilyn Nelson) is included and in
"Poetry Today," John Taylor concludes his review of Giuseppe
Ungaretti's Selected Poems and Giorgio Caproni's The
Earth's Wall: Selected Poems 1932-1986 with poetry of his own:
"[. . . ] intimations of citadels looming there above us, even as we
pass below the ramparts [. . .]." "Sayings of
Confucius" by Christopher Torockio will turn up in BASS if my vote
counts. "The Hardest Thing" by Rebecca Kavaler and Jennifer Moses's
"You've Told Me Before," deal effectively with difficult aging
parents. "Last Night's Excitement," by Zdravka Evtimova, visits a
society where no one dies. In all respects a stellar issue. [The
Antioch Review, Antioch University, 150 E. South Chicago St., Yellow
Springs, Ohio 45387. E-mail: mkeyes@antioch.edu. Single issue $8.
www.review.antioch.edu] – Anna Sidak
boundary 2
Volume 32 Number 1
Spring 2005
boundary 2 is a serious journal—with
cover art by Theodore A. Harris titled "On the Throne of Fire after
Somebody Blew Up America (for Amiri Baraka)." Among its ten essays,
Miguel Tamen's "My Taste," employs the writings of Kant and Hume to
explore the mystery of "good taste;"—and Bruno Latour's "What is
Given in Experience?" is a perceptive review of Isabelle Stengers's
study of Alfred North Whitehead: Penser avec Whitehead: Une libre
et sauvage creation de concepts. Donald E. Pease's fascinating
"Hawthorne in the Custom-House: the Metapolitics, Postpolitics, and
Politics of The Scarlet Letter," describes Hawthorne's
reaction to the embroidered bit of cloth found in the customs-house
prior to the loss of his position: "[. . .] his desire for an
authorized social position paradoxically embodied itself in this
peculiar artifact [. . .]" In an immediately comprehensible article
about teaching methods in India—"Use and Abuse of Human Rights," by
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—ironically, this statement: "I am often
reprimanded for writing incomprehensively." I'll return to this
journal based on the following statement:
"The editors of boundary 2 announce that they no longer
intend to publish in the standard professional areas, but only
materials that identify and analyze the tyrannies of thought and
action spreading around the world and that suggest alternatives to
these emerging configurations of power. To this end, we wish to
inform our readers that, until further notice, the journal will not
accept unsolicited manuscripts." (Is there an inherent contradiction
in that stance?) [Duke University Press, Journals
Fulfillment, 905 W. Main St, Suite 18B, Durham, NC 27701. E-mail:
havran@pitt.edu. Single issue $14.
www.dukeupress.edu/journals] – Anna Sidak
Conjunctions
"An Anatomy of Roads: The Quest Issue”
44
Spring 2005
This beautifully bound, map-wrapped volume is a
treasure of outstanding short stories and poetry with new work by
familiar names as well as lesser known. The quest theme applies to
almost anything, as editor Bradford Morrow acknowledges, having
summoned the timeless Robert Coover ("Dragons have no sense of time
[. . .]," from "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee,"), William Gas,
("The Piano Lesson," and a great deal more), and John Barth's
forgiven archness in "I've been Told: A Story's Story," as well as
Paul West's "Slow Mergers of Local Stars" (it is not enough to
simply kill a lion), and Joyce Carol Oates's "The Gravedigger's
Daughter" – a mother and child on the lam. Carole Maso's brilliant
"Young H Saved from Infamy": "[. . .] young H is among those who
have gained admission to the academy [. . .] See how the very world
seems changed [. . .]," falls into the realm of would-that-it-were.
Alai's "Two Stories" derive from Tibetian folktale, with a dash of
magic realism: "The moonlight burrowed out of the cluster of clouds
and kept pace with his steps." More magic realism in Jonathan
Carroll's "After having eaten the piece of the building, Allan
Harris was transformed," from "Home on the Rain."
From "Voyagers" by the extraordinary Frederic Tuten: "On reflection,
that night when my trawler was diving down to Davy Jones's Locker, I
came to see--in that moment when death seemed just ahead--to
appreciate her point." And from the poignant "Kornia" by Elizabeth
Hand: "Oh sure it takes a terrorist attack to hear from you." A
wonderful collection. [Conjunctions, Bard College,
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504. E-mail: conjunctions@bard.edu. Single
issue $15.
www.conjunctions.com]
– Anna Sidak
Ecotone
Reimagining Place
Volume 1 Number 1
Winter/Spring 2005
Ready to stand at indistinct edges or walk
vertiginous margins, the aptly named Ecotone is a brave new
offering out of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. As
editor David Gessner explains, it’s the edges, “between genres,
between science and literature, between land and sea, between the
civilized and wild, between earnest and comic, between the personal
and biological, between urban and rural, between animal and
spiritual” that Ecotone feels are “not only more alive, but
more interesting and worthy of our exploration.” Worthy of
exploration as well is this first issue, a nicely produced
perfect-bound volume weighing in at over 150 pages, with a center
section of art devoted to gorgeous collages by Pamela Wallace Toll.
The remaining pages are chock full of biggies such as Reg Saner,
Philip Levine, Bill Roorbach, Gerald Stern, Wendell Berry, and Peter
Matthiessen, to name only a few. My only complaint about volume one
is that at times it seems quality has taken a second seat to
star-power; for instance, the piece here by Reg Saner–author of many
very, very fine essays–was a disappointment. That said, the journal
still has much to offer, including an interview with Mark Doty as
well as several excellent poems; Doty is, I think, physically
incapable of producing so-so work. Also noteworthy is a lovely lyric
essay by Brad Land, as well as a tribute to the work of
“nature-writer” John Hay, to use an appellation that Peter
Matthiessen, in his response to Hay’s work, quite rightly calls
“insipid and obsolete.” No such complaint can be made about
Ecotone, whose travels to the “lands in-between” will no doubt
continue to result in a journal well-worth reading. [Ecotone,
Department of Creative Writing, University of North Carolina
Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-3297.
Email: ecotone@uncw.edu. Single issue $9.95.
www.uncw.edu/ecotone] – Kathe Lison
Field
Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Number 72
Spring 2005
Field: (fēld) n. any wide,
unbroken expanse; in this case, one of terrific poetry. But longtime
readers of the venerable journal, in publication since the 60's,
won’t find that news revelatory. As usual, there’s much here to be
praised, with new work by notables such as Pattiann Rogers, Marianne
Boruch, Dennis Schmitz and Sandra McPherson. Most appealing to this
reader, however, were two lovely poems by Kevin Prufer “Gothic:
Leaves” and “The Pastor;” the former made me long for the autumn
leaf piles of my Midwestern childhood. I read associate editor David
Young’s review of the Donald Justice’s Collected Poems,
posthumously published by Knopf (Justice died just days before its
appearance), with great interest, intrigued by his observations on
how the art of translation can feed a poet’s work (it didn’t hurt
that Young himself is one of my favorite translators). But the
highlight of this issue was four poems by Franz Wright. He may have
come in for some roasting in the “Letters to the Editor” section of
the May issue of Poetry–or, rather, roasted himself,
depending on one’s point of view–but he’s still a damn fine poet.
And this is a damned fine issue of Field. [Field, 50 North
Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074. Email: oc.press@oberlin.edu.
Single issue $7.
www.oberlin.edu/ocpress] – Kathe Lison
Gargoyle
Issue 50
2005
Gargoyle is the collection eclectic
was invented for. Its contents include—in addition to the cartoon
frontispiece by Patricia Storms offering aid and comfort to writers
everywhere, and several photographic portraits—the non-fiction
"Berkley Morning," an excerpt from Phillip Henry Christopher's
Trippin' with Charlie and "Dreaming Richard Brautigan" by
Greg Keeler. At least a third of this issue's 465 pages is
given over to poetry ranging from work by Kate Braverman, J.P.
Dancing Bear, Rachel Galvin, James Grinwis, Patrick Lawler ("It's as
if after Pearl Harbor we declared war / on Spain" from "Duct Tape
Monologue") to Rusty Russell's "Before and After Bloomington": "The
road between Champaign and Bloomington, IL / is an uncrossable
distance. / I drove through the same sunset for a week without
stopping, / and where Chicago should have been it was Saturday."
Fiction includes Kathy Acker's "The Seattle Book," presented as
published—"most privately published / in fact not even well
typed"—and Jim Barnes's "The Visiting Writer" encountering Czech
naivety. In Rick Moody's "The Pirate Station," the station enters
old age in a state of decline "[. . .] imagines it can hear the
music of the spheres and begins to totter down a long narrow
corridor [. . .]" Lance Olsen's "Every sentence is a kiss and
every paragraph an embrace." from "on the despisers of the
body," excerpted from his novel Nietzsche's Kisses, seems to
tell us how it is to drown, and/or be hospitalized; fascinating
in either case. [Gargoyle, P.O. Box 6216 Arlington, VA
22206-0216. E-mail: atticus@atticusbooks.com. Single issue $18.95.
www.gargoylemagazine.com] – Anna Sidak
Hayden’s Ferry Review
Issue 35
Fall/Winter 2004-05
From among the sage brush and juniper (not to
mention the sprawling megalopolis that is the greater Phoenix area)
Hayden’s Ferry Review continues to prove that dedication to
an editorial vision pays off. Its editors may change yearly, but its
commitment to “the artistic and cultural conversations between the
work of established and emerging artists” does not. Issue 35
continues that tradition with work from both new and old voices. In
the “new” category is a fine first publication by short-story writer
Anne Clifford about a middle-aged woman whose sexual longing for her
20-something nephew seems symptomatic of her inability to relate to
her too-often married sister. Not to be missed either is “Int. Hotel
Room-Day” a stunningly good piece of fiction in which Chris Gavaler
manages to use a porn film to poignantly reveal silences in a
marriage (honestly, you have to read this!). The other great thing
about this issue, besides all of the super poetry and artwork I
haven’t room to mention specifically, is the special section on
metafiction. The editors have collected nine meta-works here, all of
them worth reading (though I particularly enjoyed Michael Hettic’s
“Sky Full of White Birds”). The section ends with the pièce de
résistance: an interview with William H. Gass. “Prose that does
not sing is not alive” Gass admonishes; it’s a reminder Hayden’s
Ferry Review does not need. [Hayden's Ferry Review, Box 871502,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1502. E-mail: hfr@asu.edu.
Single issue $6.
www.haydensferryreview.org/] – Kathe Lison
Hiram Poetry Review
Issue 66
Spring 2005
It always makes me happy to see a long-running
literary magazine still going strong. Hiram Poetry Review is
in its 39th year, and for a magazine devoted entirely to poetry that
should signal something. Most of the poems in this issue are written
in a confessional style with a strong first-person presence. Shane
McCrae’s “Immunity” deals with the timeless subject of lost love
(“I’ve built up an immunity / to knife wounds as well / as that
photograph of Mussolini’s corpse you so admire”). E. R. Carlin
offers up a strong poem titled “Depleted” with a narrator who looks
at procreation as a kind of warfare. Remarkably the woman he is
having sex with has zero presence in the poem, which heightens the
metaphor. It is humorous, affecting and sexual, three words that
could describe a good deal of the poems here. [The Hiram Poetry
Review, P.O. Box 162, Hiram, Ohio 44234. E-mail:
poetryreview@hiram.edu. Single issue $9.
http://home.hiram.edu/www/english/hpr/] – Lincoln Michel
Mad Hatters' Review
Issue 2
Summer 2005
Alice would love Mad Hatters' Review—as
I do—there's something, including the astral threats of summer, to
delight everyone. Among its text-art-music combos are Marty D.
Ison's text, narration, and art for "Wake up, Damian Hirst!": “—but
none of it can exorcise god-want from the pleading soul.”;
and Brett Powers's "Pathology" with Wayne Yang's art, Steven Kane's
music: “[ . . . ] all it would take to change everything for the
better is three little Phillips head screws cast upon the still
water.” The impressive poetry collection contains work by John
Barbato, Lynn Lipshin, Corey Mesler, Caroline Zonailo, and others.
Beautifully formatted, this
innovative quarterly journal features—in addition to usual
categories, plus original art and music—a play by Timothy Matos;
Spent half the morning here with: five mini-movies by Mona-Lia
Ventress, three by Donna Kahn; cartoons and parodies: "Campbells's Soup
Can (Botulism)" by Tony 'Baloney' Juliano; "The Wave: Moving
Sculpture" video and text by Reuben Margolin: “The Wave has
many origins, but somehow I always associate its soul with a wheat
field in Andulsia,” music by Paul A. Toth; columns; and the zaniness
of cartoony hat-doffing icons scattered about an elegant layout. And
Alice would recognize that Paul Slapion's eerie cover artworks, the
fragmented and/or hallucinatory nature of individual contributions
confirm the title's awareness of
cultural poison and the need for respite of laughter and art. I
echo the following sentiment: “[. . .]
we're going to enjoy the ride while it lasts and we sincerely hope
that you'll join us in spirit, if not in deed,” from Editor's Rave
by Editor/Publisher, Carol Novack. [Mad Hatters' Review.
E-mail: madhattersreview@gmail.com. Online only:
www.madhattersreview.com] –Anna Sidak
Matter
“Lacunae”
Issue 6
2005
From the web site: "Matter is a unique
biannual publication of literature, poetry, photography, visual art
and just about anything that is made of matter." It is also a
beautifully constructed and environmentally oriented publication
whose editor, Todd Simmons, recommends we read it outside in
sunshine—he means well, but it's 110 degrees here today. Good
advice, however, for the Colorado/Wyoming area it serves. This
issue's call for "[. . .] work dealing with empty space, missing
parts, ecological infatuations, future primitive, and the fabric of
landscape," was met head-on. From Evan Oakley's "An Atlas of the
World": "Now, the creation myth of astrophysicists supplants those
of shamans, [. . .]" to Joseph Hawley's "a fortunate accident . . .
11 days (with medical attention)"—the journal's day 9 trampled
underfoot—Matter displays a taste for the astute, the
offbeat, the different—Michael Crake's "Concourse B": "ticketed
passengers only // pair of glasses reads the newspaper / white
shirt and black pants / she does not smile // may I have your
attention please"—and these are only items that caught my eye,
there are many more: short stories by Sue Ring DeRossett, Jeffe
Kennedy, Blair Oliver, Peter Soliunas, and essays by Ted Daughters
(ketchup), Todd Simmons (hot-air ballooning), Jane Carpenter
(sky-diving), Dan DeWeese's "Obliterated Landscape," and RoseMarie
London's "Red, Blue, and the WWE." Plus "An Elemental Life," an
interview with David Gessner; Nathan Thrailkill's strangely Egyptian
artwork: "Temple of Pious Hygiene," as well as 17 pages of
attractive monochrome ads featuring local merchants. [Matter,
Wolverine Farm Publishing, PO Box 814, Fort Collins, CO 80522.
E-mail: wolverinefarm@yahoo.com. Single issue $10.
www.matterjournal.com] – Anna Sidak
Post Road
Number 10
2005
Turning the page in Post Road always
brings a new surprise. Will the next piece be a non-fiction essay on
the local dogcatcher, a book recommendation made by one of your
favorite authors, a poem or a long series of video stills? Post
Road issue 10 is a real hodgepodge of writing with plenty that
had me excited. The aforementioned Matt Roberts piece, “The
Dogcatcher Hates Politics,” was a fun and clever piece containing
this gem: “’Excitement,’ the dogcatcher says, ‘is a dumpster full of
raccoons.’” Other highlights for me included John Colburn’s two
excellent poems and D. Gatling Price’s collage-like and beautiful
story “Still Wreck.” Most of the pieces in this issue are short,
only a few clock-in over seven pages, and the pieces contain a level
of excitement from start to finish. Post Road’s book
recommendations are interesting, allowing the reader to see the
variety of books authors have fallen in love with. I’ve seen book
recommendations in literarily magazines before, but normally only
one or two an issue; Post Road 10 contains thirteen. For my
part, I’m happy to give Post Road my recommendation. [Post
Road Magazine, 203 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211. E-mail:
mary@postroadmag.com. Single issue $10.99.
www.postroadmag.com/] – Lincoln Michel
Seneca
Review
"New Lyric Essayists"
Volume 35 Number 1
Spring 2005
In I Wanted to Write a Poem, William
Carlos Williams explained why he reduced a five line stanza so that
it would match a four line stanza: “See how much better it conforms
to the page, how much better it looks?” Unsurprisingly, this same
attention to form–form for form’s sake, as an aesthetic
consideration, perhaps even more than a literary one–characterizes
much of the work of the fifteen writers Seneca Review
features in their Spring 2005 edition “New Lyric Essayists.” Both
Seneca and lyric essay editor John D’Agata seem to have a
fondness for the term “new.” When Seneca began publishing
what it has dubbed “lyric” essays in 1997, they declared them “new
terrain,” though the newness of that terrain is debatable. The essay
has always been, by definition, an “experimental” form. Consider,
for example, the fragmented nature of much of Montaigne’s digression
and aphorism-ridden work or the mode of essay writing know as
zuihisu in Japanese, practiced by writers such as Kenko as early
as the 13th century. However, Seneca is to be heartily
applauded for continuing to remind readers that essays need not be
the boring five-paragraph theme too many generations of composition
students were once forced to digest. Of note here is the lead piece
“The Pain Scale” by Eula Bliss, as well “Raptors, Grammar and the
Electric Clock Bird” by Colette LaBouff Atkinson, two works in which
content, form and an essayistic inquisitiveness about how fact
intersects emotion, come together in a mix that’s as heady and
satisfying as a Dirty Martini. While not all of the essays here are
quite as intoxicating–a few struck me as not worth the time to piece
together, the ever-present risk of fetishizing form–Seneca Review
never ceases to be provocative, and those who like essays as jig-saw
puzzles will no doubt have a ball playing with some of these pieces.
[Seneca Review, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York,
14456. Email: senecareview@hws.edu. Single issue $7.
www.hws.edu/SenecaReview] – Kathe Lison
Spire
Spring 2005
Spire is a slender volume of poetry,
fiction, and stated purpose (from the web site): "Spire is
dedicated to publishing traditionally marginalized voices of
minority, low-income and young writers and artists who will create
the future of arts and literature. Spire publishes new
writers alongside more established writers in order to lend
credibility and establish interest in the work of the new writers.
Spire is a nonprofit organization which publishes a biannual
journal of exceptional quality." I especially enjoyed George
Rabasa's "Hyperspud" and from Sharon Lynn Osmond's "Summer
Afternoon": "One day you wake into the blue- / green botany of two
o'clock." "At the River" by Edythe Haendel Schwartz: "[. . .] trout
swishing like / the teardrop gown / her mother wears / to bed /
brown satin / flecked with wine," and "When you say / I wear a dress
of flames / I think of the madrones / their orange skin peeling / in
the White August sun," from "Summersweet" by Jeannine Hall Gailey,
as well as the black and white photography and the daisy-strewn
cover. [Spire, Spire Press, Inc., 532 LaGuardia Pl, Ste 298, New
York, NY 10012. E-mail: editor@spirepress.com. Single issue $8.
www.spirepress.org] – Anna Sidak
Swink
“Crooked Little Feelings”
Number 2
2005
Swink is like an excited child running
up to show you what she found, but instead of grubs and rocks, she
has a hand-full of great writing. There is a sense of enthusiasm and
fun that permeates this issue from head Editor Leelila Strogov’s
introduction to the quirky title pages. Some of the best trinkets
this time around include Bob Hicok’s touching “Matchglow,” Kristen
Andersen’s poem “Some Snapshots,” Susan Minot’s tale of traveling
through Mississippi in a downpour with a passenger whose foot is
bloated to the size of a football and John Warner’s hilarious
“Corrections and Clarifications” (“We declared that Sheriff Jack
Seager is an ineffectual public servant whose slipshod leadership is
plunging our town into a death spiral of crime and corruption. We
regret this because we actually think, as sheriffs go, he’s doing a
pretty good job… What we meant to say is: word has it that Sheriff
Seager has a really small dick.”). However, my favorite piece was
Steven Bartheleme and Pam Houston’s “In the Rain” from Swink’s
“Damaged Darling” section. Here one author sends a story they enjoy
but have been stuck on to another author to finish. This was my
favorite part of Swink #1 and I’m happy to see it survived to
issue #2. I can’t say that every piece here works, but there is
plenty to make it worth you while. In Newpages’ review of Swink
#1 a reviewer declared Swink to be one of the best literary
magazine debuts in years. I’m pleased to report that Swink is
still fulfilling that promise. [Swink, 244 Fifth Ave. #2722, New
York, NY 10001. E-mail:
editors@swinkmag.com. Single issue $10.
www.swinkmag.com/index.html] – Lincoln Michel
Reviewers - Contributors
Notes
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
Cumulative Index of Lit Mags Reviewed
