Number 20
Spring/Summer 2003
JHG
This journal out of Texas presents poetry, art work, photography, and reviews in a slim, perfectly bound package with good production values. The appealing poetry within captures a cross-section of American writing that balances heart and art; these works are beautiful in and of themselves but also strive to mean something. For instance, the poem “On Forgetting” by Megan Snyder-Camp plays on well-known proverbs to display a deeper truth about motherhood, as in the following:
This journal out of Texas presents poetry, art work, photography, and reviews in a slim, perfectly bound package with good production values. The appealing poetry within captures a cross-section of American writing that balances heart and art; these works are beautiful in and of themselves but also strive to mean something. For instance, the poem “On Forgetting” by Megan Snyder-Camp plays on well-known proverbs to display a deeper truth about motherhood, as in the following:
Your children have been waiting an hour.
You say you only have two hands, and they say
a stitch in time saves nine. They’re learningproverbs in school. They portend like old women.
You can barely speak to them…
The essay/review by Abe Louise Young, “New Blood for an Old Story: Rita Dove’s Mother Love,” was informative and intelligent. The bleak landscapes of California desert, photographed by Rama Tiru, provide graphic evidence of this region’s otherworldly beauty. Overall, this is a good collection that will help remind you why you like to read contemporary poetry.
[www.borderlands.org]
