Bridge – Spring 2005

Published in Chicago, Bridge is a slick culture-oriented magazine that cranks the volume to eleven. The content is comprehensive – interviews with filmmakers and artists get as much space here as fiction and poetry – but sadly seems a bit loose: too many typos really do frustrate a reader’s experience, and some of the pieces seem to swing and miss. Published in Chicago, Bridge is a slick culture-oriented magazine that cranks the volume to eleven. The content is comprehensive – interviews with filmmakers and artists get as much space here as fiction and poetry – but sadly seems a bit loose: too many typos really do frustrate a reader’s experience, and some of the pieces seem to swing and miss. The interview with Robert Altman is a bit flat, as the interviewer oddly insists on bringing up Lars Von Trier, unprompted (Altman gives his peer the thumbs down), and the real goal of the interview seems more to promote Altman’s new project than to actually interview the famed director. One of Bridge’s conscious editorial goals is clearly provocation: Cris Mazza’s story “Timeline” is a condemnatory collection of news tidbits and Reagan soundbites from the 1980s (“President Reagan . . . reminisced wistfully about Joseph McCarthy”), Keith Driver’s poems are vaguely Howl-ish, and Joe Wenderoth’s poem “The Holy Spirit of Life” features a Jesus who more or less gets gang-banged by the disciples: though “he moaned and he talked dirty . . . he never lost control.” Throughout the magazine, the works seem focused on grabbing attention and generating outrage, and with pieces like Wenderoth’s, the editors are on the right track. [www.bridgemagazine.org]