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Freshwater – 2008

2008

Annual

Maggie Glover

I had never before read an issue of Freshwater, a journal produced yearly by the Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, CT. In her “Editor’s Note,” Edwina Trentham is full of thanks, particularly to student editors who seem to be responsible for much of the journal’s production (as opposed to some lit mags who only allow students to be involved in the very early stages of selection, or just production grunt work). This note also revealed the dedication of the Freshwater team; many men and women clearly spent a great deal of time on this issue and I find this exceedingly refreshing. What’s better than a group of editors that care deeply about the selection and production process?

I had never before read an issue of Freshwater, a journal produced yearly by the Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, CT. In her “Editor’s Note,” Edwina Trentham is full of thanks, particularly to student editors who seem to be responsible for much of the journal’s production (as opposed to some lit mags who only allow students to be involved in the very early stages of selection, or just production grunt work). This note also revealed the dedication of the Freshwater team; many men and women clearly spent a great deal of time on this issue and I find this exceedingly refreshing. What’s better than a group of editors that care deeply about the selection and production process?

Freshwater opens with the winners of the sixteenth annual Asnuntuck Student Poetry Contest and includes individual paragraphs highlighting the strengths of each winning poem. The winning poems are mixed in throughout the journal, which suggests that the editors are interested in creating an arc for the journal as a whole. To me, this was a good choice, as it allowed all of the poems to speak to each other. Winning poems as well as the non-contest poems deal with a range of subject matter (from the first day of school to date rape to the Old Testament to eating paint) but the style of most of the poems could be categorized as accessible narrative. Standouts include Katherine Broad’s “Talking to God,” Ellen Dore Watson’s “What Remains” and Lynn Hoffman’s “Cannibal Sestina,” an entertaining imagining of a real-life personal ad set to form.

I hope that the students (and teachers) involved in this issue of Freshwater are proud of their hard work. Their spirit and perseverance is reflected in the final product. Overall, Freshwater is a wonderful example of a successful, student-run literary journal.
[www.acc.commnet.edu/freshwater.htm]

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