NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

In more than a decade of writing reviews, I don’t think I have ever said this before – read this journal for the editorial remarks. I’m serious. Here’s editor Sean Bernard in an interview with poet Neil Aitken, winner of the 2008 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry: “How does being Canadian (ed. Note: Neil is Canadian) give you a poetic advantage compared to being a wine swilling urban American?” Oh, did I mention that his interview with Aitken is one of the best magazine interviews I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever? Here are the editor’s comments preceding an excerpt from a novel-in-progress: “This is an episode from a novel-in-progress and it is fairly self-contained: Prism readers will be reassured to learn that the boy survives.” Here is the editor responding to Aitken after a particularly fascinating and unusual answer to one of his questions: “I don’t believe that for a minute.” Here is the editor from the notes that precede the “Canon Interview,” an imaginary conversation with a dead author (Jane Austen this issue): “On a recent full moon night, we were driving our editorial van through the Inland Empire.” Our editorial van! Continue reading “Prism Review – 2009”

This double issue of the journal begins with an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, titled simply “The Poet,” the magazine’s “Past Masters” feature. And Emerson begins with a definition of those who are “esteemed umpires of taste”: “often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether or not they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.” First, I am struck by the lovely internal rhymes (acquired, admired, inquire). Then I am simply worried that reviewers are self-proclaimed “umpires of taste.” Finally, I am convinced that the “beautiful souls” are the poets who have contributed to Poetry East where, for the most part, the poems are “personal,” heartfelt, earnest, sincere, and, for lack of a better term, accessible (as in approachable, read with apparent ease). Continue reading “Poetry East – Spring 2009”

This “international/translation issue” features the work of poets from Bangladesh, Sweden, India, Cyprus, Scotland, France, London, Greece, the Philippines, Switzerland, Turkey, South Africa, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States (most of these are poems with an “international” component of some kind). As several poems appear in languages other than English with English translations and translators’ credits, my assumption is that the others – no matter their country of origin – were written in English. (An editor’s note would help readers know for certain when they are reading originals and when they are reading translations.) Many of the contributors are natives of one country, but residents of another. The issue presents a laudable compendium of international writers, many of whose work is otherwise unavailable to readers in the States. The editorial vision is generous and eclectic, allowing for work that encompasses a variety of poetic styles, modes, and themes; most of the translations are polished, competent, and fluid. Continue reading “Off the Coast – Spring 2009”

Nimrod is a journal that has a long tradition of publishing the finest works to come out of the contemporary Mexico scene. Following that custom is the Spring/Summer 2009 issue, the third issue in Nimrod’s history to be devoted to Mexican writers. This issue is difficult to discuss succinctly – the writers are numerous (well over 50 contributors are included here) and their work is enormous (everything from borders to migration to the meaning of change is covered) – but let’s give it the old college try. Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Spring/Summer 2009”

Modern Haiku received 308 entries from 79 poets in 5 countries for its 2009 Spiess Contest! Haiku (and senryu, essentially haiku with human images, rather than images drawn exclusively from nature) appears to be as popular as ever.

Continue reading “Modern Haiku – Summer 2009”

This is, by far, the most diverse literary magazine I’ve ever encountered. On the Labletter’s introductory pages are art images, followed by fiction, photography, a feature on an improvisational acting company, which includes a scene from their improv play based on Greek tragedy. Finally, under a heading as broad as Gallery, there are photos, art of both two-dimensional and three-dimensional sort, more fiction, and a few poems. That the magazine comes with an equally diverse CD is as astonishing as reading the print edition is. Continue reading “The Labletter – 2009”

Okay, I’ll admit it: I had no idea what ‘juked’ meant. So I consulted my trusty OED, only to find that the word is a football term: sort of. It means, in essence, to fake someone out; pull them offside (this is where the football thing comes in). At any rate, I found that the stories and poems contained within Juked’s pages are, in fact, of the sort that employ a bit of skullduggery. Continue reading “Juked – Winter 2008/2009”

Published by Manhattanville College (Purchase, NY), this issue of Inkwell contains stories and poems that the editor has chosen because they “help us embrace new worlds.” Most of the works indeed strive toward character-based abstraction. The fiction, thankfully, remains grounded in concrete narrative. Continue reading “Inkwell – Spring 2009”

Wow! The only thing that would do this astoundingly exciting issue justice is to write a transgenre review. What would that look or sound like? It could be structured as dictionary entries like Jim Elledge’s “Mercy,” “Quarantine,” and “Xyloid.” Or perhaps an eight-page piece broken into segments of single phrases and sentences of no more than three text-lines each, alternating between font styles (regular and bold, serif and sans serif, different point sizes) like Lance Olsen’s “Head of Flames,” which begins: “Look: I am standing inside the color yellow.” (If only my review could have an opening this simultaneously luxurious and spare.) Continue reading “Hotel Amerika – Spring 2009”

If you love a good story – and who doesn’t? – you must read Glimmer Train. It never, and I do mean never, disappoints. This issue includes exquisite stories by Carmiel Banaksy, Hubert Ahn, Cynthia Gregory, Johnny Townsen, Marc Basch (first time in print!), Lindsey Crittenden, Diana Spechler, Scott Schrader, Mary Morrissy, and Kuyangyan Huang, as well as a critical essay by Sara Whyatt on the theater of Raisedon Baya and Chris Mlalazi, and an interview with David Leavitt, conducted by Kevin Rabalais. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Summer 2009”

The reader is welcomed to this issue of Crazyhorse with the editor’s modest reminder of the stories and poems published by the journal that were selected for the Best American Series, including the Poetry, Short Stories and Nonrequired Reading volumes. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2009”

This summer’s edition to Canteen’s canon is filled to the brim with amusing essays, thought-provoking poems, and a couple of fictional, yet introspective short stories. One such story is Justin Taylor’s “In My Heart I Am Already Gone.” Its protagonist, Kyle, is a cousin of some sort to the family with whom he spends Wednesday nights. His Uncle Danny, in referring to his medically sound, but mentally unhinged cat, says: “This was a long time coming.” He is, of course, talking of rubbing out, or knocking off, the poor, poor Buckles. Danny has asked Kyle to ‘take care of it’. Kyle, as naturally as Holden Caulfield without the sarcasm might, muses that Continue reading “Canteen – 2009”

This literary review was founded in 2004 and offers literary reviews, author interviews, essays, and publishing news. They also present articles on a variety of topics including art, science, politics, and history. Basically, there is something here for almost everyone. Below are a few juicy tidbits to be sampled in their pages: Continue reading “California Literary Review – Summer 2009”

I have always loved Brick, a handsome, polished, semi-annual from Toronto. The journal typically features some of the finest, and most influential, writers and from across the Americas and around the world (this issue’s stars include Michael Ondaatje, Eduardo Galeano, Edmund White, Dionne Brand, Francisco Goldman, Jim Harrison, Jack Spicer, and Juan Cruz for example); what I’d call “pure and original finds” (a brief essay on Harold Pinter by acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema, along with a marvelous photo of her and Pinter; and the posthumously published “Three Wishes” by Pannonica de Koenigswarter, fascinating black and white photos of and fragments from bebop and jazz musicians); and terrific graphics (some great photos in this issue). Continue reading “Brick – Summer 2009”

A promising premier beginning with fascinating cover art – a “threadwork portfolio” by Lisa Solomon whose threadwork images appear throughout the journal – Marvin Bell’s moving “dedication poem” (“The Book of the Dead Man (Arroyo)”) featuring Bell’s signature anaphoric lines; a terrific interview with novelist Eric Miles Williamson, a graduate of the California State University system where Arroyo is published; five strong stories; and contributions from ten poets, including more work by Bell. Continue reading “Arroyo Literary Review – Spring 2009”

At first glance, the Fall 2008 issue of Red Rock Review may seem to be fairly provincial in tone, but a deeper look shows the work to be as wide in locale and subject matter as it is rich in expression. From Hari Bhajan Khalsa’s poem about the swaying rhythms of summertime in Los Angeles to Mark Sanders’s deceptively simple poems about the inner lives of horses, Red Rock Review charts the forgotten ghosts and breathing minority of the American Southwest. Continue reading “Red Rock Review – Fall 2008”

Poetry as storytelling. Poetry as intimate conversation. Poetry as painting. If you know serious readers who say they don’t like poetry, give them an issue of Rattle. Especially this one, which features amazing “conversations” with Toi Derricotte and Terrance Hayes, conducted by editor Alan Fox, a “Tribute to African American Poets,” and contributors’ notes that contain brief personal (and personable) remarks rather than dull lists of credentials. “The hope is that a poem might walk the tightrope from which sloganeering topples,” writes David O’Connell in his note. Many of these notes are, happily, as satisfying in their own way as the poems. Continue reading “Rattle – Summer 2009”

Potomac Review is a publication of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. It’s not suburban Washington D.C., where the college is located, however, that graces this issue’s cover, but an exquisite black and white photograph of “Scotland’s Royal Mile,” by Roger Fritts. The street scene is viewed through a window behind a desk. The window’s divided light imposes its grid on a table of objects (drawing and scientific tools), the geometry of the buildings in the distance reflected in the instruments on the table. Continue reading “Potomac Review – Spring 2009”

To start at the ending, I loved Melanie Lynn Moro-Huber’s straightforward essay “Checking the Pulse of Poetry Today,” in which Moro-Huber attempts to assess the value of poetry in contemporary culture. Beginning with a brief conversation with her husband, who sees little to no value in poetry, and continuing on with anyone who will listen, Moro-Huber receives a variety of responses from the owner of a music store, a fellow shopper at the local Walmart, MFA students, and academics. I loved the casual tone of Moro-Huber’s essay and the quirkiness of her approach, such as when she reiterates her husband’s response that “Poetry hits you in the nuts or it doesn’t.” Continue reading “New York Quarterly – 2009”

“An international magazine of ideas and opinions, emphasizing literature and the arts” – that is how the editors describe tnr. The front cover exhibits delicate pink petals, aside thistles, against a brick cross – beauty, troubles and truth. Art this journal has in abundance – photographs, reproductions of paintings, watercolors, drawings – all very stylish and in color. Continue reading “the new renaissance – Spring 2009”

If you love Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska’s work as I do, you’ll love this issue which features the poet’s work, along with ten brief essays that “consider” her writing and influence from Lawrence Raab, Carl Dennis, Sally Ball, Kathy Fagan, Jennifer Clarvoe, William Olsen, Michelle Boisseau, Rachel Wetzsteon, Marianne Boruch, and Tony Hoagland. Olsen describes Szymborska’s poems as “a little off to the side,” ironic not as “cosmic betrayals,” but as “human fictions.” Continue reading “New Ohio Review – Spring 2009”

The new Monkeybicycle is a beautiful book to hold and admire. Weighty, a neo-Rothko cover design, that new book smell. The inside is even better. A strong lineup of edgy stories and poems. Devoting its pages to mostly prose, the selections range from flash fiction to medium length and longer short stories. What other magazine throws together hard realism with the surreal, magical realism and science fiction? Editor Steven Seighman has put together something for everyone and it is refreshing after a glut of theme-issues has dominated literary journals for some years. Continue reading “Monkeybicycle – Spring/Summer 2009”

This publication contains “prose, poetry, and art exploring Arab American.” Mizna the organization is dedicated to supporting Arab-American culture and giving is expression. “Mizna” the word means “the cloud of the desert.” In a desert, a cloud is good, cooling, giving comfort to those who pass through – a big difference maker. This publication is short – about eighty pages, but packs a wallop. Continue reading “Mizna – 2008”

A meridian stretches between poles, an apt way to describe the fascinating extremes between the pieces in this issue of the magazine – from the “Lost Classic” feature, a letter sent in reply from Katherine Anne Porter to book designer Merle Armitage (“It is not in the least difficult for me to standby what I love and believe in”) to an e-mail interview by Paul Legault with poet Tao Lin (“I want my next book to be ‘iconic’ it can’t suck”). From Lynn Pott’s poem “Barely Ask” (“When you get old do your lips shrink, do you know?”) to Angus A. Bennett’s “Muted with a Line from Someone Else’s Memory” (“and the joy of a midnight as meaningless things / as we do meaningless things – a placemarker for desire”). Continue reading “Meridian – Spring 2009”

When I read recently that a story published in this lit mag had won the Million Writers Award, I decided to give it a closer look. The award is sponsored by the online literary journal, storySouth, and involves a panel of judges reading through seven or eight hundred entries from the web to select a hundred and seventy-five or so for further consideration. Then Jason Sanford, previous editor of storySouth, selects the top ten stories and these are voted on by the public. It is a fairly democratic – if arbitrary – procedure, and the winner of this year’s award is “The Fisherman’s Wife” by Jenny Williams, which appeared in the August 2008 issue of LITnIMAGE. Continue reading “LITnIMAGE – Spring 2009”

The front cover of the “Africa Calling” edition of TLR presents us with the crossroads where Africa presently stands: four young teenage boys walking to schools in uniform, striding down a brown road against the green backdrop of ageless Africa. Modern Africa with its optimism marching forward impatiently while old Africa, with all its problems and lushness, is still there, but receding. Continue reading “The Literary Review – Winter 2009”

This literary journal is dedicated to helping the “15 million children throughout the world that have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.” The proceeds of the sales and submission fees go to various orphanages around the world. To make sure it sells, it uses both “prominent writers and artists with rising stars to produce an eclectic mixture.” How can anyone go wrong with a journal meant for such a worthy cause? Continue reading “H.O.W.Journal – Spring/Summer 2009”

Here is an editorial perspective I can get behind: Continue reading “Hayden’s Ferry Review – Spring/Summer 2009”

“I must be frank about this – the American Present baffles me.” Not longer after making this pronouncement in his interview here with Irene Keliher, David Leavitt reminds us what Grace Paley said about finding a subject or coming to terms with what one is compelled to say: “For me there is a long time between knowing and telling.” Turning what baffles us into something we can know and tell about, in ways simultaneously original and unique, yet recognizable or, at least, meaningful, is what good writing is about (although I may end up no less baffled). Gulf Coast satisfies this goal admirably. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Summer/Fall 2009”

I almost missed my stop on the subway, I couldn’t stop reading. What captivated me most in these poems, prose poems, and short stories – and what they have in common, for the most part – is the power to surprise without working too vigorously or obviously to accomplish this. They don’t go where you expect or move the way you think they will, but they don’t announce their intentions to thwart expectations with bold gestures or wildly inventive strokes. Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Spring 2009”

The editors of Glimmer Train Stories have successfully put together another issue of pieces that focus strongly on character interiority. Through the course of the issue, the reader is acquainted with several different people, including an American teacher watching over his students in Germany, ill-fated lovers dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and people on the run from Nazis. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Spring 2009”

There are stars aplenty in this issue devoted entirely to poetry and poetics: D. Nurske, Kevin Prufer, David Wagoner, Elton Glaser, Thomas Lux, G.C. Waldrep, Bruce Weigl, David St. John, Carl Phillips, Laura Kasischke, Franz Wright, Eric Pankey, David Hernandez, Jean Valentine, Alice Friman, Timothy Liu, Charles Wright, among others. And their work is, well, stellar. But there are equally bright and lesser-known voices on the horizon, too (many also quite accomplished and widely published), and I’d like to spotlight their contributions to this fine issue, beginning with moonlight and Melissa Kwasny’s prose poem “The City of Many Lovers.” “Moon that strikes on the downbeat,” she writes, and its Kwasny’s rhythms that are, indeed, most striking: “Lunedi. Martedi. Mercoldi. It’s moon-day.” And so she begins a poetic narrative that manages to tell a large story that unfolds in a small moment in one short lyric paragraph; it’s a perfect little model of prose poetry. Continue reading “Field – Spring 2009”

Founded in 1983, Exquisite Corpse went through many lives before finally transforming into an online-only journal in 1996. Now offering an annual print anthology of material from the web journal, the work in Exquisite Corpse is as richly layered as it is stunningly diverse. Continue reading “The Exquisite Corpse – 2008”

The front cover of this superb publication shows a sleek black cat, tail high, eyes narrowed to luminous slits, strutting along an embankment in a photograph by Alexander Petrosyan. Like Russia, the cat is proud, a survivor. Gogol saw Russia as a brooding, dark country. These readings convey other writers’ takes on Gogol. Some of the fiction is absurdist fiction written in the early part of the twentieth century, when there was much experimentation in art and literature, like Dadaism. A Soviet writer could get himself shot for writing absurdist fiction under the Stalin regime. Continue reading “Chtenia – Spring 2009”

Toby Wiliguru Pambardu’s poem “First Truck,” “splutters,” and spins, and gushes, and presses forward, with the wild, persistent, percussive energy of the strange and magical beast of a “first truck” on the plain. Written in Yindjibarndi, the indigenous language of the people by the same name of the Pibara region of Australia, the poem creates a rumbling across the page that “clatters,” “rattles,” and “whirls” like the vehicle itself. The poem is translated by Shon Arieh-Lerer whose translation is not, in fact, the first of this poem. This one “attempts to capture Pambardu’s daring innovation, excitement, and poetic style.” Even without the ability to read the original, I can see that Arieh-Lerer has succeeded, and the poem (which takes up four pages in an issue of a mere 35) – and the translation – are thrilling, a highlight of the issue. Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Summer 2009”

Aimee Nezhukumatahil, 49th Parallel Poetry Award judge, is not exaggerating when she calls the prize-winning poem “gorgeous” and “breathtaking.” Kaveh Bassiri’s “Invention of God” is divine. From Bassiri’s clever, lyrical tercets to Mardi Link’s experience of Tractor Supply as “a spiritual moment” in the essay “Chicken Trilogy,” this issue of Bellingham Review is about pure pleasure: that particular and spectacular pleasure of purely good reading. Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Spring 2009”

Issue #3 of the Agriculture Reader has a nice feel to it, literally. For one thing there’s something particularly satisfying about the paper it is printed on; it somehow feels thin without seeming fragile; somehow gives the entire issue a nice flexibility, somehow lends itself to a comfortable back pocket curl. Coming in at 103 pages, if you count the three final lined pages tagged on for taking “notes,” this issue is the perfect size for summer reading, for savoring, for holding up in a sun shielding position while swinging to and fro on a hammock. Continue reading “Agriculture Reader – 2009”

As a literary magazine of “magical realist and experimental works,” this issue teems with imaginative stories, poetry, and a play. Magical realism wowed Europe before it hit the United States with so much force. This issue will tickle the mind with the ingenuity and refreshingly original, even zany pieces. Who needs brain-altering drugs when reading this can be a mind-blowing experience? Continue reading “A Cappella Zoo – Spring 2009”

When I first read – or rather, studied – this issue of ZYZZYVA, I had no idea how to review the thing. The entire issue is in “textimage, instances in which text and image collide on the page,” and since I’ve been interested in the written word for over twenty years and visual art for only five, I ought to be excused for my quandary. On my second reading, I decided to describe what is in the journal and encourage readers pick up a copy and make their own commentary. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Spring 2009”

Newspapers everywhere are disappearing. Magazines are closing shop. The New York Times is consolidating sections, no more “Escapes,” no more Sunday “City.” Yet, somehow, WLT, as gorgeous as always, manages to survive into its eighty-third year with as expansive and broad a vision as ever. The first eighty years (way back to when WLT was Books Abroad!) will soon be available online through JSTOR. So, now we have the best of both worlds. Continue reading “World Literature Today – May-June 2009”

It’s the range – and, in some cases, the combination – of tones, voices, and diction that make this issue of West Branch exciting. Poems from Christopher Weese’s series “Marvels” will help me illustrate my point about diction. Here is an excerpt from XXII: Continue reading “West Branch – Spring/Summer 2009”

South Loop Review is the creative nonfiction and art annual published by the English Department of Columbia College Chicago, and though said to “give greater emphasis to non-linear narratives and blended genres,” I would say the publication as a whole is fairly balanced in its variety. It might be more accurate to say the non-linear and blended genres are the stronger and more lasting pieces in this issue. Continue reading “South Loop Review – 2008”

Only three writers have ever published plays in The Sewanee Review, including William Hoffman, whose drama in this issue, “The Spirit in Me,” based on a story of the same title, appeared in the Review twenty-five years ago. The play takes place in a southern West Virginia coal town (Hoffman’s father, incidentally, owned a coal mine) in the sweltering summer of 1936 and is an exploration of race and class issues which unfold inside the framework of a love story, shaped by the strong arm of the law and the church. The dialogue is fast-paced, despite the sluggish, heavy heat, and the voices clear and true and particular. It’s easy to imagine a production of this short play, with its spicy, clipped dialogue, finely etched characters, enormous imaginative opportunities for a set, and historical importance. Continue reading “The Sewanee Review – Winter 2009”

You can hold Sentence in one hand. It’s fat, but also squat, and just the right size for a one-fisted read, so you can hold a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, in one hand and hold up the journal in the other. But, wait – you won’t need the caffeine or the booze. Sentence provides its own special and particular high. I have loved it from the first issue, and this one is easy to love, too. Continue reading “Sentence – 2008”

“[T]he way you can feel his intelligence moving on the page in the choices and turns he makes.” This is Cornelius Eady describing the work of Gregory Pardlo, the poet whose work he has chosen for “Poets Introducing Poets,” always one of this magazine’s finest features. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a better description of that elusive and spectacular quality that makes great poetry so hard to define and so easy to love. And Eady – who praises Pardlo’s line and his ear, as well as his poetic intelligence – couldn’t be more right about Pardlo. His work is “dense, but it’s never a burden to navigate” (“Kite / strings tensing the load of a saddle- / backed wind”). Continue reading “Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2009”

I love guest editor Eleanor Wilner’s work, so it is terrific to have a chance to read her picks for the magazine. Some of her choices surprised me; almost all interested and satisfied me for they are unpredictable and wildly engaging in their use of language. Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Make Believe” merges language that can border on the ordinary with syntax, line breaks, and images that magnify and elevate it: “We will eventually be archaeology, but now in America / I tell my young daughter the new headlights are a bluish-white / instead of the smoky yellow / of my upbringing.” and “It’s that time when I’m alone in America with my young / daughter that she startles / herself realizing the woodpile beneath the black oak is itself / formerly a tree, / and she wants to know whether these trees have feelings.” Continue reading “Ploughshares – Spring 2009”

Laurence Goldstein, Michigan Quarterly Review’s editor for 32 years, is stepping down. His last issue is a doozey. But, let me back up and start at the beginning. Not with his brief and poignant farewell, but with the journal’s cover. A stunning photograph of Orson Welles in a 1947 production of Macbeth introducing the portfolio of letters and memos from the Orson Welles Collections at the University of Michigan, curated and introduced here by Catherine L. Benamou. But, let me back up even further and start “above the fold,” for the photo is the bottom half of the cover. The top half is a glorious and amusing juxtaposition of the extremes of academe: “On the Originals of American Modernist Poetry,” an essay by Frank Lentricchia and “The Dirty Little Secret of Sabbatical,” an essay by Susannah B Mintz. Okay, I might as well admit it. I went straight for Mintz’s essay. “The Adored Long Ago: Poets on their Long-Lost Loves,” by Mark Halliday (also announced on the cover) competed, but only briefly, for my attention. Mintz’s dirty secret won out. Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Spring 2009”

Whether or not it’s deliberate or simply a happy accident, the Table of Contents is, in and of itself, simply fabulous. Listen to these titles: “The poem I’m obsessed with,” “Have you ever noticed how many bugs,” “The Simple Life Reveals its Complications,” “Marriage, it turned out, was a disappointment,” “Swee’ Dadday’s Big Sanyo,” Going to Jail Free,” “Triptych of My Aunt Linda, Poet in Her Own Right, Frightened of Bicycles,” “The Wrong Thing, the Bad Thing the Untrue Thing.” A welcome and true sign of the originality to come. Continue reading “The MacGuffin – Winter 2009”

Okay, maybe it’s not an issue for most, but I’m a sucker for fonts. Ever picked up a lit mag and thought, “Good content, but it looks awful on the page”? A good lit mag isn’t just about content, it’s about presentation. And Mississippi State’s Jabberwock Review is a brilliant example of just how much quality production can do for a magazine: the cover photo is austere, the pages are nice and thick, and, yes, the font is nice. Continue reading “Jabberwock Review – Winter 2009”

Hawk & Handsaw – “The Journal of Creative Sustainability” – “was born out of a deceptively simple pair of truisms: first, reflective sustainability is crucially important to the collective health of our planet; secondly, figuring out how to be successfully sustainable requires a lot of thought and no small amount of patience and whimsy.” This first issue focuses on home – “no attempts at the grand statement, but rather, close observations of the particulars that sustain us.” Continue reading “Hawk & Handsaw – 2008”