NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

Most of PEN America reads less like a traditional literary journal and more like the transcript of conversations with authors, which makes sense, since much of the writing comes from PEN’s annual World Voice festivals. The unique format allows for interviews, conversations formed around a theme, and short remarks, as well as the traditional poetry, fiction, and essays. Of the various forms, the interviews and conversations stood out the most to me. Continue reading “PEN America – 2008”

This issue of Northwest Review features “essays, fiction, and poetry on aneurysms, arrhythmia, adolescence and other afflictions.” What caught my eye – and stoked my envy as a writer – was the excellent fiction. Continue reading “Northwest Review – 2008”

“Art & Poetry” reads the cover of Mudfish 15, with an impressionistic watercolor of a man treading water in a swimming pool; on the back is a watercolor of trees, a blue mountain, purple fields, a pink sky, all conveyed beautifully by Paul Wuenshe with a few deft brush strokes. Also deft are the poems inside, which can be as short as three lines, or a paragraph or two; many contained in a single page, some several pages. Continue reading “Mudfish – 2007”

To launch their inaugural issue of Memoir, a literary magazine devoted to prose, poetry, graphics, and more, the co-editors, Joan E. Chapman and Candida Lawrence, write competing columns on the definition of memoir. Chapman brings a postmodern reading lens to the genre, delighting in the shifting self and the instability of memory, while Lawrence focuses on a good story carried by a strong voice. Taken together their viewpoints create a solid definition of the complex genre and provide the perfect starting point for a magazine devoted solely to memoir in all its forms. Continue reading “Memoir – Spring 2008”

In these days when literary journals have mainly free verse poetry, Measure: An Annual Review of Formal Poetry is a refreshing contrast. This second issue contains over two hundred pages of formal poems, from Catullus and Horace to Seamus Heaney and Richard Wilbur, as well as many lesser-known poets. Continue reading “Measure – 2007”

An image of a ferocious bear wielding a handsaw at a precise 45-degree angle over a two-by-four greets the reader after opening the handsomely letterpressed cover of The Lumberyard: A magazine for poetry and design. Though slim at thirty-two pages, the magazine is otherwise stuffed with a visual array of black and white cropped text and found art in a copy-job, cut-and-paste style. The layout, with varying font sizes within pages and poems, has the jostled effect of ‘90s television dramas shot by hand-held cams, which may be distracting for some or a fresh sight for others looking for an irreverently-styled magazine. Continue reading “The Lumberyard – 2008”

This issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review is themed “The Grotesque.” It lives up to the name, especially the photographs which include strange human bodies, a bird turned inside-out, and a dog with recent knee surgery. Continue reading “Hayden’s Ferry Review – Spring/Summer 2008”

When I tried to think of an adjective to describe this issue of The Gettysburg Review, the closest that came to mind was eclectic. No prevailing theme or esthetic tied together these wonderful essays, stories and poems. Continue reading “The Gettysburg Review – Summer 2008”

From the essays to the poetry and fiction, war and 9/11 are recurrent themes in this issue of The Georgia Review. The essays – by Ihad Hassan, Reg Saner and Elizabeth Dodd – all examine current and past world crises, from fundamentalism in literature to a reminiscence by a Korean War vet. In Dodd’s essay, she meets an Iraqi poet who wrestles with disturbing images of war and suffering. Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Spring 2008”

Forge is a short, one hundred-plus-page journal, small in size but not in impact. It chose as its cover theme “little people opening things.” The picture on the pale, yellow, glossy cover depicts black stick-like figures pushing open two huge doors that dwarf the little anonymous people, making a 1984-esque look. Forge is actually quite whimsical in places, very modern in its approach and material, and frequently rather dark. Continue reading “Forge – Winter 2007”

Though not planned as a themed issue, Editor Michael W. Pollock claims “Dysfunction” took hold in tying this collection together. Admittedly, the theme didn’t stick with me, as I found each work unique in its own right, the strength of this journal being the variety of the prose selections. Continue reading “First City Review – Spring 2008”

Issue 34 of Creative Nonfiction is all about baseball. I have to admit, I’m a bigger fan of baseball writing than I am of the actual game, and this magazine does not disappoint. The essays cover many aspects of the game: its history, fandom, positions and paraphernalia. They include heavily researched articles and deeply personal memoirs, but all the essays reveal something fascinating about the game. Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction – 2008”

Conduit: subtitled, “Last Laugh,” “Black Humor in Deadpan Alley,” “Words & Visions for Minds on Fire,” is just what these phrases suggest. This tall, narrow issue with a gold skull and crossbones printed on the black cover definitely sports a sense of humor, and strives to be different. Instead of having numbered pages, it has alphabetized words on the lower corners of pages, such as, “antics, balderdash, banter, barb….”all the way to “wag, whoopee cushion, wiseacre, x-ray specs, zany.” Continue reading “Conduit – Spring 2008”

Brooklyn-based Cannibal by the editorial duo Katy & Matthew Henriksen is a poetry journal in the manner of sharp sincerity – sharp in its well-rounded and striking poem selections and sincere in its physical construction. With a textural screen-printed cover in copper ink, copy-job striations and sewn binding, the journal has the look and feel of a gift hand made for you by your no-frills but talented friend. The journal’s seven signatures handbound to the spine capture in their physicality the overall theme of the work: poems in parts. Continue reading “Cannibal – Winter 2008”

Broken Bridge Review sports a three-piece painting as cover art: three gorgeous blue-green panels titled “World View Trip-Tik” by Jessica Hathaway Scriver, painted on top of world maps. The editors chose to make this painting the inspiration for this issue, and included a substantial amount of material that is in some way connected to the political sphere. Continue reading “Broken Bridge Review – 2007”

With a splendid cornucopia of colors and textures on the large, glossy front cover, and many gorgeous full pages of voluptuous art and photography within, The Briar Cliff Review could be a splendid coffee-table book. However, with the quality literature inside, it proves it is something more. The art is spectacular – twenty-two works from oil or acrylic to graphite, sculpture, even archival inkjet. Thirteen photographs are equally spectacular and eclectic – the issue is a feast for the eyes. Continue reading “The Briar Cliff Review – 2008”

This issue of Beeswax Magazine, with its red and gray letterpressed cover and “hand-turned metal binding pegs,” is so beautiful I had a hard time opening it. When I finally did, I discovered the inside is just as distinctive as the outside. Continue reading “Beeswax – 2008”

This issue of Alaska Quarterly Review is nice and thick and full of great writing. Of the fiction, my favorite story was “B & B” by Celeste Ng, a coming of age tale featuring a main character who suffers from pica, the urge to eat things the rest of us don’t consider food. I will never look at chalk in the same way again. I also enjoyed Shao Wang’s story, “One Voted No,” a melancholy piece about an aging Chinese widow whose life is disrupted when the town must elect a mayor. Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Spring/Summer 2008”

With the tagline “The Modern Writer as Witness,” this publication assembles work by authors from the U.S., South America, Korea, Vietnam and a 10th-century Jewish poet from Muslim Spain. Continue reading “Witness – 2007”

Confession: It’s been ten years since I last read The Sun, and I’m not sure why, but now I feel a sense of regret for all I have missed. If you don’t read this three-decades-old, ad-free publication, or don’t know it at all, get this issue (at least). The interview with Edward Tick is an absolute, tell-everyone-you-know-to-read-this-now piece. Tick currently directs Soldier’s Heart, a nonprofit initiative to promote “community-based efforts to heal the effects of war.” As a college teacher working with returning vets, I felt guided by Tick’s insight. The most poignant comment for me: “We have a parade and shoot off fireworks, which scares the hell out of many veterans. A better way to honor them would be to listen to their stories. We should give them new ways to serve and an honorable place in our communities.” Thanks to Tick, I have already started an initiative in my community. This interview, read in combination with Edwin Romond’s poem “Brother in Arms,” about the treatment of ‘Nam vets in a particular workplace, gives voice to the sorry spectrum of response our “warrior class” experience. Continue reading “The Sun – June 2008”

Although its content was featured in notable anthologies, Sport Literate has been riding the proverbial pine since May 2005. Thankfully, the publication has returned to the mound and serves up this Chicago-themed issue of creative nonfiction, poetry and photographs. Continue reading “Sport Literate – 2007”

Knock: Hurt on Purpose is as amazing, off-the-wall, and anguished as the title suggests. There are some very strange pieces inside. Weird. Off-beat. Even creepy. And downright original, stunning, hair-raisingly good! Try the odd short-fiction piece, “Artificial Heart” by E.C. Jarvis, which effectively gives the reader a rise with its dark, twisted sense of humor. Then, “Plump” by Matthew Hamity, a love-hurt story, complete with a villainess-narrator that gives a chilly slant on the definition of “love,” complete with tears. Continue reading “Knock – 2007”

This issue marks The Hudson Review’s 60th anniversary, which is an impressive feat in and of itself, especially in the impermanent world of literary journals. It features two stories by Penelope Fitzgerald who died in 2000. For readers unfamiliar with her work, she won the Booker Prize in 1973 for her novel Offshore and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993 for The Blue Flower. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Spring 2008”

Hot Metal Bridge, the innovative and fiercely imaginative online literary magazine of the University of Pittsburgh, publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction and criticism that will cause such an extreme variety of reactions that by the time we are done reading, we will be so spent and drained that we will have to go home, rest, dive into a hot vat of peanut oil perhaps, before attempting to peruse any more of its wacky literary experiments. Continue reading “Hot Metal Bridge – April 2008”

What struck me first about Hotel Amerika was its gorgeous design and layout. Its pages are taller and wider than most journals – it looks and feels like a trade magazine. Prose is printed in two wide columns of text, while poetry roams freely across the page. Continue reading “Hotel Amerika – Spring 2008”

Harvard Review is not a first pick among reviewers, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps the name scares some away – too high falutin’? However, in reading this issue, I felt not the least bit shut out of the content, and if anything, found much to access and some enjoyable challenges. Continue reading “Harvard Review – 2007”

Dark Horse: the Scottish-American Poetry Magazine is simple enough to look at: a plain white cover with a mirrored horse icon in the lower right corner, and content items listed plainly. However, it does pack a punch into its ninety-five pages. There is poetry, but it mostly focuses on four poets. Continue reading “Dark Horse – Winter 2007/2008”

Court Green is a natty-looking 220 plus page paperback-sized journal with a pink plaid cover and a world of poetry inside. The first section contains absolute jewels, nothing off-the-wall or experimental, just good poems, a variety to pique every interest. For example, the whimsical “Sexy” by Jack Anderson: “The train stops and people leave – how sexy. / New people step in; they’re sexy, too. / That’s how it goes as stations pass: sexy.” It’s fun and sassy and everything summer should be, subway or no. In contrast to “Sexy,” Kevin Carollo’s “Do I Have a Doctor’s Note?” decries school violence by having a youth pose questions: “I didn’t make it / to the audition? / Because I still / had to learn / how to kiss fire?” He hooks the reader effectively with the tragedy and the greater question “Why?” Continue reading “Court Green – 2008”

Center is 200 plus pages of what you would expect from a quality literary journal – poems, short stories, autobiographical essays, and an interview. It also contains the not-so-usual, “Symposium on the Line: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Poetry.” Lines, even more, line breaks, are discussed imaginatively by distinguished poets. Continue reading “Center – 2008”

Created as a result of the one-time issue of the same name by the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, Cadillac Cicatrix offers a diverse range of poetry, nonfiction, prose, art, criticism and video. Leaving so much literary food on the readers’ plates, they will be forced to ingest its offerings one course at a time. Continue reading “Cadillac Cicatrix – Winter 2008”

A serene and bright swathe of red and yellow sunset greets you before you even read a word of Blue Print Review, a journal that incorporates an image, be it a painting, photograph or sketch, with something like a poem, short story or prose piece – although it never explicitly labels any of them as anything but “words.” Even the all-encompassing theme of being “Lost, Found and Stolen” is open to interpretation, much like a painting or photograph. Continue reading “Blue Print Review – 2008”

Blood Orange Review is a poetry, fiction, essay and art journal with a dark skin and a smooth philosophical center. Enter the orange confines of their most current issue and be exposed to crimson narratives imparting stories of characters and places told with their fascinating and sometimes tragic details (whether the narrative centers on class, a jellyfish or the struggles inherent in the immigrant experience). Continue reading “Blood Orange Review – March 2008”

Colorful, penetrating art, theory and a treasure trove of poems is what comprises a major portion of this issue. Before reading these poems (about politics, a chicken, even the floors of a nasty bathroom stall off the New Jersey Turnpike), we are introduced to the artwork of Jackie Skrzynski: startlingly stark paintings of children in various states of action and repose with titles like “Cold Comfort” and “Boy Napping with Bears.” These pieces are a great first course of what is to come when we are presented with audio of the authors reading their poems on the pages ahead. Continue reading “2River View – Spring 2008”

The stories presented in this issue of Zahir challenge the conventions of speculative fiction. Instead of tracking plots inspired by a unique idea or extrapolation of science, the reader is invited to consider the consequences of the hook at the same time as the characters. Continue reading “Zahir – Spring 2008”

Its website identifies The Yale Review as the “Nation’s Oldest Literary Quarterly.” The magazine is august, perhaps, but not stodgy, on the evidence of its most recent issue. The strength of this installment is in its poetry, particularly in the selections from Louise Glück, David Wagoner, and Carl Phillips. Glück’s four poems look at themes of loss, in the personal and natural realms. Her final poem, “Sunrise,” connects both spheres: “I had to see if the fields were still shining, / the sun telling the same lies about how beautiful the world is / when all you need to know of a place is, do people live there. / If they do, you know everything.” Continue reading “The Yale Review – April 2008”

Tin House is thick – 200 pages – and it contains enough variety and ingenuity to enthrall even the pickiest reader. Continue reading “Tin House – Spring 2008”

The subtitle for Silk Road is “A journal of writings on place.” In an interview with John Rember, he coins a contemporary definition for place: “Place used to be something that stayed the same, by which you could measure changes in yourself. Now you have to stay the same and watch while place changes. It means that place, if it’s going to exist at all, has to become internal rather than external.” Silk Road’s authors write about different places in the traditional sense – as physical entities – but they also inevitably write about the internal sense of place as well. An excellent example of this duality is in John Rember’s own story, “When a Cold Place Turns Hot”: “Can you ever really know a place if you keep changing?” his narrator asks. Continue reading “Silk Road – Spring 2007”

I had high expectations for this special “all-black women’s issue” of PMS. Guest edited by renowned poet Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, this issue featured several mega-literary names like Lucille Clifton, Patricia Spears Jones, Nikki Giovanni, and Edwidge Danticat. As a white woman only vaguely immersed in black women’s writing, I was thrilled and eager to dive in, more than anxious to finally become edified in this wonderful and “sassy” universe. Continue reading “PMS poemmemoirstory – 2008”

The resilient southern quarterly features essays, poems and journalism on a range of sports, both major and minor (for the latter, see Mike Powell’s essay on dog shows, “the most allegorical sporting event in America”). Some of the themed pieces are amusing but slight, more Sports Illustrated than New Yorker. Others, however, shade into poignant territory. Continue reading “Oxford American – Winter 2007”

America is the land of reinvention: we love people and institutions that arise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of their old selves, glittering and new. Now New South, a dazzling literary magazine out of Georgia State University, has joined the ranks of Madonna, the U.S. Mint, and other such American institutions. Formerly GSU Review, New South’s inaugural issue features a snazzy red plane flanked by two smaller planes, jetting into a future that looks wide open. Continue reading “New South – Fall/Winter 2007”

The Kenyon Review opens with a note from David H. Lynn describing a new project: KR Online. Although the editor mentions that pieces selected for online publication may be different than those selected for the journal, he promises that the “critical judgment and standards will remain intact.” If the online pieces are held to as high standard as those in the journal, readers should check out this new online addition. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2008”

This issue of the Hollins Critic focuses on Milton Kessler. The front cover features a portrait sketch and an excerpt from his poem “Tiny Flashes Always”: “To sing was the only way through High School and life.” Liz Rosenberg’s essay lauds Kessler as a teacher, a poet, and a human being. He had an eclectic teaching style in which he would ask random questions and make poets post their poems around the room. Although he wrote a lot of poetry, he rarely sent his work out to be published. He also “helped [poets] with their personal lives and health and finances,” so that his actions spoke as loudly as his poetry (4). Rosenberg’s essay celebrates Kessler’s life and poetry, and the two dozen excerpts included make the reader want to read more of Kessler’s work. Continue reading “The Hollins Critic – February 2008”

An ornate frame graces the cover of the Fairy Tale Review, now in its third issue. Inside the frame, a stark grey-and-white etched oval that opens a space in the violet background where a cloaked woman embraces a cloaked child. Both rise from the supine body of a menacing creature – a wolf? – who lies on his back as if dead, but whose open eyes and waving limbs suggest otherwise. “Violet,” editor Kate Bernheimer writes, can be misread as “violent,” and, as the cover image and this mistake-in-waiting suggest, fairy tales traffic in this tension. Continue reading “Fairy Tale Review – 2007”

The Cincinnati Review has, in its five years of existence, built a reputation as an outstanding, and beautifully produced, literary magazine. Each issue includes a full-color portfolio of a contemporary artist’s work, as well as three writers’ reviews of a single book, allowing for dialogue between and among the arts. Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2008”

For those of you familiar with the Chattahoochee Review’s twenty-five year publishing history, this probably won’t come as a big surprise; but for me, a newcomer to the magazine, I knew as soon as I read John Stazinski’s heartbreaking short story “Waiting for a Dog to Run,” that the CR had achieved a level of literary sophistication that far outran the rest. I instantly realized I now had a new standard with which to measure my critiques. Continue reading “The Chattahoochee Review – Winter 2008”

What impressed me the most about this issue of Calyx was how it contained an extraordinary range of voices and styles while still maintaining a high standard of artistic craft that managed to speak to a highly diverse audience. While some of the poems, stories, and artwork in this issue didn’t strike me as “read-again” favorites, there was no question in my mind that they were examples of excellent, above average work. Continue reading “CALYX – Winter 2008”

Bejeezus is subtitled “Reclaiming Southern Culture,” but its coverage of culture extends far beyond its Kentucky roots. Encompassing the broad categories “See, Watch, Read, Eat, Listen, Make, Visit, & More…” the magazine provides short columns on each, keeping the publication varied and concise. Continue reading “Bejeezus – 2008”

The fiction in this issue of the VQR offers “Superhero Stories.” But none of the protagonists of the short fiction that opens the magazine – a discharged sailor who suffered psychic and physical wounds in the 1946 Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test; a masked vigilante who comes across as “a slurring crackpot taking a momentary break from a barbiturate triathlon” in his only public appearance; and a homebody in boxer shorts who commandeers the voices of televangelists – are paragons of virtue. Instead, Scott Snyder, Tom Bissell, and George Singleton give us blackly comic portraits of the flawed and fallen. These are men forged and broken in violence, antiheroes for our own times. Continue reading “Virginia Quarterly Review – Spring 2008”

In SUB-LIT’s first issue, you get the not so subtle impression that you will be titillated or at the very least tantalized. And you will, but in a more intellectually risky manner than first expected when you come face to face with the sexy 60’s style rock’n’roll poster on their website. The poems and stories in this issue challenge your definition of the truth. Continue reading “SUB-LIT – Number 1”

The Sewanee Review begins with twenty pages of “Current Books in Review” written succinctly about both authors and their current books, making these introductory pages informative and entertaining. Continue reading “The Sewanee Review – Winter 2008”