NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

Once yearly, Poetry eschews its commentary and letters sections to focus on its namesake; this year, the month chosen is June, and the result is not disappointing. Left to fend for itself, the poetry feels less intellectual, and more kinetic, than generally. Its strongest offerings are surrealist satires; David Biespel’s “Rag and Bone Man” struggles to fasten a trickster mask around a Literatus; Ralph Sneeden’s “Prayer as Bomb” provides vibrant satire in which explosives come to be seen as individualized elements of misplaced hope. Heidi Steidlmayer’s brief, deft “Scree” is worth citing in its entirety: Continue reading “Poetry – June 2007”

“Consider this the definitive statement of how to succeed in your life,” says the spine of Opium‘s fourth issue. Right under this is written, “What? No, that’s all we wanted to say.” Maybe this issue, subtitled “Live Well Now” will have too much slapstick and too many cheap jokes for my taste, I think before opening it. Before that thought settles, it’s erased. Easily the most zine-influenced journal I have ever read, Opium thrills me from cover to cover with its variety and is packed full of punch. This single issue is as thoroughly conceptualized as a Pink Floyd album, complete with background street sounds and stray barking dogs, even sparrows in the thirteenth layer of sound. The editorial statement “We promise it’s like nothing you’ve seen before, and better yet: we promise you’ll laugh,” is the truest one in the journal. A lineage of man follows, worth witnessing first-hand. Aptly enough, the first fiction is F. John Sharp’s “Primal Urges.” The editors share with us more information: “Estimated reading time: 5:59.” Continue reading “Opium – 2007”

Having just edited a story anthology in which four contributors were poets by trade, I was particularly interested in reading this installment of Open City, which offers “prose by poets.” It’s a bit of a departure for this venue – if only because those accustomed to its steady professionalism will find the quality here to vacillate wildly. Continue reading “Open City – Spring/Summer 2007”

While the title may give the impression of wide open spaces, this publication is anything but in its content. A mere 87 pages is packed with over 30 contributors of artwork, poetry, prose (fiction/non-fiction? can’t always tell), and an interview with Ellen Hopkins (author of the poetry novel Crank). The authorship range is varied, with contributions coming from Truckee Meadows Community College students to such well knowns as Suzanne Roberts and Lyn Lifshin (“I Remember Haifa Being Lovely But” reprint). Part of the Hopkins’s interview focuses on the Ash Canyon Poets, some of whose work is featured. Hopkins agrees with the interviewer that the poets’ focus on place is “fed mostly by this stunning place where we live.” Continue reading “The Meadow – 2007”

This issue of The Kenyon Review contains three absolutely delicious article-length book reviews of collected letters: The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005), reviewed by Willard Spiegelman; Love Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt (2005), reviewed by Sam Pickering; and A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (2005), reviewed by Saskia Hamilton. (Hamilton’s review is double, covering also the 2005 Selected Poems by James Wright.) These critiques of three great 20th century poets emphasize the personal letter—that intimate form of correspondence, sadly retired in our internet-driven world—as an art form. The reviewers’ insights into the life and work of Lowell, Clampitt, and Wright renew my reverence for them; yes, I will read the letters and return once again to their poetry! Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2007”

Test the weight of your best thoughts. If they are turgid with inspiration, and quotes like “To be or not to be,” then you are beyond the ordinary good writer. The Journal of Ordinary Thought (JOT) is for those writers who realize that editing is half the writing, and to get to the level of an everyday Shakespeare, there are many thoughts that need to be discarded or reshaped. JOT imagines the landscape of thought as one where no words should be culled. All the ordinariness of language is settled here like the surface of a sea of jetsam and flotsam. Sounds bad, right? But the effect is quite the opposite. In her short essay “Me and Time,” Pennie Holmes-Brinson begins: “Time and I don’t get along well.” She continues the personification of time with sentences like “Then it stands there with one hand on its hip, pointing at its wristwatch with another hand, and reaching out at me with yet another hand!” JOT is littered with such gems, and they all lie on the surface. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Winter 2007”

If you ever thought science and literature didn’t get along, Isotope will prove you wrong. Non-fiction is the strength of this issue. Much is similarly styled in the use of densely layered narratives which are both story and informative (science) writing. David Gessner’s essay, “Field Notes on my Daughter” is as much about his daughter and the family of foxes he observes as it is about his being a father, a scientific observer, a writer, and what all of this means together in one human existence. It’s an amazing piece that, like the observation notes he writes and analyzes, becomes its own surprising creation. So, too, are non-fiction works by Bonnie J. Rough (“Looking for Sacajawea”), Jeffery Thomson (“Turbulence”), Pete Gomben (“Succession”) and George Handley (“Eddies”). If I had been able to learn natural science and history from reading these works in high school, I may have had a much greater appreciation for the discipline – or at least higher grades. As it is, with bare minimum science knowledge, every piece in this magazine is accessible, educational and enjoyable. Continue reading “Isotope – Spring/Summer 2007”

For a literary journal that is “informed by – or grapples with – religious faith,” Image is really “with it”. Editor Gregory Wolfe’s introductory essay “East and West in Miniature” is a discourse on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent controversial lecture, and meditates on the issue of Islamic extremism in the light of some mystic concepts. Continue reading “Image – Spring 2007”

Effective travel writing – like good fiction – creates an experience that is shared by the reader. The fourth issue of Divide, themed “Travel and Enlightenment,” is brimming with experiences and reflection. Continue reading “Divide – Fall 2006”

Sometimes, when you’ve read a large number of literary magazines, you begin to feel that one seems much like another. There is no danger of that happening with Circumference. This lively journal of poetry in translation presents a variety of poetic voices, languages, and styles through the ages. Continue reading “Circumference – 2007”

I’m happy to report that there are some absolute gems in this issue of Calyx. I particularly enjoyed the fiction; many of the stories here feature strong, distinct voices and new approaches to common themes. Raima Evan’s “Gittel and the Golden Carp” is a fish-out-of-water tale which presents us with a Polish-American immigrant who feels uneasy in her new country, but whose strange encounter with a talking carp from the butcher’s helps her come to terms with it. Another sharp tale is Annie Weatherwax’s “Eating Cake,” which features Missy, a young adult whose homosexual brother has been killed in a hate crime; in Missy’s small town full of people intolerant of boys who meet other boys in the woods, sympathy is often laced with judgment. Missy is wry, she’s smartmouthed, and she’s almost moved to violent retaliation against a closed-minded church lady who insults her brother’s memory. This is a perceptive look at lives left behind by murder, as well as an acknowledgment of the potential for rage and violence in all of us. Continue reading “CALYX – Winter 2007”

BPR is one of those slim, no-nonsense poetry journals that publishes a strong selection of the best work that comes their way, followed by several book reviews. No filler, no academia, no kidding. In that spirit, I’ll just get down to a couple of the poems I admired most, starting with James Doyle’s playful “Magritte,” in which “an admirer / has slid the skeleton of a pheasant” through the surrealist painter’s mail slot. Continue reading “Birmingham Poetry Review – Summer/Fall 2006”

Despite an impending hiatus, Editor Christopher Harter is optimistic that Issue 20 will not be the last batch of Bathtub Gin. The challenges of producing a lit journal be damned: Harter expects Gin to reach legal drinking age. The stapled, zine-sized journal features new and familiar artists contributing pieces on war, work and marginalization. Carmen Germain’s broken verse gets better with each read, specifically in the fight between a homeowner and a nest-building wasp in “Work Like This”: “Work like this makes / work. I aim the garden // hose, sorry that killing / comes to what’s / mine, what’s yours.” Continue reading “Bathtub Gin – Spring/Summer 2007”

For those who enjoyed the first two issues of A Public Space, get ready for more of the same. The journal has settled into a steady routine: its “If You See Something, Say Something” department contains a mélange of cultural criticism and ruminations on environmental changes; its comics confront the potential disunity of strict cultural roles; its poetry is experimental and edgy. It’s the poetry which is most improved, particularly Eugene Ostashevsky’s “DJ Spinoza” and Anne Carson’s “Zeus Bits” (the latter a series of lighthearted fragments worthy of Fence). In fiction, Martha Cooley’s “Month Girls” features three word processors (April, May and June) telling the stories of their names to an orphaned coworker; the arbitrariness of a name provides a smooth segue into emotional indifference. Continue reading “A Public Space – Winter 2007”

This issue of SRPR is longtime editor Lucia Cordell Getsi’s swan song before retirement; tempted though I am to draw a parallel between her moving on and this issue’s many poems of grieving, I won’t. Continue reading “Spoon River Poetry Review – Summer/Fall 2006”

When I can, I like to single out one or two stories in a journal for particular praise, but all four fiction entries in this issue of Phoebe merit attention. “Forgery,” by Steve Yates, is a tale of corporate revenge set in the offices of a company that sells pornographic toys, yet it manages to be sweetly romantic. “Harvest,” by Danielle Evans, sets a group of women of color, Ivy League college girls all, against a friend who is able to sell her eggs to infertile couples for loads of cash simply because she’s white. William Jablonsky’s “In Dreams” features a fireman who is able to perform amazing acts of courage because he has seen his own death in his dreams and “knows” he won’t die as long as he doesn’t drive his truck through a certain fateful intersection, while “The Good Life,” by Jonathan Lyons, centers on a character who is so blitzed out on drink and drugs that he and his buddies can’t quite manage to care when they kill four strangers in a tragic highway accident. Continue reading “Phoebe – Spring 2007”

If one looked for themes in this splendid and beautifully presented collection, it would have to be drug addiction, past or present, in each of the four fictions: “The Yoshi Compound: A Story of Post-Waco Texas,” is a delightful satire of phony spirituality by Todd James Pierce; Rebecca Rasmussen’s “Partway,” is a terrific story of a drug addict’s daughter and the people who love her; “The Girl Who Drank Lye” by Colleen Curran traces the shocking decline of an ostracized fourteen-year-old picking up bad habits when befriended by the class bad girl. Jason Ockert’s “Piebald” tells the story of a father dying of some strange malady while mourning the death of his son, but, of course, it’s more complicated than that. Continue reading “Mid-American Review – Fall 2006”

This rewarding collection of essays, poems, and fiction avoids direct confrontation with current concerns—war, poverty, ecology—in favor of a Jewish boy’s memoir of 1938 Berlin and Vienna and Bertolt Brecht’s poem on WWII propaganda. From Brecht’s “The Government as Artist”: “It is well known that an artist can be stupid and yet / be a great artist. In this way, too / the government resembles the artist. As one says of Rembrandt / that he couldn’t have painted any differently if he had been born without hands, / so it can be said of the government that it couldn’t govern any differently / if it had been born without a head.” Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Spring 2007”

The Massachusetts Review is truly a quarterly of literature, the arts, and public affairs as evidenced by this issue’s rewarding stories, poems, and essays. “Fear and Torment in El Salvador” by Noel Valis provides a comprehensive overview of El Salvadorian terrorism and opposes Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, the Making and Unmaking of the World. Valis reminds us of the early 80’s writings of Carolyn Forche, especially her unforgettable prose poem “The Colonel,” and of Joan Didion’s Salvador (“Terror,” she says, “is the given of the place.”). Also mentioned is Robert Stone’s film Salvador, as well as the work of others who have explored the moral hell of torture, which Valis, although conceding that it is born in the imagination, posits imagination as the site of its demise. Continue reading “The Massachusetts Review – Spring 2007”

Nature poetry, whether well or poorly written—and this issue of Isotope contains some fairly nice examples of the former—is something we’ve all seen before. Continue reading “Isotope – Fall/Winter 2006”

This attractive issue includes the 2005 Indiana Review Poetry Prize Winner, “Galloglass,” by Susan Tichy (“Likes to meet with potentates,” said John Dean on the radio. “Doesn’t like to kiss babies.”) and the 2006 Indiana Review Fiction Prize Winner, Marjorie Celonam’s imaginative “Y” (“That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass.”) Continue reading “Indiana Review – Winter 2006”

Greatcoat: an oversized, catch-all garment designed to protect in all kinds of weather. Practical, not flattering, it provides comfort without ostentation. The debut issue of Greatcoat is thin enough, at 83 pages, to fit inside a greatcoat pocket, yet it lives up to its name, enveloping the reader in poems and essays which blur the design lines and obliterate genre seams. The first of the two essays exemplifies Greatcoat’s vision. “Electric Energy,” excerpted from a 1998 book by Lynn Strongin, is a spinning centrifuge of non-sequiturs and vivid imagery. From the quotations about aging which open the piece, Strongin distills ideas of a “cell-like enclosure” trapping the women in her life: “I used to dream I made myself a home in a beehive as a child: clean, solitary, holy.” Continue reading “Greatcoat – Spring 2007”

This British Poetry Issue is likely to be enjoyed by those with a strong academic interest in poets of the so-called “Cambridge School.” An introduction by Sam Ladkin and Robin Purves defines this label as a “widely-promulgated apparition” that is “associated with elitism and self-serving obscurantism . . . held to stand for a deliberately inaccessible mode of writing, engorged with critical theory, often held to be ‘only about language itself’ and written purely for the delectation of a smug coterie of reclusive adepts.” Continue reading “Chicago Review – Spring 2007”

This issue’s charming cover photo, taken during WWI in Vichy, France, shows a nurse from Bellevue’s medical staff helping a dog apply a stethoscope to the temple of a man in uniform—eavesdropping on the man’s thoughts, perhaps? This image says much about the journal’s literary aesthetic; the stories, poems, and essays inside are about death and loss (of health, loved ones, ways of being in the world—the many things there are to lose as we encounter the human body’s various limits), but these are not depressing tales melodramatically told. Instead, they are creative and sometimes humorous engagements with realities we usually prefer to avoid. Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2007”

If you’re interested in testing Antioch Review’s stellar reputation, just pick up the current issue. Everything that has made AR a benchmark standard for literary journals is in evidence here, as always: intelligent essays, eclectic themes, engaging stories, and unsparing poetry—all of it thriving in an ever-evolving habitat of exploration. It’s almost impossible to choose standout pieces in a collection as accomplished as this. Jeffrey Meyers opens the issue (and this writer’s eyes) with “The Literary Politics of the Nobel Prize,” a revelatory inside look at the Oscar-like machinations pulling the strings of literary prestige. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Spring 2007”

In case you were wondering, yes, 32 Poems is just that—a journal of thirty-two poems, one to a page. This issue’s works, chosen by guest editor Carrie Jerrell, are mostly of a straightforward, narrative style, with a couple of wryly amusing “list” poems kicking things off. (Having said that, I wonder if Daniel Nester, whose “Queries,” a list of creative writing class comments, begins “Isn’t everything tucked always lovingly tucked? / Don’t loomers always appear from overhead?” would ask, “Must everything amusing be wryly so?”) Continue reading “32 Poems – 2007”

Zone 3’s current issue is a thoroughly entertaining selection of poetry and short fiction, though if you have recently experienced a troubled relationship, this issue might not be the one for you. James Iredell’s “Custodian” gives a snapshot of an unfulfilled woman who is attracted to a coworker and fears her husband is having an affair with his new boss. Continue reading “Zone 3 – Fall 2006”

Sycamore Review refuses to be lost in the “to be read” stack, partly because the magazine is an 8-inch by 8-inch square, which leaves its wings outstretched from most towers of books. However, not only its unusual dimensions (but, really, what is unusual anymore?) and comfortable paper quality make the magazine an aesthetic delight. We are gathered here today to find out whether form and content are unified as equal partners. Continue reading “Sycamore Review – Winter/Spring 2007”

Although Subtropics is only three issues old, it’s already hard to imagine the American literary scene without it. Published at the University of Florida, it offers a wealth of quality fiction and poetry, including a few works in translation. In this issue, you’ll find an excerpt from Sándor Márai’s Hungarian novel The Rebels, and poetry by Romanian poet Mariana Marin and French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859). Continue reading “Subtropics – Winter/Spring 2007”

Generally speaking, I hate theme issues – if I wanted to read that much about a single topic, I’d buy a book – but subTerrain’s issue on “Money” won me over. Continue reading “subTerrain – Winter 2006”

It is hereby noted that Sojourn has everything in it. Consider it a digest of contemporary writing, featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translations, interviews (with poets Noami Shihab Nye and Ted Kooser), a play, and an array of photographs and paintings that build momentum from one page to the next. Yet in trying to be everything to everyone, Sojourn can feel incomplete and lacking in places. Continue reading “Sojourn – 2006”

Sleeping Fish is, like many experimentally-based journals, not a collection of stories or even fiction in the traditional sense, but more the evocation and exploration of a single aesthetic premise: in this case, the unconscious mind at work. To say that its content is driven principally by wordplay goes without saying, even if titles like “The Mushroom Withdraws Among the Roots” and “The Bearded Favor” didn’t suggest this beforehand. Continue reading “Sleeping Fish – 2006”

If poetry as a whole struggles to avoid becoming a minor art, prose poetry may be even more endangered; and what’s clear is that Sentence, like may contemporary poetry journals, sees its mission as much about preservation as promotion. With this comes anxiety: Contributing Editor Russell Edson declares himself “one of the established masters of the prose poem,” while Peter Johnson, also a contributing editor, sees the tradition of “publishing excellent prose poems” as dating back to the establishment of his own journal in the 1970’s. Clearly, biographical modesty has not made it to Sentence’s’s agenda. But while such arrogance generally confines itself to an enclosed academic establishment, I was happy to find many contributors living on wheat farms (Louis Borgeois), healing the ill (Cecil Helman) or posthumously honored with continued translations (Friedrich Hölderlin – 1770-1843). Continue reading “Sentence – 2006”

A new journal is born, one with an ancient name. How does it merge the split-ends of legacy and innovation? It embraces the age-old tradition of straightforward storytelling and updating it with a solid cast of fledgling writers. Continue reading “Short Story – Fall 2006”

This Santa Clara Review opens with MC Hyland’s Palm Poetry Prize-winning poem, an apt entry into this issue with its measured cadence and stark pronouncements: “God is blond, and loves you, though not as you are now.” Continue reading “Santa Clara Review – Fall 2006/Winter 2007”

The advantage of a literary journal devoted entirely to one genre is the ability to explore and expand the possibilities of the form. River Teeth does just that. While most literary journals might publish two or even three nonfiction essays, River Teeth can include more than a dozen in each issue, a number that allows the reader to get a strong sense of just how many ways there are to approach the “truth.” Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2006”

The Pinch offers a strong variety of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction with a few interviews thrown in the mix. Although poetry is a strength of The Pinch, the narratives shine the brightest in this excellent literary magazine. J. Malcolm Garcia led off the issue’s creative non-fiction with “Leave Taking,” a retelling of his experience of going to a brothel simply “for a beer.” Continue reading “The Pinch – Spring 2007”

Parnassus is beautifully constructed. First, there’s the odd but intriguing painting on the cover, Gustave Moreau’s “Oedipus and the Sphinx,” which forms part of the subject matter for one of the poems found inside – “To Constantine Cavafy,” by Richard Howard. Turns out Cavafy wrote a poem about this painting without ever having seen it. Continue reading “Parnassus – 2007”

Oyez– “from the Anglo-Norman word for hear ye, the imperative plural of oyer, meaning to hear. It was used as a call for silence and attention in court and at public gatherings.” Continue reading “Oyez Review – Spring 2007”

It is a tremendous effort to develop quality work like Open Minds Quarterly does, while focusing on the consumers and survivors of mental health services. Continue reading “Open Minds Quarterly – Winter 2007”

Reading the latest installment of Noon, I began to frame the not-at-all-uncomfortable impression that this journal, strange as it may seem, shares its design aesthetic with McSweeney’s. This isn’t obvious from the content (though the likes of Tao Lin, Deb Olin Unferth and Sam Lipsyte, might encourage such misconceptions) as much as through Noon’s insistence on importing iconographic singularity (read: noble) into the chirographic (read: agricultural) sphere of influence. In McSweeney’s these concerns are presented dualistically; you have your journal, it comes in a box or an envelope or with magnets or paperclips, you recall Dada and Aspen Magazine, you chuckle, and move on to the stories. Noon’s format, by contrast, is relatively straightforward: cover art, stories, long photographic portfolio, occasional drawings. At the same time, the rhythm and tone of the stories give the impression of tiptoeing from painting to painting in a modern art gallery. Many movements tangle in Noon: minimalism (Tao Lin and Greg Mulchay), Dadaism (Lypsite’s “The Illuminated Aisle Carpet”), Pop-Art (Laurence A. Peacock’s “The Palmer System”), and, most impressively, Clancy Martin’s Art Brut-inspired “Dirty Work.” Swaddled in a heavy-paper cover and containing an addendum explaining typeface history, it seemed clear that this journal was striving to remain a lasting object itself. This is particularly rare in the realm of experimental literature, where venues like Conjunctions or Sleeping Fish are designed more to dissuade the power of the image or ignore it altogether, conceiving the book pragmatically, as a vehicle for the presentation of printed matter. Continue reading “Noon – 2007”

Ninth Letter is an impressive machine. No expense was spared in design or production. A few ground rules before putting this thing in gear: No sipping tea or coffee while reading its contents, because, like piloting a big rig down the highway, Ninth Letter requires both hands. Open up and hold on. Your attention is no longer yours. Fiction takes off with Rachel Cantor’s “Zanzibar, Bereft,” the story of a story in search of and in conflict with itself, seeks growth and also desires the clean definition of identity. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2007”

New Ohio Review (/nor) clearly states, “This year we are particularly, though not exclusively, interested in innovative and cross-genre work that blurs conventional boundaries and resists easy definition.” /nor succeeds on all accounts. /nor is allusive, elusive, packed with experimental poetry, essays, fiction, philosophy, and everything in between – at once lyrical and pushing the boundaries of meaning, drawing from any and every source, exploring as well as indulging the natural slippage of language and the shifty exchange of meaning and context, where form is often as informative as text. One such example is Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s poem,“Draft 68: Threshold,” wherein words and, increasingly, entire lines and almost whole stanzas are blacked out as though at the hand of a censor, some silencing Other. This censorship leaves a “twist[ed] discourse,” “obliterates statement,” but ultimately is self-defeating, as what is blacked-out – these “wordless words” – becomes more interesting and more beautiful than what neutralized scraps are left. Continue reading “New Ohio Review – Spring 2007”

This issue of the attractive journal, New Madrid – named for the seismic zone of the central Mississippi Valley and published by Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky – is devoted to writing by former teachers at Murray State. Continue reading “New Madrid – Winter 2007”

I selected this attractive volume for its beautiful cover—aware of literary potential, of course, as Mississippi Review is one of the better-known journals—and opened it to find a masthead identified as “Actualization” and a collection of “prose poems.” Continue reading “Mississippi Review – Fall 2006”

This issue of The Midwest Quarterly offers a broad selection of essays, beginning with Mark Glouberman’s “The Birth of Death in Athens and Jerusalem,” a comparison of death and origins in Homer’s Iliad and the book of Genesis. Continue reading “The Midwest Quarterly – Winter 2007”

Driving on an Oakland freeway not long ago, a recent Iowa MFA graduate defined contemporary poetry as something that was less of a craft, than a handicraft: after adamantly denying my knowledge of the various journals where she had published, she described a world of self-made chapbooks distributed solely among “friends.” There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this, until one remembers that she and her “friends” have been granted inroads into the poetic establishment, its scarce jobs and grant monies. Continue reading “Melee – January 2007”

Meena is a literary journal that prints all contributions in both English and Arabic. This second installment of the journal focuses specifically on Hurricane Katrina, the ramifications of rising floodwaters, and related global political-environmental concerns. Its prose elements include a discussion on the anthropological significance of famous bodies of water (the Ganges as bringer of tranquility to the dying, the Volga as a “strong citadel in the face of invaders,” are only the two most obvious metaphors referenced). Through reading these, we learn that the allocation of the Nile River resources has become a major component of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after Sadat’s plan to enrich Sinai with an irrigation channel was stunted by Ethiopian resistance. It is now suggested that Israel’s impending water crisis – which already leads to enormous imbalances in usage – may furnish grounds for another war. A brief socioeconomic history of the now-notorious 9th Ward, and a speculative history of the death of Atlantis that’s really about New Orleans, aren’t far behind. Continue reading “Meena – 2006”