There’s a lot of death in this issue. A lot of death. Also: depression, senility, thoughts (and acts) of suicide, and many, many old people. If, as Andrei Tarkovsky said, “the aim of art is to prepare a person for death,” you’ll get some good practice here. Personally, I prefer art that prepares me for something else. I don’t know what, exactly – call it mystery. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2006”

As Journal of New Jersey Poets quietly celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, something curious remains about the manner in which poets write about the Garden State. More than a locale but less than a state of mind, New Jersey is evinced in its most dignified sense: fond and often dryly ironical memories of family gatherings, wooded communities, and The Shore, The Shore, The Shore. Continue reading “Journal of New Jersey Poets – 2006”

What are the implications of being human in a complex age? Interim offers a special feature on the subject, and it’s likely to stimulate debate as much as inform. Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover, partners in art as well as life, make cases for literature as an ancillary tool for improving the human person in an age plagued by deception and frivolity. Continue reading “Interim – 2006”

“There are no more quiet places to read.” This is poem XI, by Joshua A. Ware, and it captures the essence of this issue of Harpur Palate. The journal begs to be read, it shouts, and even nags with lines like, “By now you will recognize / that I have taken some liberties… and that when / I describe the third most / happening bar in town I mean / this one,” from Jeffrey Dodd’s “Translator’s Note.” Continue reading “Harpur Palate – Winter 2007”

This issue’s cover, graced by a cool-toned color photo of a flooded home on a river in South Dakota, is intriguing, and the writing inside eclectic. Perusing an issue of Flyway is like attending a series of author readings; each story, essay, or poem is followed by an author’s note that lets you in on what inspired the writer to write the piece, or what the work means to him or her. Continue reading “Flyway – Spring/Fall 2005”

In a preemptory explanatory note, Fence’s editor seems slightly apologetic – and certainly nostalgic – as the magazine’s move from its New York City birthplace to the suburbs is explained. It may seem shocking that any journal as cosmopolitan as Fence was willing to migrate at all. Occasional bouts of realism may provide inroads into the altering psyche of the editors: they both mention children. Continue reading “Fence – Winter/Spring 2007”

Ellipsis, like many student-run literary journals, cleaves tightly to a sense of journalistic “normalcy.” It’s the type of journal in which you’re likely to discover solitary photographs of installation art projects hung out to dry on the spare end of an empty page, stories that sink into the easy chair of the quotidian, and poetry slouching towards the sentimental. Continue reading “Ellipsis – Spring 2006”

This issue’s first story, “Fat Girl Outside” by Kathie Giorgio, is about an obese woman working in the “Large and Luscious Women’s Apparel Store.” Giorgio uses phobias, image-consciousness and fragmented sentences like, “Underwear that could flap for surrender in the wind” to create a dreamy narrative. It makes the reader side with the fat girl, despise her and admire her all at the same time. Continue reading “The Dos Passos Review – 2006”

Cranky is a slim little journal just bursting with spunky prose and poetry. The first poem, “When Company Comes,” by Robert Nazarene, sets the tone: “Mommy sweeps me under the sofa / beside the rotten Easter eggs / I was too dumb to find last spring.” There is little lyricism or slow contemplation here; turn to Cranky when you’re ready for sore spots and surprise. Take “The Bitter and Melancholy Exile of a Mummy,” the tale of an exhumed mummy who finds himself in New York City in 1935, which shows that it’s hard to make friends when you’re undead, but easy to become a celebrity. Before heading to Hollywood to make a depressing, falsified film of his own life story, the mummy meets Noel Coward at a cocktail party: “‘I have been often alone,’ Coward says softly, his gaze sliding from the Mummy’s eyes to hide from him the remnants of a desolation felt too often in the past. ‘Not like me,’ the Mummy says bitterly.” And it’s true—you can’t help feeling for someone whose own world is long out of reach and who, undead and immortal, has no way out of this one. Continue reading “Cranky / 2007”

If anything about this hundred-fifty-page poetry journal can be generalized, it’s that this volume is a collection of stories. Court Green might be considered a relatively new publication, but its formula is already a winner. Aspects of the poetic narrative are in play everywhere, especially in David Hernandez’s “Fork Lines in White Frosting”: “With his presence he contaminated the birthday party, / his aura the dark plumes of a burning tire. Buttonhole // eyes and hair that rebelled the idea of lather and rinse. / Overmedicated, his heart snoozed inside his chest.” Of course, the confessional “I” can be overbearing, but many of the authors resist it, often without elaborate tricks. Occasionally you get a line that hooks you, like the opening couplet from Kirsten Kashock’s “Maiden Mead”: “It was when September, ending jealous, eats bees. We / nervoused again for the island in a boat still made of rocking.” The second half of Court Green is a dossier on bouts-rimés, in which every poem adheres to the same fourteen end-words that the editors advertised when seeking submissions. Although it’s fun to see what results from such concrete rhymes as “Garbo” and “hobo,” the amusement wears off fast, and most poems don’t allow for a deeper reading. Continue reading “Court Green – 2006”

Colorado Review is probably best known for its poetry. And this issue includes over fifty pages of poems, including the powerful “Orders of Infinity” by Jacqueline Osherow, a meditation on the inexpressibility of trauma and the loss of singularity when faced with infinity. The narrator of Osherow’s poem returns to a now-tree-lined Treblinka in an attempt to make sense of the thousands who were killed. What the narrator finds are cremated bodies measured in piles of stone. Although the poetry is stellar – and really every piece in this issue demonstrates an exceptional quality of craft – what captures the reader’s attention in this issue is the prose – including the winner of the 2006 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, a haunting story of a man’s unraveling by Lauren Guza, and the essays. Continue reading “Colorado Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

Everyone loves cake, right? There’s nothing more satisfying than trying a new flavor of cake. It’s something sweet and different, bringing excitement to your mouth and soothing your anxious craving. Caketrain is like a bakery that’s open twenty-four hours to successfully serve even the pickiest of cake eaters. Or in this case, readers. The prose in this magazine is definitely something to dive into. Pedro Ponce’s “Fortune Fish” explores the life of a curious anti-social boy obsessed with Fortune Fish. The boy, due to peer pressure, turns his curiosity to sex and accidentally walks in on his parents. Continue reading “Caketrain – Fall/Winter 2007”

This very cerebral and provocative issue of Black Warrior Review begins with an unexpected critique of U.S. culture and international perceptions of the U.S. in Beth Ann Fennelly’s poem, “Cow Tipping.” The idiotic “tradition” of cow-tipping is juxtaposed with the speaker’s confusion about negative views of U.S. society/culture in other countries; in the end, she begins to understand that these international criticisms view bragging about cow-tipping “at a party for a laugh” as representative of a self-centered approach to the world. This issue is full of great poetry, notably Stephanie Bolster’s “The Life of the Mind.” Bolster’s poems interpret paintings, Sylvia Plath’s last residence, and captions from books and newspapers. Her words animate material objects. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2007”

Given editor W. Scott Olsen’s own work in nonfiction, one might assume that Ascent would demonstrate a bias for personal essays, place-based work, and travel writing. But what really stands out are the poetry and the fiction, especially the three short stories. The opening story, “Puck,” by Edith Pearlman, about a statue that seems to draw forth the desires of those who view it is both puckish and hopeful. Snappy dialogue and quirky characters keep the reader interested. Continue reading “Ascent – Winter 2007”

The theme of this issue of American Short Fiction is prison, according to Editor Stacey Swann, whether by prison bars or self-imposed limitations. The former is the concern of the pictorial essay, “Captain, Don’t You Know Me, Don’t You Know My Name?” Nathan Salsburg, curator of this historical collection, notes in the preface, these stunning photographs, interviews, and work-gang songs are from the work of the late folklorist Alan Lomax during his visit to Mississippi State Penitentiary in the late 1950’s. This prison, also known as Parchman Farm, is the setting for his 1993 memoir The Land Where the Blues Began, wherein he quotes a 1957 New York Post article describing Parchman Farm as “simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor.” Continue reading “American Short Fiction – Winter 2007”

Alaska Quarterly Review is approaching its 25th anniversary, which alone attests to its position among the top literary magazines in the nation. Simply opening to the first piece in this issue, Samuel Ligon’s story “Drift and Swerve,” readers will learn (or relearn) that AQR surviving and thriving for a quarter-century is certainly no surprise. Ligon’s story takes the reader on a ride-along where a drunk driver may not be so dangerous when a force of nature, like a normal – if slightly dysfunctional family of four (again, pretty much normal), happens to share the same stretch of highway. Mike Harvkey’s “One Owner, Part II: Won’t Last” is a haunting story of a man-on-the-run who stumbles untouched in the wake of a mysterious plague, finally settling with a family in Mexico. Eventually, he learns that he has not escaped, he cannot; he must face the past that hounds him and account for what he has done. Harvkey renders the protagonist’s consciousness with fresh language, brilliantly weaving the story’s haunting, hallucinatory atmosphere. Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Spring/Summer 2007”

In a recent New Yorker article, Milan Kundera charted the genealogy of some of the most important writers of the last five centuries by tracing a map of “influences” that criss-crossed continents, hemispheres, and oceans. In doing so, he made a case for the importance of translation, which allows literature to jump outside of the “provincial” context of the country (and language) in which it was written, and resituate itself in the vastly more important “supranational territory of art.” Absinthe – a journal that dedicates itself to publishing translations of “new European writing” – is a small but wonderful island in that territory. Some of the pieces (from writers working in Greek, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and a slate of other European languages) are occasionally tinged with a tone of political irony that struck me as clichéd. Although these writers are clearly “correct,” I found their seemingly rote anger disturbing.  Continue reading “Absinthe – 2006”

When I was in college, the English majors and science majors just didn’t get along. Reading Zahir, I kept wondering what all that tension was about, since so many of this journal’s cross-disciplined writers are able to blend their interests in creative writing and science so well. My favorite piece in this issue is Jerry Underwood’s “Traveling Companion,” set in a world which is simply a very long train, constantly moving on a Track with no beginning or end in sight, inhabited by robots all named Bob (if male) or Bobbie (female). Continue reading “Zahir – Spring 2007”

Antioch Review celebrates its 65th year of publication with this fine issue’s eclectic collection of essays, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and et cetera, which includes Editor Robert S. Fogarty’s thoughtful editorial, “Nolan Miller (1907 – 2006),” on the last of the journal’s founding editors, and John Taylor’s “Poetry Today.” Thomas Washington’s “A Quarterly Reader (and Writer),” laments the absence of editorials in many quarterlies, as do I. If you enjoy sophisticated spy stories, you’ll love “Tunis and Time” by Peter LaSalle; Stephen Taylor’s “Bloomsbury Nights: Being, Food and Love” will bring you closer, perhaps (to a dictionary); “Odessa” by Rick DeMarinis will remind you of those among us who cannot sort things out. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Winter 2007”

If pop culture irritates and disgusts you, then this magazine is for you. If you’re a pop culture junkie and your admiration for Patrick Swayze and Mr. T is rivaled only by admiration for your father, then this magazine is for you. Equipped to satisfy the panoply of individual tastes, Barrelhouse brilliantly succeeds at “bridging the gap between serious art and pop culture.” With a wide range of fare – essays, interviews, poetry, fiction, art – Barrelhouse has it all. I mean, come on, who else is publishing poetry about Ed Asner? Exactly. Fiction in this issue is strong across the board, and to be fair, each piece deserves its own review. Melissa Yancey’s “Recommended if You Dig” is a perfect example of the Barrelhouse blend, where the young indie protagonist may finally have fallen in love but becomes obsessed with the fact that the woman he’s seeing does not share his love for Neutral Milk Hotel, and this seemingly irreconcilable difference threatens to be the deal-breaker. Another excellent piece is Wendy Wimmer’s “Billets Doux,” an art/fiction piece (Barrelhouse art director Kylos Brannon does a top-notch job laying this piece out) comprised of emails tapped on a Blackberry, offering verbal snapshots cumulating in a portrait of loneliness and desire. Continue reading “Barrelhouse – Issue 3”

This end-of-year issue by the Canadian journal Vallum is a pleasant and serious counterpoint to the monthly whimsies of Poetry. Its theme is the desert, and I’m not talking about the American diet. Through poetry, Vallum explores deserts of ice and deserts of sand and deserts of the mind. Still hungry? Good. Continue reading “Vallum – 2006”

Washington Square is edited by students in the New York University Graduate Creative Writing Program, which includes among its faculty members E. L. Doctorow and Philip Levine. This issue contains work by writers of sometimes dual national backgrounds, among them Kurdistan, Romania, Australia, India/Hong Kong, England, Bulgaria, Japan/Germany, Lebanon/France, Spain (Kirmen Uribe of the Basque region), Palestine/USA, Palestine, and USA—fitting for an issue proclaiming itself the Inaugural International Edition. Continue reading “Washington Square – 2006”

For TriQuarterly, one of Chicago’s many estimable literary venues, their 125th issue is surprisingly erratic. It allows Moria Crone’s flat, turgid “The Ice Garden” to consume nearly 30 pages, and David Kirby’s initial travelogue/essay to proffer descriptions of how we consider sex: “The question is a loaded one, and the gun that fires it is double-barreled, for nothing is more wonderful than sex and nothing more tawdry, nothing more elevating yet nothing more degrading.” Continue reading “TriQuarterly – 2006”

Before I start, I have to admit to being confused by humor, which at least I do know is a very individual construct. I don’t watch stand-up comedians because I can’t enter into the proper frame of mind, David Letterman’s smug face makes me want to hurl (hard objects at the TV), and bitter sarcasm makes me anxious for the state of the world. Continue reading “Swivel – 2006”

It would take a particular effort of resistance to ignore this debut of The Saranac Review simply because Frank Owen’s vibrant painting In Season August adorns the cover. And while the black-and-white interior renditions of his paintings do not do justice to his work, the written works (fiction, non-fiction, verse, and “inter-genre”) match the cover’s brilliance. I enjoyed reading excerpts of the forthcoming novels Deadline Fiddle (HarperCollins, 2007) by Jay Parini and Push Comes to Shove by Wesley Brown. Parini’s novel, with its sympathetic characters and well-drawn settings (couldn’t tell much about plot in so few chapters), will likely take a prominent place among novels set during the American Civil War. Continue reading “Saranac Review – 2005”

This Brooklyn-based review celebrates its fifth anniversary with this issue, and I must say, they are five quite underrated years. Alongside some new pieces, the editors have selected the best of their fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Brian Baise’s “Don’t Leon Sanders Me” is flat-out hilarious. Continue reading “The Saint Ann’s Review – Number 2”

This issue of Portland Review showcases “innovative fiction,” beginning with two pieces selected from the FC2 Writer’s Edge workshop for experimental writing that was held at Portland State University last year. There are hazards to publishing work selected from a pool as small as a workshop, which is not to say that these two stories aren’t interesting, but rather that other work that appears in the journal is better. Martha Clarkson’s “Water Filter,” for example, tells the story of a family that acquires gills (through surgery) and moves into the pool for a few months to get away from Dad. Continue reading “Portland Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

Porcupine literary magazine is concerned with both the visual as well as the literary arts. Each issue contains poetry, fiction, and essays, as well as portfolios of artists and a full-color section dedicated to visual media. In this issue, Janet Yoder describes the basketry of Vi Hilbert, an Upper Skagit elder, who has been weaving her entire life, binding her community and her past as tightly as her cedar root baskets. We are given photos of two of her baskets and left wanting to see more of this amazing woman’s art. Continue reading “Porcupine – 2006”

Want to get a taste of modern and contemporary Japanese poetry but don’t speak Japanese? Then Poetry Kanto will give you a draught. It includes English translations of Japanese poems by members of the Kanto Poetry Center at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama. They have prefaced the works with helpful introductions to the poets’ lives and works. Many of the poems collected here have appeared previously on web sites or in books, and a number of these poems are slated to appear in Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology (M.E. Sharpe, 2007). I have the impression that many of the Japanese poems lost vitality in the translation, and this is the likely nature of translation because, of course, many aspects of poems (sounds, wordplay) cannot be rendered well in another language. What remains then are the images, and if the reader is not stirred by the images, the poem falls flat. Of the translated poems, “Eating the Wind” seemed to be the most successful, partly because the Indonesian terms are included so the sounds are not lost, and because of the difference in meaning of the title phrase in Indonesian and Japanese, as explained by the persona. Continue reading “Poetry Kanto – 2006”

While this journal’s academic covers do little to counter the misperception that the Plains are plain, NDQ’s ninety-six-year publishing history does. This issue’s highlight is “Holy Socks.” After her father, an Ohio minister, endured a lobotomy that permanently confined him to a hospital, Constance Studer, a nursing student, breaks hospital regulation to gather information and portrays a family broken by “the cure” as well as the fine line dividing some peoples’ spirituality from psychosis. “White Meat of Chicken, Flowing Streams of Milk” excerpts a memoir about a Southern expatriate’s life in the Dakota oilfields with his beloved Boston Terrier. Continue reading “North Dakota Quarterly – Summer 2006”

This elegant, high-quality journal has a little bit of everything: fiction, poetry, essays, book reviews, and striking art in the form of black and white photographs of Uganda by Gloria Baker Feinstein. In one of these, school children look sternly into the camera, as if demanding to know the photographer’s reason for taking these pictures; in another, they seem to offer her a flower. The two essays, though very different in style and subject, are the most engaging pieces. “Recovering Robinson,” a biographical sketch of poet Edward Arlington Robinson, recounts high and low points in Robinson’s career and conveys the nature of his craft and aspirations in a conversational manner that made me want to pour the writer, Scott Donaldson, another glass of wine and ask him to keep talking. “Portrait of a Homeless Art History Student,” by Andrew T. McCarter, is riskier work, told in second person: Continue reading “New Letters – 2006/2007”

New England Review is known for its excellence. A highly selective journal, the fiction and poetry found in its pages not only point to the writers who are at the fore of their genres but also to the direction the fields are heading. The editors seem to prefer poems and stories that break with tradition without sacrificing craft. Stephen O’Connor’s short story “Bestiary” would be an example. Continue reading “New England Review – 2006”

The admirable literary venture that is The Massachusetts Review will soon celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Continue reading “The Massachusetts Review – Winter 2006”

Make has gone the route of Opium and Swink—championing shorter material and a more relaxed design style. For this, their international issue, they also include “sister city” book reports; Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code tops the list in both Jordan and Israel. Athens, Greece, appears to have far better taste— three Orhank Pamouk novels make its top six. Osaka, Japan appears consumed with captivating nonfiction titles like The Dangers of Induction Heating Cooking-ware—Electromagnetic Waves Could be the next Asbestos. A diatribe about the anti-gay culture of Poland follows. Occasionally this lackadaisical style grows tiresome; an “interview” with poet Gabriel Levinson allows exchanges like, Q: “What is memory?” A: “My best friend. My worst enemy.” to be less the exception than the rule. Continue reading “MAKE – Winter 2007”

This attractive publication, an eclectic collection of fiction, essays, interviews, book reviews, and poetry, has—without the backing of a college or university—flourished for ten years under its original editor—quite an accomplishment. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Fall 2006”

Any journal sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is going to require a decent amount of attention to enjoy. And this issue seems to take academic contentiousness one step further by first devoting an entire issue to Virgil, and then, in the second paragraph of the introduction, claiming that Virgil’s influence in the practical arena has diminished to the point of irrelevance—not even Harold Bloom can find use for Virgil in his canon. If that sentence sounds like cannon-fodder for the deeply cynical, pointing to the essays may quiet the booms slightly. Why doesn’t Virgil appeal to us in these imperialistic times? To be perfectly (unfortunately) consumerist (or Franzenian) about it, perhaps it’s American pragmatism that’s to blame. We want our reading to “multi-task” for us. The Aneid, we know, is an analysis of Empire; and we, as readers, are interested in how his classical conception coincides with our image of America. However, we are disappointed to find that the Aneid is not prescriptive of Republican ideals of Government, as its conception of violence (a necessary prerequisite for Empire) is entirely unlike our own. It is seen primordial and incapable of destroying either the spiritual or physical sustenance of life: a literary, as opposed to lived violence, alien to a contemporary culture accustomed to conceiving of war as a totalizing experience. Continue reading “Literary Imagination – Fall 2006”

From its bright cover—red and blue feet on a purple background—to the wide pages and spacious spreads of its interior layout, to the quirkiness of the stories and poems found within, LIT shimmers with youthful energy. The poetry is plentiful and tends toward the surreal. Continue reading “LIT – Spring 2006”

I don’t know what mainstream literature is, but after reading Iconoclast #94, I know what it isn’t. “…whores never fare as well once the rumor gets around they thinking on starting a family. Customers tend to get nervous—and absent,” Laura Payne Butler writes in “Only Horses Run Wild in Clouds.” Continue reading “Iconoclast – 2006”

Focusing exclusively on poetry, the editors of this privately supported journal offer readers a wide selection by such varied poets as Nicole Sprague, Marion Boyer, Richard Levine, Hal Sirowitz, Constance Norgren, Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons, Maria Terrone, Donald Lev, and Billy Collins. Indeed, there is something for everyone. For example, in “Guardrail,” Kathleen Flenniken captures an anxious thought to which many are prone, while in “Trash,” Ruth Bavetta meditates on how difficult it is to be rid of non-human and human garbage. Wendell Hawken’s “Trophy Buck” had me so drawn into the drama of the scene that I exclaimed aloud when I read the last line. Of course, being a writer who can panic at the blank computer screen, I found “Writer’s Block” by Matthew Spireng touching—and perhaps instructive. In it he depicts that bane of writers as a bat “hanging motionless in the light.” Continue reading “Heliotrope – December 2005”

Gulf Coast does almost everything right, from cover to content. The magazine is even the perfect size: heavy enough to seem substantial, yet not injury-inducing, big enough to stand out on your bookshelf, but not so large as not to fit. The cover of this issue is adorned with one of Amy Blakemore’s haunting photographs. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Winter/Spring 2007”

Sixtieth Anniversary Congratulations to the editors and staff of The Georgia Review, long acclaimed as the best of the best. Correspondence—letters—beginning with the journal’s 1947-1976 archives (1977-2000 items to appear in Spring 2007) is the theme of this double issue of nearly 400 pages, perhaps in the hope aid and comfort for today’s writers would emerge (as it has: cover letters should self-destruct; also personal papers upon the writer’s death, if not before). Much has been made of the loss of the art of personal letter writing since the advent of e-mail, but Hugh Ruppersberg’s review of Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren offers insight regarding letters by literary figures: “Writers tend to reserve their intellect and energy for their creative efforts . . .” Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

For readers not yet familiar with this wonderful journal: eco Greek oik-os, house, dwelling + tone tonos, tension. Thus an ecotone is a transitional zone between two communities, containing the characteristic species of each; a place of danger or opportunity; a testing ground. Ecotone the journal embodies all of these qualities: Its characteristic species are fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and interviews. Poet Sarah Gorham, in her illuminating essay, “The Edge Effect,” goes to great lengths to define and to help readers understand how such genres as the prose poem, short short, and lyric essay intermingle prose and verse and thus well represent the fertile concept of ecotone. In the process, she challenges writers and readers to greater levels of contemplation and creativity. The works in Ecotone are stylistic and thematic testing grounds for metaphoric maps, yet this issue also marks the debut of a genre new to the journal: literal, pictorial maps of places that are important to a writer (Aimee Bender “Three Maps”). Continue reading “Ecotone – Fall/Winter 2006”

Judging by its title, which, next to the cover, is the greatest way to judge anything, I expected Driftwood to be a ragtag collection of literature in translation and experimental writing from the English writing world. Instead, Driftwood offers seven short stories featuring the sort of exoticism that has populated mainstream bookshelves for years, which, in effect, dilutes the very exoticism they originally brought to light. Once I got over my own preconceptions, I saw Driftwood for what it is—a fine literary magazine that caters to these types of stories. Continue reading “Driftwood Press – Spring 2006”

It’s to the credit of the editorial staff at The Cincinnati Review that the winter 2007 issue cannot be easily classified. The range of voices is as wide as the experience of the contributors. Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2007”

Just about to enter its fortieth year, Cimarron Review does not appear to be suffering from a midlife crisis—no new bells and whistles, just poetry, fiction, and essays. As usual, Cimarron Review excels with their selection of poetry. Emily Fragos delivers two devastating poems, “19 Chopin Waltzes” with its accusatory lines, “All the begetting: the weak limbs and soft bellies, / the faces elongated like the devil himself,” and “Insomnia” whose ending is one long shiver, “Even the chained lie down in the dark; / Soldiers, sick of shoveling muck and trench, dream of resting / Beneath blankets of snow. Continue reading “Cimarron Review – Fall 2006”

After finishing the final piece “Punched” by Steven Cordova in the Cimarron Review, I was left with the line, “You were punched.” Indeed, I was. With each piece I was smacked in the face with a story and a perfect picture, like a movie reel with words streaming by at an almost overwhelming pace, leaving me breathless. The selection of poetry is inarguably strong. For example, “Nocturne,” by Nate Pritts, is based on the simple concept of night, in which he envelopes the feeling, letting each aspect out in short detailed descriptions such as, “Tiger lilies outside my window beat slow time // against the screen, six-petaled heads bobbing / burnt orange, mute tongues curling & streaked // like the sky…” “Aunt Catherine” by Yvonne Higgins Leach also shined, showing a sign of hope for a woman who only had time for herself when she was in the water. Continue reading “Cimarron Review – Winter 2007”

Talib Kweli sums up this issue in the final interview/article when he advises, “Make sure that you acknowledge, at all times, your history, your ancestors, where you come from and what you are responsible for, what people have done, how people fought, struggled, and died to get you to where you are.” Each and every engaging and diverse perspective in Callaloo’s issue on “Hip Hop and Culture” clearly sounds off on the importance of the roots of the culture, which entails those directly and indirectly involved in the music and culture. The authors manage to establish the importance of hip hop culture’s history through a variety of interviews, photos, poetry, and articles, not to mention the great front and back cover artwork. There’s nothing like seeing a respectable journal’s title in graffiti topped equally with city and island skylines, a meeting of the urban and the earth. The roots of hip hop and its culture also find an unexpected icon in Curtis Crisler’s poem, “Elegy for Mister Rogers: In memory of Fred Rogers,” which served “as a backbeat, before Run/DMC, Eric B. and Rakim, Tupac and Biggie.” Again the dominant theme for each poet in this issue is the importance and relevance of personal and cultural history in hip-hop. Regarding the critical articles, I found Wayne Marshall’s work on sampling’s relevance in hip-hop and Ed Pavlic’s exploration of the relationship between the DJ and audience the two most captivating pieces of criticism. Continue reading “Callaloo – Summer 2006”