ZYZZYVA, officially subtitled “The last word: West coast writers and artists,” is above nearly all else a fun magazine. They fill their back cover with letters, a good sampling of the weird to funny to cringe-inducing (for writers), and the front cover, on this latest issue, is a beautiful drawing of a lone chair in front of towering shelves of books. After the “Editor’s Note” on the fifth page, and after the 24 following pages of advertisements for art galleries and MFA programs and coffee shops all along the west coast, there’s an hilarious picture of the comedian Robin Williams (page 29), immediately after which (30 pages in), the art of the magazine begins proper. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Fall 2003”
NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews
Find literary magazine reviews on the NewPages Blog. These reviews include single literary pieces and an issue of a literary magazine as a whole.
Land-Grant College Review – 2003
Brand new, all fiction (plus one interview), advertisement free and gorgeous, the Land-Grant College Review is one of best literary magazines since McSweeney’s. The contributors, by and large, are the interesting mid-list authors we don’t find enough on the NYTimes bestseller list—Ron Carlson, Stephen Dixon, Aimee Bender, Robert Olmstead. The artwork by Joy Kolitsky is stunning, from the cover to the two-color title pages preceding each story. There’s an interview with Thisbe Nissen that alone is worth the issue price, even if you’ve no familiarity with her award winning collection of stories or novel or stolen recipe book. Continue reading “Land-Grant College Review – 2003”
The Iowa Review – Spring 2003
An exciting and exceptional issue. The Iowa Review doesn’t label its contents by genre as many do, but that’s just as well — many of the pieces here defy categorization. Continue reading “The Iowa Review – Spring 2003”
Harvard Review – Spring 2003
Given the world in which we live, explains editor Christina Thompson, it is not all that surprising to find an “undercurrent of violence” in this issue. The obvious examples are excerpts from a new play by poet Owen Doyle, Heraion, introduced by Robert Scanlan as a “reenactment of the Medea material,” and the “prologue” of Don MacDonald’s graphic novel, “Machiavelli” with its depiction of a hanging witnessed by Machiavelli as a child. (In many ways, MacDonald’s brief description of how he created the comic strip is as interesting as the strip itself and motivated me to take a serious look at it, where I might otherwise have skipped it.) Continue reading “Harvard Review – Spring 2003”
Michigan Quarterly Review – Summer 2003
“The trouble with September is, it’s nothing / you can put your finger on…” – Deborah Warren’s poem “From August to Autumn,” which captures brilliantly the precise season in which we find ourselves, is a peak moment in an issue of peak moments. Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Summer 2003”