Seneca Review – Fall 2003

Seneca Review continues to showcase stellar poems and lyric essays by both unknown and familiar writers. Lucy Shutz’s poem, “The Philosophers Will Never Love the Poets and the Poets Will Continue to Smoke Cigarettes and Starve Themselves,” is adventurous and playful in style, while still dealing with some of the more serious problems of existence.

Seneca Review continues to showcase stellar poems and lyric essays by both unknown and familiar writers. Lucy Shutz’s poem, “The Philosophers Will Never Love the Poets and the Poets Will Continue to Smoke Cigarettes and Starve Themselves,” is adventurous and playful in style, while still dealing with some of the more serious problems of existence. Walt McDonald’s highly formal “Aunt Emma and the Spoils of War” portrays a rural aunt dealing stoically with the fallout of multiple disasters, and Alicia Ostriker’s poem “One-Minded” presents the interior monologue of an aging surfer with striking lyricism, ending with: “Now you’re hoping to die in your wet suit / And if death could capture you / On a day like this, / The swells / Sheer glass, the air. Unbelievable mild, balmy – / If he’d clasp you to his heart / And pitch you into the ocean, that brainless grave // Today, today you’d be superbly glad.” Overall, this issue was a pleasure to read through and contained enough diversity in voices and styles to sustain interest from beginning to end. [Seneca Review, Hobart and William Smith College, Geneva, New York 14456. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $7. www.hws.edu/senecareview/] – JHG