The Literary Bird Journal – Fall 2008

Putting together a literary journal filled with quality work is a challenging task. Putting together one issue of a journal with a theme is even more difficult. Launching a journal that hopes to focus on entirely on one subject must seem impossible! When I first heard about The LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts Journal, I was intrigued by the moxy behind it and simply had to check it out. Could this journal really be all about birds?

Putting together a literary journal filled with quality work is a challenging task. Putting together one issue of a journal with a theme is even more difficult. Launching a journal that hopes to focus on entirely on one subject must seem impossible! When I first heard about The LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts Journal, I was intrigued by the moxy behind it and simply had to check it out. Could this journal really be all about birds?

Editor Nick Neely’s introduction (aptly titled “First Song”) explains that the journal is, in fact, named The LBJ for the tiny brown bird on its cover:

This is an lbj, a “little brown job” if there ever was one, and a poster bird for these pages. A bird overlooked by many, but once learned, rarely forgotten. Tune-in, and they’re everywhere – deep in the wilderness or your suburban backyard. And yet, in various corners of the continent, with a different look…[t]hat’s the kind of writing you’ll find here: variation by region, by genre, by aesthetic, but somehow, a unified song.

Nothing makes me happier than when a new journal exceeds my expectations, and The LBJ definitely does that. Though I’m not a bird lover, I am a lover of great writing, and this journal was filled with the latter! The juxtaposition of bird journaling, like David Gessner’s “In Retreat: a Heron Journal,” with poems that take full advantage of the metaphorical possibilities of birds, such as Elizabeth Bradfield’s “On the Habits of Swallows,” and bird book reviews, like Susan Hanson’s review of Sydney Landon Plum’s Solitary Goose, works beautifully. This issue also contains the winners of “The LBJ’s Inaugural Sparrow Prizes”: Derek Sheffield’s haunting poem “Aubade” and Maureen Scott Harris’s “Regarding the Ovenbird.”

In this remarkably accomplished first issue, the editors of The LBJ have set an important precedent: this journal is no one-trick pony. While it’s no surprise it’s the perfect read for bird-lovers, I also recommend this unique journal to anyone who enjoys high-quality poetry and prose.