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Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction January 2017 features three new craft essays: “The Essay and the Art of Equivocation” in which Brandon R. Schrand [pictured] considers our ability to equivocate artfully in the essay; “Truth & Delight: Resisting the Seduction of Surfaces” in which Peter Selgin examines the need to resist total seduction by sounds and surfaces; and  “Beyond ‘Craft for Craft’s Sake’: Nonfiction and Social Justice” with Rachel Tolliver and M. Sausun discussing nonfiction and social justice in the new political era. Brevity’s full content can be read online.

The fall 2016 issue of Seneca Review is a book of poems, Deborah Tall’s final collection, Afterings. “It is a remarkable volume by a poet and nonfiction writer at the peak of her powers. Eavan Boland has called it ‘an essential collection,’ and Mary Ruefle says the poems have ‘not what is to be expected – hints of cessation – but an overwhelming sense of blossoming.'” Deborah Tall edited Seneca Review  for twenty-five years, until 2006. This winter, Seneca Review  will include a copy of Deborah Tall’s final book of nonfiction, A Family of Strangers, with any new subscription to the journal.

In its regular “Rediscoveries” section, the newest issue of Middlebury’s New England Review (v37 n4) features “Two City Sketches” by Charles Dickens. Editor at Large Stephen Donadio provides an introduction, noting that after the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, “there was indeed popular demand for a second selection of sketches. . . The complete collection of some fifty-six pieces came out in 1839, by which time Dickens’s commanding presence on the scene had been securely established. In that 1839 volume, the pieces are grouped in four categories: ‘Seven Sketches from Our Parish,’ ‘Scenes,’ ‘Characters,’ and ‘Tales.’ The two city sketches presented here are the first two included under ‘Scenes’; they are taken from the illustrated Sketches by Boz in the Standard Library Edition of Dickens’s Complete Writings published in thirty-two volumes by Houghton Mifflin & Company (Boston and New York) in 1894.” NER  treats readers to several selections from its current print issue to read online, including these sketches by Dickens.

Editor Nathaniel Perry [pictured] of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review considers in the Winter 2016 Editor’s Note “that poetry is both a serious lifeblood and something seriously fun.” And further questions, “. . .how many poets are still willing to admint that it’s the fun of poetry that maybe primarily attracts us to the art? . . . why must we always take ourselves so seriously? What’s wrong with an occaion for poetry?” And so, Perry set out to creat both the occasion and the invitation to have fun. “I thought if an issue of the magazine could empahsize the fun of the moment, the pleasure in working out draft – it might be a tonic kind of enterprise and, who knows, soemtimes something bigger happens anyhow. In that spirit, this year’s issue was commissioned specifically for the magazine. Writers, both solicited and unsolicited, were told they could write on one of five themes – A Walk, Silence, Water, Frames and Containers. Each poet only had an hour to compose a poem . . . and ‘sonnet,’ formally, could be in interpreted in whatever way was useful to the writer.”

The contributions fill this annual issue of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, including A.E. Stallings. Stephen Dunn, Jessica L. Wilkinson, Mira Rosenthal, Bob Perelman, Katrina Vandenberg, Jon Pineda, Laynie Browne, Rob Shapiro, Eamon Grennan, and many more.

It may not seem that far a stretch for a literary journal published at Mississippi Valley State College to theme an issue on the Mississippi Delta, but indeed, since its inauguration in 2000, Valley Voices has been a publication renown for presenting a global perspective of thought and voice. Past issues have focused on New York School and Diaspora, Michael Anania, Perspectives on African American Literature, Poetic Translation in a Global Context, and issues on southern writers. So, indeed, it is a ‘special issue’ of Valley Voices when the content is fully dedicated to the Mississippi Delta. Editor John Zheng writes in his introduction to issue 16.2, “The Mississippi Delta isn’t a region where tourists can easily seek out natural beauty as they do in Yellowstone or in the Smoky Mountains; its beauty remains to be discovered with a little exploration. . . . We run this special issue for literary or artistic expression, for doumenting the region, for people deeply rooted here or having moved elsewhere. It is hopeful that these voices, literary or visual, will tell interesting stories.” See a full list of the issue’s content here.

Arroyo Literary Review recently announced an exciting addition to their website. A new Excerpts page has arrived with selections from past issues now available as PDFs, and with more on the way. Read six pieces from the current Spring 2016 issue, or travel back in time a few years for Pushcart Prize nominees and other noteworthy work. Writers considering submitting to the magazine can now get an idea of what the editors are looking for without a physical copy. There’s a lot there to keep both readers and writers busy as more winter weather rolls in.

“Why our continuing attraction to Greece?” writes Keith Taylor in his introduction to the newest issue of Michigan Quarterly Review. “There is something in that small country out there on the edge of Europe that doesn’t feel like the rest of the continent. Part of the attraction is certainly to the very different modern history, and to a landscape shaped by human use yet still oddly wild. . . . And, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, we continue to be drawn to Greece by the weight and presence of the classical tradition. We have tried to expand our canon and assume the influence of other traditions, but whether we like it or not, Western ideas continue to reflect the ideas first thought on those dry hills.”

Michigan Quarterly Review Fall 2016 presents Returning to Greece: A special section of poetry on Greece with work by Lauren K. Alleyne, Christopher Bakken, Natalie Bakopoulos, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, and Allison Wilkins.

With its Fall 2016 issue, The Wallace Stevens Journal celebrates 40 years of publishing scholarly articles, poems, book reviews, news, and bibliographies. In his Editor’s Column, “The Wallace Stevens Journal in the Age of Electronic Reproduction,” Eeckhout is able to quantify the popularity, and correlating usefulness, of the journal being made accessible via Project Muse five years ago. Sifting through massive amounts of data, Eeckhout is able to distill numerous points of meaning and their impact on the journal’s continuing success. What works have been most downloaded, from which institutions – and finding among the names Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and North Hennepin Community College, which are the top-most universities downloading, the popularity of specific issues (often themed), full-issue download vs. table of contents only, and more. Eeckhout comments on the how this data provides insight into, not only the world’s continued interest in Stevens’s work, but in the impact of The Wallace Stevens Journal in providing a place for a community of like-minded people to share their interests, explore them, and perhaps discover them for the first time. Four decades of worthwile effort we hope to see continued long into the future.

With their Winter/Spring 2017 issue, Gulf Coast celebrates its 30th anniversary. “Preparing for this milesone issue,” write the editors, “we too tracked the past, interviewing Phillip Lopate and exploring the works of Donal Barthleme. We lingered over Barthelme’s collage. They are inventive and uncanny, encouraging you to look closer and see differently. In that spirit, Digital Editor, Michele Nereim, embarked on the project of creating the small art-pieces featured throuhout this issue, scouring the Library of Congress digital archives, combining and refashioning old images so they might say something new, connect to now. Like how the wedding of unfamiliar words can forge new ideas. Or bring to light what’s already there.” Readers can enjoy these contributions along with a full content of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews – including a Q&A with Phillip Lopate – and the section “Art Lies: Art & Critical Art Writing.”