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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”

The title is utilitarian, the cover resembles vinyl, the pages are held together by a large snug red rubber band and the price is sexy ($3). And the poets run six deep and publish six poems each. If that isn’t good enough for you, then the top-right corner is cut diagonally. Plus, there’s the John Ashbery effect. This isn’t wrong though. For instance, opening act Christina Clark says in the first lines of her fourth poem, “Vous avez les shoes of august / fine-willed and waning.” And Sue Carnahan writes, “The midwife parks in the pond while the breech baby / is turned birthed slapped.” That it whirls the chorals and courses plodding along in the overhead is just part of my sympathies. But, listen to these lines from the sad-eyed recovery poems of Rick Snyder, collectively titled “The Memory of Whiteness.” Continue reading “6×6 – Spring 2006”

Very early on, the issue boasts the lines “Funny thing about the Autumn sun / how it warms the heart first / and later the skin” (Dexine Wallbank’s “Autumn Light”). And that is how this issue of The Antigonish Review sinks into a reader’s being. The issue continues with a Zoë Strachan (Betty Trask Award winner) piece, “Play Dead,” which adds another dimension to the fluidity of human sexuality, and makes sublime its otherwise trite last line: “I don’t suppose she’d ever felt so alone.” It’s a must read, if only to see how Strachan’s line makes the piece and vice versa. There’s a playful, narrative arc in every piece, even the reviews of Canadian poets. Ken Stange reviews Allan Brown’s Frames of Silence, a collection, beginning with: “This is not an unbiased review […],” for reviewer and writer are close friends. Stange does an evenhanded job, despite the admitted favoritism—treading finely the thin line between over- and under-whelming with his and Brown’s personal history; a fine place to start researching for an honest best-man speech. Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Summer 2006”

An elegantly slim volume, the Fall 2006 Bellingham Review is an eclectic collection with the slight political edge of interviews with two poets: Gerald Stern: “So I don’t know where all my leftist influence comes from, maybe it was just in the air, but I identified with them. I was a socialist.”—in conversation with Kate Beles; and Robb St. Lawrence’s interview of Rita Dove: “I admire the Star Trek universe for the way it has always encapsulated our social structures and put them on spaceships, and I love the way they disregard race and other ‘differences.’” Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Fall 2006”

That a self-portrait of Kenneth Rexroth looks out from the cover of this sixtieth anniversary issue is à propos as its first 180 pages celebrate the centenary of Rexroth’s birth. Continue reading “Chicago Review – Autumn 2006”

Doing justice to the 25th Anniversary issue of Conjunctions in a brief review is almost a crime in and of itself. Simply put: you won’t know where to start. I recommend Bradford Morrow’s introduction; this interposition of historical details and expressions of gratitude proves good preparation for the aggressive experimentation that ensues. The first offering, by Jonathan Lethem, features the antics of various characters marooned on an island after an airplane crash, who, as they document their disparate reflections of the enclosed landscape, collectively call into question the anthologizing process. Similarly, Rick Moody’s contribution reads like an acidic installment of “Sedaratives” from The Believer: a verbose advice columnist’s gleeful delivery of Mencken-esque dismissals is interrupted by the intrusion of a square-jawed, simple-minded, weightlifting, gun-toting allegorical figure called “American Literature,” who eventually shoots out the columnist’s entrails before fleeing to New Mexico. Continue reading “Conjunctions – 2006”

I wish I would have discovered Cream City Review twenty years ago. This issue on memoir, which celebrates the journal’s thirtieth anniversary, was the high point of my holiday reading because every piece offers something of interest. In his excellent introduction, an excerpt from his forthcoming book Then, Again: Aspects of Contemporary Memoir, Sven Birkerts draws distinctions between autobiography, memoir, and traumatic memoir. Wisely, the editors of Cream City Review also distinguish between “fictional memoir” and “nonfiction memoir.” Of these, I particularly enjoyed the fictional “The Fall of Iran” by Ed Meek—an adventure—and the nonfiction “Seven Dwarf Essays” by Michael Martone—an exploration of son Sam’s interest in dwarfs and the wider implications of dwarfism. Continue reading “Cream City Review – Fall 2006”

The Georgia Review is a champion of verbosity, and this installment does not disappoint. The fiction is dense and energetic—particularly Julia Elloitt’s “The Whipping”—but entirely believable. The reviews, though brief, are given the room to expand. They don’t pull punches; Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn is dismissed as “showy,” for example. True, Paglia is a barnyard-sized target for a publication slinging MLA phrases like “postpartum existential quandary.” Nonetheless, any publication whose foray into “criticism” isn’t an opaque attempt to make friends is one to be admired. Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Summer 2006”

Don’t judge Greensboro Review by its cover. Though the plain-brown-wrapper-style cover maintains the forty-year tradition of this magazine’s publishing history, the writing isn’t the least bit dated. Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Fall 2006”

Harpur Palate is a sharp little journal featuring a center section of striking and surprisingly well reproduced visual art: otherworldly photography by Robert Kaussner, architecturally inspired drawings by David Hamill, gloriously colorful mixed media images by Michael Sullivan Hart, and an intriguing, surreal ink and paper study by Joseph Hart. Continue reading “Harpur Palate – 2006”

A long story has the possibility of incorporating a handful of moments, and spanning a story over a considerable length of time. The narrative space of three pages might not allow for an engaging tale spanning several years as much as twelve to twenty pages do. One common theme running through the stories in this issue is that of entrapment. Protagonists are incarcerated in three of the eight stories, while in another a girl is branded with the letter “J” on her forehead. Three gems in the collection are Shawn Hutchens’s “Midnight and the Fleeing Phoenix,” Peter Chilson’s “Toumani Ogun” and Bruce Douglas Reeves’s “You Only Live Once.” Chilson’s story is a chilling and funny take on Africa’s multiple problems, and the continuing hopelessness of Western aid organizations in their ability to understand the situation, let alone bring it under control. Reeves’s Prohibition-era first-person narrative of a luckless bootlegger is tastefully layered with the antithesis of ordinary situations: a flood that smashes the protagonist’s booze-laden truck and also his future, and the way he hunkers down in a movie theater afterwards, plagued with hunger and danger as equal threats. Hutchens manages to create a credible bull (the animal) with feelings—no mean feat, even in a non-fabulous long story. Continue reading “The Long Story – 2006”

Far more than a survey of literary Louisiana, this university journal collects fiction and poetry from West Virginia to the Ozarks. Perfect-bound in a firm, glossy cover as arresting as any book, though more scholarly-looking than most lit mags, each issue comes crowned with a striking color photograph. If the cover is the front door, the photo is the welcome mat, so come on in. Continue reading “Louisiana Literature – 2006”

One look at Murdaland’s cover and you know that you won’t be disappointed. It shows a potbellied assassin taking aim with a nearly-finished cigarello in his mouth, nothing but boxers on, and a look of precision in his one open eye. Continue reading “Murdaland – 2007”

I love it when I open a journal and serendipitously the first piece I read is a winner. This recently happened when I picked up Pebble Lake Review and turned to Ted Gilley’s poem “Password,” which begins “Young Dewey’s head / was shaped like a melon. / His password was I’m ripe. / His brother Matthew’s was / I blow up mailboxes. / Mine was just ignore me.” Although it includes several book reviews and works of fiction, including Dave Housley’s hit-the-nail-on-the-head, slice-of-life piece, “Where We’re Going,” this issue focuses on poetry. It includes poems by Denise Duhamel, Kelli Russell Agodon, Judith Skillman, C.J. Sage, Dan Rosenberg, Barry Ballard, Paula Bohince, and some two dozen other poets. For their wonderful imagery, I recommend “Measure Twice, Cut Once” and “House Diptych” by Bernadette Geyer. I also suggest that readers visit the journal’s website, where they can listen to selected audio files of the authors reading their own works—a great addition to the print journal. Continue reading “Pebble Lake Review – Summer 2006”

Pool is a great name for a poetry journal—all those denotations, connotations, symbols, and similes. Spanning a wide range of styles, this volume contains multiple poems by Gareth Lee, Bob Hicok, Elizabeth Horner, James Haug, Amanda Field, Paul Fattaruso, Tony Hoagland, Campbell McGrath, and Mary Ruefle, as well as single poems by three dozen others. Although many of the poems in this issue fell flat (belly flopped?), I enjoyed the playfulness of Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s language in “In Pursuit of the Original Trinket” and “Mosey Is as Mosey Does.” Corey Marks’s long poem “Lullaby” is this volume’s graceful dive from the high platform. In it he demonstrates skillful interweaving of avian imagery and symbolism with a fairytale motif and modern medical dilemma:

. . . your body
unstitched our trust in it, thread by thread, pocking
itself with blood that no longer knew to contain itself
capillaries split and spilt across your face and hands
into a map of a country you’d never thought to visit. Continue reading “Pool – 2006”

I picked Renovation Journal from a shelf of journals because of its theme: “The Letter Issue.” You see, I still feel the presence of my deceased father when I reread the letters he sent to me while I was away at college. I still cherish the love letters my boyfriend sent to me in France before he became my husband. So I expected a great deal from this slender volume. Cornelia Veenendaal’s, “I Must Tell You about a Trip to Zweeloo,” based on the letters of Vincent Van Gogh, well portrayed the pre-South of France painter, and editor Kate Hanson’s letter to Franz Wright caught the all-too-familiar timidity when in the presence of celebrity. Continue reading “Renovation Journal – Spring 2006”

This non-fiction issue of Salmagundi includes, along with much else, Richard Howard’s response to disdain for works older than one’s self—”A Lecture on a Certain Mistrust of the Past among Young Writers”—and “The Women of Whitechapel: Two Poems” by Nancy Schoenberger, whose second victim, remarkably perceptive under the circumstances, comments: “[. . .] a gentleman’s a man where darkness lurks until it’s sprung by some medicinal.” Linda Simon’s curious title, “What Lies Beneath,” is a review of Virginia Blum’s Flesh Wounds, the search for redemption via cosmetic surgery. From David Bosworth’s “Auguries of Decadence – American Television in the Age of Empire”: “If the rude yoking of the picayune to the profound is a feature of the post modern [. . .],” his brilliant 50-page rumination on TV’s spectacles of pain and folly—weeping Kurdish women, Extreme Makeover‘s cosmetic-surgery desperadoes—is postmodern, indeed; and also a hard-hitting indictment of the Bush administration. “D. H. Lawrence, Comedian” by Jeffrey Meyers must concede the humor of Lawrence may be easily mistaken for misogyny, as in this example: “[. . .] I feel such a profound hatred of myself, of the human race, I almost know what it is to be a Jew.” Informative and entertaining as all this is, one expects no less from a journal claiming Russell Banks, Carolyn Forche, and Mario Vargas Llosa among its regular contributors. Continue reading “Salmagundi – Fall 2006”

If there’s been a push as of late to break the glass ceiling of female graphic artists, then little magazines stand in the vanguard: this summer Marjane Satrapi was interviewed in The Believer; a little later, A Public Space came out with an excerpt from Lauren Redniss’s Century Girl. Now comes Tin House’s graphic issue, which goes further than either publication, featuring articles with Satrapi and earthy icon Lynda Barry (whose curiously scatological and entirely dualistic rumination on the nature of mental imagery graces the cover), and, later, a vignette on the dearth of female graphic artists. An interview with Satrapi follows, wherein this “queen” of graphic novels discusses how she reworked the flurry of misconceptions surrounding her Iranian heritage into the intelligent, darkly humorous Persepolis, now the subject of a movie deal. Continue reading “Tin House – Fall 2006”

Listening to NPR recently, I heard an interview with the new PR guru for the state of Mississippi, who was touting the state’s heritage as the birthplace of famous writers and entertainers. Right away I thought of The Yalobusha Review. This volume, which is dedicated to novelist and essayist Larry Brown (Father and Son, Billy Ray’s Farm, Feast of Snakes), who died in late 2004, has much to recommend it: a moving if episodic eulogy “Larry Brown: Passion to Brilliance” by Barry Hannah; the heartfelt appreciation “Larry Brown: Mentor from Afar” by Joe Samuel Starnes; the fiction “Niche” by University of Mississippi writer-in-residence, Michael Knight, who as judge for the Barry Hannah Prize for Fiction chose Patrick Tucker’s story “The Course of History” for that honor because, he noted, it “doesn’t feel like it’s had the guts work-shopped out of it”; haunting poems by Nicole Foreman, Larry Bradley, and Joan Payne Kincaid; and Christopher Brady’s untitled print of an elderly woman (p. 33), which begs viewers to hear the story told in the wrinkles of her face and hand. Fans of Aimee Bender’s fiction (An Invisible Sign of My Own, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures) will certainly want to check out the interview, in which the author discusses magic as sleight of hand, realism as a bogus term, and holding something back from the reader. Finally, while some readers might say that the plot of Ron Pruitt’s story “Meth Lab” hinges on coincidence, I found it right on target with the unknowing ways things happen in the universe. Continue reading “Yalobusha Review – 2006”

Gracing the cover of this issue is a photograph of Spalding Gray, an actor-writer known for his humorous monologues and who long suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2004. Dave Korzon’s moving interview with Gray’s wife, director Kathie Russo, provides insights into Gray’s life and art, as well as Russo’s efforts to keep her husband’s legacy alive (Swimming to Cambodia; Monster in a Box; Morning, Noon and Night; It’s a Slippery Slope; Life Interrupted, among other books). Regular departments in this magazine include “No Do-Overs” (in this issue, Stephanie Johnson’s at turns hilarious and poignant essay “Girly”) and “Voices,” collecting the opinions of selected people on a certain topic. The magazine’s subtitle, “Your World, Your Story,” is apt, for, like the alternative magazine The Sun, The Rambler solicits works from readers, though instead of written thematic prompts, The Rambler offers readers photographs as inspiration for nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. In this issue, Kerry Jones’s perfectly modulated short story, “So Glad We Had This Time Together,” is the sole fiction selection. It reads so well that were she not writing in the first-person voice of a male character, it could easily be mistaken for memoir. Continue reading “The Rambler Magazine – November/December 2006”

The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review does better than many literary magazines at integrating poetry and visual arts. In fact, marrying the two genres is the express intention of its “Crossover” section, which features the 8 x 10-inch digital mixed-media selections Wholeness and Eternity by Jing Zhou. Part of a series called “Ch’an Mind; Zen Mind,” these black-and-white pieces demand repeat “readings,” as does Sandra Kohler’s nine-part poem cycle “The Unveiling.” With its elliptical structure, recurrent imagery, and timeless theme, this poem amply rewards the reader who peels back the layers of craft and meaning. More direct but no less moving are Christine Leche’s “Three-Minute Egg” and “Eye of the Storm,” and upon reading Kelly Jean White’s “I Cannot Say How Deep the Snow,” I felt a chime of recognition. I would have positioned “The Drowning Man” by Nick Conrad as the issue’s finale poem, for its haunting quality will linger with readers long after they have set the journal aside. Continue reading “The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review – Number 15”

Quarter After Eight describes itself as publishing “some of the most innovative and significant experimental prose in contemporary letters.” This issue contains plenty of prose poetry and flash fiction, but the pieces that strike me as most unusual and interesting are the longer ones. Karrie Higgins’s essay, “State Lines,” about her epilepsy, is a standout. Continue reading “Quarter After Eight – 2004/2005”

Since this is an annual publication—despite title—the short story’s continuing evolution may be visible—although not yet deciphered—over even the one short year of this stellar 528-page collection. Continue reading “StoryQuarterly – 2005”

This publication of Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment combines fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and black-and-white photographs from the college’s students as well as national prize winners, all chosen by guest judges. The fiction runs the gamut from the naturalistic treatment of a poor woman giving birth in a tobacco field (Vickie Weaver’s “Distance”) to the magical realism of a murderous mountain lion (Andrew Beahrs’s “Full”). Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2006”

A Public Space, destined to become a “big” journal from the outset, now adds the term “importance” to its resume. Though APS fiction shows surface divergences – teenage assassins (Nam Le), cult followers (David Mitchell), imprisoned women (Malie Chapman) – the aesthetic remains consistent. The essays, by contrast, point to the coutercultural bankruptcy of the present, and environmental destabilization of the future. Continue reading “A Public Space – Summer 2006”

If I were to close my eyes and imagine a literary magazine, it would look much like The Antioch Review—no filler, the only artwork a cover to hold the stories together. Of course, the stories inside aren’t as stodgy as one might presume from the appearance. Kris Saknussemm’s “Time of the End” belongs on any shortlist of the best stories of this year. Hephaestus Sitturd invents things that don’t work, but now he must invent a Time Ark so that his family can escape the William Miller-predicted end of the world, based on his evidence, “[…] only the year before a dairy farmer in Gnadenhutten had found a cow pie in the shape of the Virgin Mary. Clearly the world was working up to something decisive.” Saknussemm’s imagination proves bottomless in “Time of the End,” as the long lists of the inventions and interests of Hephaestus’s genius son Lloyd attest, “The child had already constructed a steam-driven monorail that ran from their house to the barn, a crude family telephone exchange, and an accurate clock that needed no winding. A rocking horse that turned into a simple bicycle and a giant slingshot that had propelled a meat-safe over the river.” The rest of the fiction has a hard time reaching the heights Saknussemm attains, but Scott Elliott’s excellent “The Wheelbarrow Man” comes closest. Though the cover states “All Fiction Issue,” there is poetry to be found inside The End of Time, and the poems ascend their own peak. From the last lines of Scott Dalgarno’s “Mea Culpa Mea,” “I know, I know, it’s true— / I should be shot. I’d do it myself, except / who blames the victim anymore?” to Molly Bendall’s “Pass up the Votives” (“Suit up / In your mood, look at the people who / never take trips”). The Antioch Review shows sixty-five years has given them a pretty good idea of how to put something special on paper. [The Antioch Review, P.O. Box 148, Yellow Springs, OH 45387. Single issue $8. review.antioch.edu.] –Jim Scott Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Summer 2006”

I often read on the train, and no issue has brought more questions from strangers than this issue of Fourteen Hills. Much of the credit belongs to this issue’s gorgeous and disturbing cover, The Best Intentions by Tiffany Bozic. The stories are often like the painting—imagistic and somewhat scientific, but with something slightly discomfiting about them. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Summer/Fall 2006”

Modern Haiku is not only a delight for haiku enthusiasts, but a pleasant surprise to readers looking for more understanding of this deceptively simple poetic form. Continue reading “Modern Haiku – Winter/Spring 2006”

That genre fiction is rarely thought of as quality work should come as no surprise to anyone who has tried submitting it to undergraduate writing workshops. The editors of New Genre take their crack at the stigma of the g-label via a pair of essays which posit that there is no shame in writing, reading, and using the very word “genre.” Continue reading “New Genre – Winter 2006”

No magazine looks better than Ninth Letter. For someone like me, who appreciates but doesn’t understand design, the fact that each segment has its own look and yet the magazine holds a uniform aesthetic is a miracle. This would all be well and good, a coffee tabletop showstopper, but the content proves worthy of the image. In fact, the descriptions in the lead story, Steve Stern’s “Legend of the Lost,” are as memorable as the stark graphics of a lone bungee jumper or a fading Ferris wheel—“the mezuzah nestled like an ingot in the boiling chest hair revealed by his open collar” and “a potato-shaped woman whose Old Country accent remained as thick as sour cream” were two of my favorites, though I could list a dozen without a noticeable dip in quality. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Spring/Summer 2006”

It is difficult to neatly sum up a journal as diverse as Northwest Review; it contains a wealth of short stories, poems, and essays, with a range of voices in each category. The fiction, particularly, takes the reader through a variety of cultures, from the traditional but tense Cuban-American family of Jennine Capo Crucet’s “Noche Buena” to the subtle power plays in Houston among expatriate Bangladeshi women in Gemini Wahhaj’s “Exit.” Therese Kuoh-Moukoury’s excellent “Colors of Tears” (translated from French) is written in an African folkloric style, but is contemporary in its content and female point of view. Continue reading “Northwest Review – 2006”

I don’t say this kind of thing very often, but flip to the back and read the essay first. Merrill Leffler’s “Poetry: What I Want of It” is a thoughtful exploration of topics many poets struggle with: why am I reading and writing poetry; aren’t all these “I” poems just navel-gazing; and what should poetry, ultimately, do for language? Continue reading “Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2006”