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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Common Ground Regained in The Big Easy

Malik Rahim: Spreading Common Ground
An interview with the cofounder of New Orleans’ Common Ground Collective
by Doug Pibel

Doug: What has the experience of Common Ground taught you about how communities can learn to act together?
Malik: I’m going to tell you, that’s the reason why I continue on. Not only has it taught me what we can do, it has shown me the true greatness of this nation. Yes we are a rich nation; yes we are one of the most powerful nations. But, the greatness of our nation is not in our government—it is in our people. I have seen the essence of that greatness in those who made sacrifices to come down to help us in our time of need.

Read the rest of this interview and more on Yes! Magazine, Summer 2007 Issue: Latin America Rising.

Z Magazine Memorials: Olsen and Ivins

Memorial for Tillie Olsen
Tillie Lerner was never supposed to be a writer. She grew up poor. She dropped out of high school. She was a teenage mother. She worked long hours to support her kids. She got fired. Too often, she recalled, “the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” Yet, she wrote. (More at Z Magazine Online)

Memorial for Molly Ivins
Mary Tyler “Molly” Ivins (August 30, 1944–January 31, 2007) was a U.S. newspaper columnist, political commentator, and bestselling author from Austin, Texas. Ivins was born in Monterey, California, raised in Houston, Texas and attended St. John’s School in Houston. (More at Z Magazine Online)

Gulf Coast Interview: Bob Hicok and Matthew Siegel

MS: What message, if any, do you have for the several thousand people who are going to graduate this year with MFAs?
BH: Remember that, when I say I want my root beer without ice, I mean it.

Read the full interview in Gulf Coast, Volume 19 Number 2, Summer/Fall 2007, where you’ll find more humor as well as insight in response to questions such as:
MS: So many poets are rushing to get that first book out, spending hundreds of dollars on contests and reading fees. Do you believe this is the best way for young poets to get noticed?
and
MS: Some of your newer poems seem to be much more meditative and less “witty” than your earlier work. Also, I’ve been told that you are trying to turn away from this perception of you being a “funny” poet. Is this true” If so, what do you find troubling about being called a “funny” poet?

Dollars and Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice

Muckraking Around the Globe
“BBC investigative reporter and international gadfly Greg Palast has dug into many critical stories in recent years—particularly those, like the vulture funds saga (see Palast’s article in the current issue of D&S), that lie at the intersection of political decision-making and corporate greed. Dollars & Sense recently interviewed Palast about the sometimes-surprising appraisals that he offers in his latest book, Armed Madhouse, which came out in a revised paperback edition in April.”

Also from the current issue of Dollars and Sense and available online:

The Homeownership Myth by Howard Karger
A contrarian asks whether homeownership really benefits low-income families.

The Real Political Purpose of the ICE Raids by David Bacon
Using immigration raids as a pressure tactic to get Congress to approve new guest worker programs is not a legitimate use of enforcement.

Fidelity and Genocide by Chris Sturr
Activists are calling on Fidelity and other investment houses to divest from Chinese oil companies that help fund the killing in Darfur.

New & Forthcoming from Anhinga Press

My Last Door by Wendy Bishop (2007)

Yellow Jackets by Patti White (2007)

The View from Zero Bridge by Lynn Aarti Chandhok, winner of the Levine Prize in Poetry (2007)

All you have to do is ask by Meredith Walters, winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry (2006)

Visit Anhinga Press for more on their publications.

Talk the Talk Online with Writers Revealed

Join Felicia Sullivan (Editor of Small Sprial Notebook) each week in a new kind of Sunday Book Review: Writers Revealed. Participate in live discussions, book giveaways, and opportunities to get between the sheets with some of today’s most buzzworthy writers. Writers Revealed is not about name-dropping obscure authors and talking about the “process” of writing – this show is all about the hilarious and heartbreaking stories you can relate to.

This Sunday, June 17, chat live with Kevin Smokler, David Wellington, Andi Buchanan and Josh Kilmer-Purcell about successful online marketing and how you can be your own marketing & publicity machine. Previous shows available on podcast.

Visit Writers Revealed: www.writersrevealed.com.

NCAC’s Censorship News, Spring 2007

Check out the National Coalition Against Censorship Newsletter: Censorship News, No. 104. Available online and as PDF, “NCAC’s newsletter, published quarterly, contains information and discussion about freedom of expression issues, including current school censorship controversies, threats to the free flow of information, and obscenity laws.” In this issue:

Reading the Fine Print

A Minor History of Miniature Writing
By Joshua Foer
Cabinet Magazine Online
“Miniature book collector George Salomon of Paris disperses his seven-hundred-title collection, a library that reportedly “could be carried in a moderate-sized portmanteau.” His spirit lives on today in the Miniature Book Society, an organization whose interests extend only to printed works three inches or smaller.”

Read the article and see images of miniature writing through history on Cabinet Magazine Online.

Pinsky Speaks on Music and Literature

Poetry Northwest Web Exclusive
“On March 21, 2007, in Portland, some 400 people crammed the sold-out Wonder Ballroom to hear to hear the former poet laureate speak, read poems, & launch the Music Issue. Robert Pinsky condemned educational administrators who want to break the chain of culture by cutting funding to music, arts, & creative writing programs. ‘Woe unto them,’ said Pinsky, who also read recent & new poems, & closed the night with an electrifying reading of John Keats’s hymn to music & poetry, ‘Ode to a Nightingale.'”

Listen to an excerpt (apprx 45min) of this performance lecture on Poetry Northwest.

Writing in Prison: The PEN American Center Program

“Founded in 1971, the PEN Prison Writing Program believes in the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing, by providing hundreds of inmates across the country with skilled writing teachers and audiences for their work. The program seeks to provide a place for inmates to express themselves freely with paper and pen and to encourage the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. The program sponsors an annual writing contest, publishes a free handbook for prisoners, provides one-on-one mentoring to inmates whose writing shows merit or promise, conducts workshops for former inmates, and seeks to get inmates’ work to the public through literary publications and readings.”

For more information about this program, read writing from contest winners, or how to get a copy of the writing handbook, visit PEN American Center.

How to Sustain Your Labor of Love

Love’s Labour Lost?: Working for a sustainable alternative press
By Nicole Cohen
Briarpatch Magazine
June/July 2007

“I don’t recall the exact moment I became skeptical of the term labour of love, but I do remember the day it began feeling like an inappropriate descriptor for Shameless, the independent, feminist magazine for teens I co-founded in 2003 and edited until recently.
[. . .]
While it is critical for media activists to talk seriously about the business of producing alternative media and to find innovative ways to boost circulation, it is dangerous to believe that the only way to become commercially viable is to make content more mainstream. Alternative media exist to disseminate an oppositional or radical stance, and the development of creative, sustainable business models should centre on strengthening that goal, not abandoning it.”

Read the rest of the article HERE, with Cohen’s assessment as well as advice for small, independents who wish to remain alternative.

Recipe for Inspiration

File this under the “finding writing ideas in the most unlikely places” category. Check out some of these great recipe names, courtesy of Backwoods Home Magazine:

Dragon’s Breath Chili
Earth’s Greatest Cookies
Egg Thingies
Humble Stew (Served with humble pie for dessert? Oh, c’mon, you saw that one coming…)
Dishpan Cookies
Baked Macaroni and Cheese to Kill For
Czarist Chicken Salad
Chow-chow (I read the recipe and still don’t know what this is – ?)
Lazy Housewife Pickles
Emergency Casserole (Maybe to help the person killed for the mac and cheese…)

Can’t you just see it now: “She went to the kitchen and started banging pots and pans onto the stove. She’d have the last laugh for his cheating on her, the Dragon’s Breath Chili would see to that…”

Inspiration can indeed come from the strangest places. If nothing else, some of these really do sound worth trying!

New Online Issue: Dark Sky Magazine

The June 2007 issue of Dark Sky Magazine is now online, featuring literature by Jenny Steele, Michael Phillips, Charlie Geer, Meredith Doench, Jack Emery, Martin Brick, Luke Boyd, Richard O’Connell, Richard O’Connell, Louise Snowden, Rupert Fike, John Grey, and artwork by Elizabeth Cadwell, Isabel Barnes, Miranda Clark.

From “Bend” by Meredith Doench:

I.
“No one’s ever loved me before. People have told me they did, like my mom. But she only said so when I’d done something to please her, or after she’d had too much to drink or smoke. So when Alison Rogers said, Nicole, I love you, I cried harder than I’ve ever cried before. And the weird thing was Alison cried too, hugging me close, her tears getting the shoulder of my old t-shirt wet and warm.

Now the staff at Lakeridge Psychiatric Center would have called this inappropriate touch between patients, so we were wedged tight into the cubby hole of a maintenance closet that someone left open while getting a mop. I could hear…”

Read and see much more on Dark Sky Magazine.

Writing: Characters in Africa

Africa Settings: Writers in search of characters
From Worldview Magazine (v20n2)by David Arnold

“Before being there, my only reference point for any African country was a reading of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King which, as I recall, was more about crazy Henderson than about Africa. It turns out that this is typical of Americans who write about Africa. Even those like Hemingway who were there…

In this issue of WorldView, we’re sampling writers whose work has become part of our Africa bibliography: Norman Rush, George Packer, Paul Theroux, Leonard Levitt, Kathleen Coskran, Sarah Erdman, Richard Wiley, Maria Thomas and Tony D’Souza…”

Read more here: Worldview Magazine.

Leslie Bennets Speaks Out on The Feminine Mistake

From The Humanist by Heidi Bruggink:

“In her new book, The Feminine Mistake, Bennetts asserts that women’s decisions to abandon their careers may save them stress in the short-term, but the repercussions are enormously dangerous-and women often fail to understand this until it’s far too late. Further, she argues, the financial and psychological benefits of working outside the home are enormous. Bennetts herself serves as a prime example of this assertion, having crafted an enviable journalism career over the past thirty years while simultaneously raising a family. She spoke with the Humanist in March, shortly before her book’s release, to discuss the urgent message she wants to impart on today’s younger women…”

Read an excerpt of the interview here: Don’t Give Up Your Day Job: Leslie Bennetts on The Feminine Mistake

The Language of Global Warming

Sustaining Change from the Middle Ground
James Biggar and Michael M’Gonigle
Alternatives Journal Online, April 2007

“‘Climate porn.’ That’s how the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain depicts the portrayal of the climate crisis by media and governments. In the organization’s report, ‘Warm Words,’ the authors claim the apocalyptic and external framing of global warming convinces the public that climate change is inevitable and therefore beyond human control. In the context of that frame, appeals for changes in individual behaviour, such as the Liberals’ One Tonne Challenge and the endless ‘Ten Things you Can Do’ lists, seem pretty lame, even to advocates. After all, how many times can a dutiful bicyclist be squeezed into the curb by a lumbering SUV before she feels there is no point to her action?”

Read the rest of the article at: Alternative Journal Online

Contest Winners: McSweeny’s Convergences

A Convergence of Convergences
“To celebrate the release of Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, we are launching an extravagant new contest: A Convergence of Convergences. Submit your own convergence—an unlikely, striking pair of images, along with a paragraph or three exploring the deeper resonances. The best contributions will be posted on the site, along with responding commentary from Weschler.”

See the list winners at McSweeny’s.

Submissions: Fault Magazine

“FAULT Magazine (www.faultmag.com) is seeking short stories, nonfiction essays, photographs and animated works that deal with human flaws. Each issue of the magazine will focus on a single undesirable characteristic, exploring who is affected by it, the impact it has on individuals, when it can be especially bad (or actually good), and any other aspect of the flaw that is interesting to consider.”

More info here: www.faultmag.com

Literature of Martial Arts: Tomiki Sensei’s Writings

“Tomiki Sensei, in addition to being a superb martial artist, was also a man of the letters and of arts. As a man of letters, Tomiki published numerous articles on Judo, Aikido, the relationship between the martial arts and Eastern religious and philosophical traditions, articles on the proper place of the martial arts in the modern world, and of course articles on the technical aspects of various martial arts techniques. His masterwork is entitled Budo-ron, or The Theory of Budo. This book is widely acknowledged in Japan to be one of the most significant 20th Century contributions to martial arts theory and thought. Unfortunately, it remains to be translated into any Western language. However, two of Tomiki Sensei’s more influential essays, fortunately, have been translated: ‘The Fundamental Principles of Judo’ and ‘On Jujitsu and Its Modernization’.” (Vassar College Aikido Club)

To read both translations, visit the Vassar College Aikido Club Website.

Film: Gay Movie Marathon on TBS

From “Movie Marathon” by Alonso Duralde, The Advocate, June 4, 2007:

“Well, it’s June again, and for many cable networks that means it’s time to mark Pride Month with a halfhearted rerun of every notable post-1990 queer film they can get their hands on. But leave it to Turner Classic Movies to dig deeply into its vaults for ‘Screened Out: Gay Images in Film,’ a 44-film series running Mondays and Wednesdays all month long. Based on Richard Barrios’s book Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, the series offers a varied look at gay characters in American film: from swishy supporting roles (mostly banished from the screen after the Hays Code went into effect) to butch prison matrons to seductive, unscrupulous, exotic inverts of any gender.”

For more on this, see the rest of Alonso Duralde’s article on The Advocate.

Submissions: Dive Bar Stories Wanted

Tell Us Your Dive Bar Stories
“Barrelhouse is searching for non-fiction about your favorite dive bar, your best or worst dive bar story, the ‘I never thought these letters were true until I wound up shirtless drinking shots of Black House with three old men on a Sunday afternoon’ kind of dive bar story. It’s not really a contest, but the ones we like best will be published in a special section of our next print issue.”

Uh…pseudonyms allowed?

For more info, stagger on over to Barrelhouse.

Submissions: Ballyhoo

Ballyhoo Stories: 50 States Project
Ballyhoo is currently “accepting submissions for all states except California, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Ohio, and Indiana. Stories should show a strong representation of the people and culture of the particular state. Stories should be no more than 5,000 words and have the state as either the subject or the setting. Please be sure to read one or two of our current stories for an idea of what we are looking for.”

Stop by Ballyhoo for more info: http://www.ballyhoostories.com/

Submissions: New Magazine Feature

War and the Environment: Cause and Effect

The literary anthology, North Atlantic Review, is open to submissions on war and its effect on the environment or the environment and its effects on war. We invite you to write an essay, short story, poem, song, or journal based on personal experience or philosophy. Please keep submissions under 5,000 words. This is a new section of the journal and will be included in future issues.

For more information: North Atlantic Review Submissions

Recess! Funny Times Cartoon Playground

Set aside at least twenty minutes in your day to play on the Funny Times Cartoon Playground where you can create a one- or two-panel comic from preset characters (including a few from the White House), settings, props, and text ballons you fill in yourself. You can then save your masterpiece and allow it to be publicly viewed in the gallery, or keep it private and e-mail it to select recipients.

Just be sure to mind the bell and get back to class on time!

Photography: New Orleans After the Flood

Photography After the Flood
By Nicolaus Mills
Dissent Magazine, Spring 2007

A review and commentary on the photography of Robert Polidori:

“Robert Polidori’s photographs of New Orleans challenge our sense of how the world is supposed to look. Cars stand upside down. Uprooted trees rest on houses. In contrast to the familiar photos of bombed-out Hiroshima, where everything but the walls of a few buildings lies flattened on the ground, Polidori’s post-flood New Orleans is a collage of random disorder. Nothing is where it should be.”

Read the review/commentary and view the photos at Dissent Magazine.

Submissions: Appalachia

“Founded in 1876, Appalachia is the Appalachian Mountain Club’s mountaineering and conservation journal, published twice a year in June and December.

Appalachia welcomes nonfiction submissions on the following topics: hiking; trekking; rock climbing; canoeing and kayaking; nature; mountain history and lore; and conservation. We recommend reading a sample issue before submitting materials.

Writers should submit unsolicited material by December 1 for the June issue, and by June 1 for the December issue.

Original poems about the above topics are also welcome. Shorter poems are preferred. Only eight poems are published per issue, which makes this the most competitive section of the journal; on average, one in 50 submissions is accepted.”

For more information, visit Appalachia online.

Imprisoned Journalist Awarded Golden Pen of Freedom

HRIC Supports Campaign to Free Golden Pen of Freedom Recipient Shi Tao
June 05, 2007

“Human Rights in China (HRIC) congratulates imprisoned Chinese journalist Shi Tao and his family on his receiving the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom on June 4 at the opening ceremony of the World Newspaper Congress (WNC) and World Editors Forum (WEF).

The Golden Pen of Freedom, established in 1961 and awarded by the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, is an annual award recognizing individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the defense and promotion of press freedom.

Shi Tao’s mother, Gao Qinsheng, accepted the award on her son’s behalf, thanking everyone for not forgetting Shi Tao, and stating that her son had ‘only done what a courageous journalist should do.'”

Read the full article at HRIC.

Artistry & Activism: The Poetry of Irena Klepfisz

By Ursula McTaggart from the May/June 2007 issue of Against the Current

“AS A JEWISH child growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, Irena Klepfisz had parents who taught her only Polish so that she could pass for Aryan and escape the concentration camps. It wasn’t until after the war that she began to learn Yiddish, the language she would try to maintain and revive in her adult work as a poet.

For Klepfisz, then, language has always been intensely political. As a child, language meant life and death, and today, in her work as a professor at Barnard College in New York, Yiddish is a remnant of pre-Holocaust Jewish culture and a sign of hope for the future. But attuned to the political nature of even the language used for communication, Klepfisz also uses her poetic language to call our attention to urgent political issues in our own lives.”

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/527

Call for Submissions: Current Events Poetry

THE NEW VERSE NEWS covers the news and public affairs with poems on issues, large and small, international and local. It relies on the submission of poems (especially those of a politically progressive bent) by writers from all over the world.

The editors update the website every day or two with the best work received.

See the website at http://www.newversenews.com for guidelines and for examples of the kinds of poems THE NEW VERSE NEWS publishes.

New Lit on the Block

Greatcoat – A biannual publishing poetry, creative non-fiction, interviews, and photography, the editors of Greatcoat, “being of relatively sound mind and possessed of radically different literary tastes, do hereby relinquish any claim to rational thought, free time, and dreams of profit; in short, we have no illusions about what makes a literary journal successful.”

Nano Fiction: A Journal of Short Fiction from the University of Houston, “NANO Fiction is a non-profit literary journal run entirely by undergraduate students at the University of Houston. We plan to publish twice a year, with issues appearing each spring and fall. Our purpose is to share undergraduate work with others in a form that can be easily digested in a short amount of time.”

Poetry in Movies

Thought you recognized those lines tucked into Million Dollar Baby? Now you can know for sure!

Poetry in Movies: A Partial List
Created/Edited by Stacey Harwood

Michigan Quarterly Review is featuring this list “of the appearance of recognizable, often canonical, poems, or excerpts from poems, in mainly American and British sound films. The catalog is necessarily incomplete; readers are invited to submit new entries to the journal at [email protected] or to Stacey Harwood at [email protected]. The filmography will be revised and updated regularly.”

Workshop: Lost Horse Press


Lost Horse Press proudly presents the Dog Days Poetry & Prose Writing Workshops featuring Melissa Kwasny (poetry) and EWU Professor Emeritus, John Keeble (fiction & non) on 10 – 12 August 2007 at Lost Horse Press, 105 Lost Horse Lane, Sandpoint, Idaho. Workshop fee is $150. Classes are limited to 12 studentsd; register early. For additional information or to register, please contact Lost Horse Press at 208.255.4410, email: [email protected].

Brazil Anyone?


Creative Writing in Brazil
Participate in a week-long poetry workshop with Edward Hirsch and a translation class on Brazilian poets Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Joao Cabral de Melo Neto. Discussions on Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil and tours of important cultural sites and literary landmarks. Also, casual get togethers with leading contemporary Brazilian poets, editors, writers, translators, and publishers. Workshop is from July 9 to July 16, 2007.

Peabody Props

Check out Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant blog – Richard Peabody: Mondo Literature – where Ed gives a well-deserved tip of the keyboard to Richard and his life-long dedication “to printing work by unknown poets and fiction writers, as well as seeking out the overlooked or neglected…” publishing “‘name’ writers — sometimes before they were ‘names’.” And recognizing that: “As if being an unparalleled literary impresario and entrepreneur isn’t enough, Rick is also a superb poet and fiction writer.” If you don’t know Gargoyle or Richard or Ed – you can get it all – and then some – in this one read.

Literary Podcasts at Chattahoochee Review

The Chattahoochee Review hosts podcasts from Georgia Perimeter College. A great variety of readings, interviews and lectures. Here’s just naming a few:

Mark Bixler Lecture – author of The Lost Boys of Sudan

Donald Bogle Lecture – two parts lecture by the award winning African-American film historian and media scholar discussing the history of African-Americans in the movies.

William Julius Wilson Lecture – the preeminent sociologist and former advisor to President Clinton discussing his book There Goes The Neighborhood, an examination of race and class issues in Chicago. November 2, 2006.

Leonard Susskind – The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design
Luis Alberto Urrea Interview
Elizabeth Cox Reading
Alistair MacLeod Reading
Several GPC faculty open mic readings

Call for Submissions: Narratives of Africa

a.magazine: nonfiction narratives of Africa — due to launch in 2007 — is the first exclusively nonfiction literary magazine dedicated to publishing Africa’s stories by writers from across the globe, and, most importantly, emerging and established writers who call the continent of Africa their home. a.magazine is published quarterly, available in U.S. bookstores and to subscribers worldwide.

Crazyhorse Winners Announced

Crazyhorse prize judges (Fiction judge: Antonya Nelson, Poetry judge: Marvin Bell) are pleased to announce:

Crazyhorse Fiction Prize Winner: Karen Brown for the story “Galatea”

Fiction finalists: Jacob M. Appel, Kathy Conner, Rick Craig, Diane Greco, and Ann Joslin Williams

Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize Winner: Jude Nutter for the poem “Frank O’Hara in Paradise”

Poetry finalists: Kurt Brown, Colin Cheney, Melody S. Gee, Luisa A. Igloria, John Isles, Joshua Kryah, Gabriella Klein Lindsey, M.B. McLatchey, Xu Smith, and Jared White

The 2007 Crazyhorse Prize Winners receive $2000 each and publication in Crazyhorse Number 72, due out Nov. 1, 2007.

2River View: New Issue Online

2River has just released the 11.4 (Summer 2007) issue of The 2River View,with new poems by Philp Brady, Therese Broderick, Ryan Collins, LydiaCooper, Michael Flanagan, Nancy Henry, Laura McCullough, Karen Pape, PetreStoica, and Sally Van Doren; and art from the Underground Series by MeganKarlen.

Take a few moments to stop by 2River and read or print the issue, available as PDF.

Online Lit Mags: New Issues Up

Failbetter 23, Spring 2007 is now available, featuring interviews, fiction, poetry and multimedia.

Boxcar Poetry with poetry, artwork, reviews & responses.

The Stickman Review, Volume 6 Number 1 – poetry and fiction.

42 Opus – new writing every few days – currently featuring poetry, fiction, non-fiction.

Born Magazine, May 2007, specializing in literary arts and interactive media.

Get Your Vote In: storySouth Million Writer Awards

Votes are now being counted (yes, there are places in this great nation of ours where votes really still do count) for storySouth Million Writer Award for Fiction 2007. The top ten online stories have been selected and readers will choose the winner. To read the top ten stories and cast you vote, as well as read more about the award and the Notable Stories 2006 from which they were selected, visit storySouth.

Voting will run through June 30, 2007.

32 Poems – 2007

In case you were wondering, yes, 32 Poems is just that—a journal of thirty-two poems, one to a page. This issue’s works, chosen by guest editor Carrie Jerrell, are mostly of a straightforward, narrative style, with a couple of wryly amusing “list” poems kicking things off. (Having said that, I wonder if Daniel Nester, whose “Queries,” a list of creative writing class comments, begins “Isn’t everything tucked always lovingly tucked? / Don’t loomers always appear from overhead?” would ask, “Must everything amusing be wryly so?”) Continue reading “32 Poems – 2007”

The Antioch Review – Spring 2007

If you’re interested in testing Antioch Review’s stellar reputation, just pick up the current issue. Everything that has made AR a benchmark standard for literary journals is in evidence here, as always: intelligent essays, eclectic themes, engaging stories, and unsparing poetry—all of it thriving in an ever-evolving habitat of exploration. It’s almost impossible to choose standout pieces in a collection as accomplished as this. Jeffrey Meyers opens the issue (and this writer’s eyes) with “The Literary Politics of the Nobel Prize,” a revelatory inside look at the Oscar-like machinations pulling the strings of literary prestige. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Spring 2007”

Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2007

This issue’s charming cover photo, taken during WWI in Vichy, France, shows a nurse from Bellevue’s medical staff helping a dog apply a stethoscope to the temple of a man in uniform—eavesdropping on the man’s thoughts, perhaps? This image says much about the journal’s literary aesthetic; the stories, poems, and essays inside are about death and loss (of health, loved ones, ways of being in the world—the many things there are to lose as we encounter the human body’s various limits), but these are not depressing tales melodramatically told. Instead, they are creative and sometimes humorous engagements with realities we usually prefer to avoid. Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2007”

Chicago Review – Spring 2007

This British Poetry Issue is likely to be enjoyed by those with a strong academic interest in poets of the so-called “Cambridge School.” An introduction by Sam Ladkin and Robin Purves defines this label as a “widely-promulgated apparition” that is “associated with elitism and self-serving obscurantism . . . held to stand for a deliberately inaccessible mode of writing, engorged with critical theory, often held to be ‘only about language itself’ and written purely for the delectation of a smug coterie of reclusive adepts.” Continue reading “Chicago Review – Spring 2007”