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Greatcoat: an oversized, catch-all garment designed to protect in all kinds of weather. Practical, not flattering, it provides comfort without ostentation. The debut issue of Greatcoat is thin enough, at 83 pages, to fit inside a greatcoat pocket, yet it lives up to its name, enveloping the reader in poems and essays which blur the design lines and obliterate genre seams. The first of the two essays exemplifies Greatcoat’s vision. “Electric Energy,” excerpted from a 1998 book by Lynn Strongin, is a spinning centrifuge of non-sequiturs and vivid imagery. From the quotations about aging which open the piece, Strongin distills ideas of a “cell-like enclosure” trapping the women in her life: “I used to dream I made myself a home in a beehive as a child: clean, solitary, holy.” Continue reading “Greatcoat – Spring 2007”

This attractive issue includes the 2005 Indiana Review Poetry Prize Winner, “Galloglass,” by Susan Tichy (“Likes to meet with potentates,” said John Dean on the radio. “Doesn’t like to kiss babies.”) and the 2006 Indiana Review Fiction Prize Winner, Marjorie Celonam’s imaginative “Y” (“That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass.”) Continue reading “Indiana Review – Winter 2006”

Nature poetry, whether well or poorly written—and this issue of Isotope contains some fairly nice examples of the former—is something we’ve all seen before. Continue reading “Isotope – Fall/Winter 2006”

The Massachusetts Review is truly a quarterly of literature, the arts, and public affairs as evidenced by this issue’s rewarding stories, poems, and essays. “Fear and Torment in El Salvador” by Noel Valis provides a comprehensive overview of El Salvadorian terrorism and opposes Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, the Making and Unmaking of the World. Valis reminds us of the early 80’s writings of Carolyn Forche, especially her unforgettable prose poem “The Colonel,” and of Joan Didion’s Salvador (“Terror,” she says, “is the given of the place.”). Also mentioned is Robert Stone’s film Salvador, as well as the work of others who have explored the moral hell of torture, which Valis, although conceding that it is born in the imagination, posits imagination as the site of its demise. Continue reading “The Massachusetts Review – Spring 2007”

This rewarding collection of essays, poems, and fiction avoids direct confrontation with current concerns—war, poverty, ecology—in favor of a Jewish boy’s memoir of 1938 Berlin and Vienna and Bertolt Brecht’s poem on WWII propaganda. From Brecht’s “The Government as Artist”: “It is well known that an artist can be stupid and yet / be a great artist. In this way, too / the government resembles the artist. As one says of Rembrandt / that he couldn’t have painted any differently if he had been born without hands, / so it can be said of the government that it couldn’t govern any differently / if it had been born without a head.” Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Spring 2007”

If one looked for themes in this splendid and beautifully presented collection, it would have to be drug addiction, past or present, in each of the four fictions: “The Yoshi Compound: A Story of Post-Waco Texas,” is a delightful satire of phony spirituality by Todd James Pierce; Rebecca Rasmussen’s “Partway,” is a terrific story of a drug addict’s daughter and the people who love her; “The Girl Who Drank Lye” by Colleen Curran traces the shocking decline of an ostracized fourteen-year-old picking up bad habits when befriended by the class bad girl. Jason Ockert’s “Piebald” tells the story of a father dying of some strange malady while mourning the death of his son, but, of course, it’s more complicated than that. Continue reading “Mid-American Review – Fall 2006”

When I can, I like to single out one or two stories in a journal for particular praise, but all four fiction entries in this issue of Phoebe merit attention. “Forgery,” by Steve Yates, is a tale of corporate revenge set in the offices of a company that sells pornographic toys, yet it manages to be sweetly romantic. “Harvest,” by Danielle Evans, sets a group of women of color, Ivy League college girls all, against a friend who is able to sell her eggs to infertile couples for loads of cash simply because she’s white. William Jablonsky’s “In Dreams” features a fireman who is able to perform amazing acts of courage because he has seen his own death in his dreams and “knows” he won’t die as long as he doesn’t drive his truck through a certain fateful intersection, while “The Good Life,” by Jonathan Lyons, centers on a character who is so blitzed out on drink and drugs that he and his buddies can’t quite manage to care when they kill four strangers in a tragic highway accident. Continue reading “Phoebe – Spring 2007”

This issue of SRPR is longtime editor Lucia Cordell Getsi’s swan song before retirement; tempted though I am to draw a parallel between her moving on and this issue’s many poems of grieving, I won’t. Continue reading “Spoon River Poetry Review – Summer/Fall 2006”

In a recent New Yorker article, Milan Kundera charted the genealogy of some of the most important writers of the last five centuries by tracing a map of “influences” that criss-crossed continents, hemispheres, and oceans. In doing so, he made a case for the importance of translation, which allows literature to jump outside of the “provincial” context of the country (and language) in which it was written, and resituate itself in the vastly more important “supranational territory of art.” Absinthe – a journal that dedicates itself to publishing translations of “new European writing” – is a small but wonderful island in that territory. Some of the pieces (from writers working in Greek, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and a slate of other European languages) are occasionally tinged with a tone of political irony that struck me as clichéd. Although these writers are clearly “correct,” I found their seemingly rote anger disturbing.  Continue reading “Absinthe – 2006”

Alaska Quarterly Review is approaching its 25th anniversary, which alone attests to its position among the top literary magazines in the nation. Simply opening to the first piece in this issue, Samuel Ligon’s story “Drift and Swerve,” readers will learn (or relearn) that AQR surviving and thriving for a quarter-century is certainly no surprise. Ligon’s story takes the reader on a ride-along where a drunk driver may not be so dangerous when a force of nature, like a normal – if slightly dysfunctional family of four (again, pretty much normal), happens to share the same stretch of highway. Mike Harvkey’s “One Owner, Part II: Won’t Last” is a haunting story of a man-on-the-run who stumbles untouched in the wake of a mysterious plague, finally settling with a family in Mexico. Eventually, he learns that he has not escaped, he cannot; he must face the past that hounds him and account for what he has done. Harvkey renders the protagonist’s consciousness with fresh language, brilliantly weaving the story’s haunting, hallucinatory atmosphere. Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Spring/Summer 2007”

The theme of this issue of American Short Fiction is prison, according to Editor Stacey Swann, whether by prison bars or self-imposed limitations. The former is the concern of the pictorial essay, “Captain, Don’t You Know Me, Don’t You Know My Name?” Nathan Salsburg, curator of this historical collection, notes in the preface, these stunning photographs, interviews, and work-gang songs are from the work of the late folklorist Alan Lomax during his visit to Mississippi State Penitentiary in the late 1950’s. This prison, also known as Parchman Farm, is the setting for his 1993 memoir The Land Where the Blues Began, wherein he quotes a 1957 New York Post article describing Parchman Farm as “simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor.” Continue reading “American Short Fiction – Winter 2007”

Given editor W. Scott Olsen’s own work in nonfiction, one might assume that Ascent would demonstrate a bias for personal essays, place-based work, and travel writing. But what really stands out are the poetry and the fiction, especially the three short stories. The opening story, “Puck,” by Edith Pearlman, about a statue that seems to draw forth the desires of those who view it is both puckish and hopeful. Snappy dialogue and quirky characters keep the reader interested. Continue reading “Ascent – Winter 2007”

This very cerebral and provocative issue of Black Warrior Review begins with an unexpected critique of U.S. culture and international perceptions of the U.S. in Beth Ann Fennelly’s poem, “Cow Tipping.” The idiotic “tradition” of cow-tipping is juxtaposed with the speaker’s confusion about negative views of U.S. society/culture in other countries; in the end, she begins to understand that these international criticisms view bragging about cow-tipping “at a party for a laugh” as representative of a self-centered approach to the world. This issue is full of great poetry, notably Stephanie Bolster’s “The Life of the Mind.” Bolster’s poems interpret paintings, Sylvia Plath’s last residence, and captions from books and newspapers. Her words animate material objects. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2007”

Everyone loves cake, right? There’s nothing more satisfying than trying a new flavor of cake. It’s something sweet and different, bringing excitement to your mouth and soothing your anxious craving. Caketrain is like a bakery that’s open twenty-four hours to successfully serve even the pickiest of cake eaters. Or in this case, readers. The prose in this magazine is definitely something to dive into. Pedro Ponce’s “Fortune Fish” explores the life of a curious anti-social boy obsessed with Fortune Fish. The boy, due to peer pressure, turns his curiosity to sex and accidentally walks in on his parents. Continue reading “Caketrain – Fall/Winter 2007”

Colorado Review is probably best known for its poetry. And this issue includes over fifty pages of poems, including the powerful “Orders of Infinity” by Jacqueline Osherow, a meditation on the inexpressibility of trauma and the loss of singularity when faced with infinity. The narrator of Osherow’s poem returns to a now-tree-lined Treblinka in an attempt to make sense of the thousands who were killed. What the narrator finds are cremated bodies measured in piles of stone. Although the poetry is stellar – and really every piece in this issue demonstrates an exceptional quality of craft – what captures the reader’s attention in this issue is the prose – including the winner of the 2006 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, a haunting story of a man’s unraveling by Lauren Guza, and the essays. Continue reading “Colorado Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

If anything about this hundred-fifty-page poetry journal can be generalized, it’s that this volume is a collection of stories. Court Green might be considered a relatively new publication, but its formula is already a winner. Aspects of the poetic narrative are in play everywhere, especially in David Hernandez’s “Fork Lines in White Frosting”: “With his presence he contaminated the birthday party, / his aura the dark plumes of a burning tire. Buttonhole // eyes and hair that rebelled the idea of lather and rinse. / Overmedicated, his heart snoozed inside his chest.” Of course, the confessional “I” can be overbearing, but many of the authors resist it, often without elaborate tricks. Occasionally you get a line that hooks you, like the opening couplet from Kirsten Kashock’s “Maiden Mead”: “It was when September, ending jealous, eats bees. We / nervoused again for the island in a boat still made of rocking.” The second half of Court Green is a dossier on bouts-rimés, in which every poem adheres to the same fourteen end-words that the editors advertised when seeking submissions. Although it’s fun to see what results from such concrete rhymes as “Garbo” and “hobo,” the amusement wears off fast, and most poems don’t allow for a deeper reading. Continue reading “Court Green – 2006”

Cranky is a slim little journal just bursting with spunky prose and poetry. The first poem, “When Company Comes,” by Robert Nazarene, sets the tone: “Mommy sweeps me under the sofa / beside the rotten Easter eggs / I was too dumb to find last spring.” There is little lyricism or slow contemplation here; turn to Cranky when you’re ready for sore spots and surprise. Take “The Bitter and Melancholy Exile of a Mummy,” the tale of an exhumed mummy who finds himself in New York City in 1935, which shows that it’s hard to make friends when you’re undead, but easy to become a celebrity. Before heading to Hollywood to make a depressing, falsified film of his own life story, the mummy meets Noel Coward at a cocktail party: “‘I have been often alone,’ Coward says softly, his gaze sliding from the Mummy’s eyes to hide from him the remnants of a desolation felt too often in the past. ‘Not like me,’ the Mummy says bitterly.” And it’s true—you can’t help feeling for someone whose own world is long out of reach and who, undead and immortal, has no way out of this one. Continue reading “Cranky / 2007”

This issue’s first story, “Fat Girl Outside” by Kathie Giorgio, is about an obese woman working in the “Large and Luscious Women’s Apparel Store.” Giorgio uses phobias, image-consciousness and fragmented sentences like, “Underwear that could flap for surrender in the wind” to create a dreamy narrative. It makes the reader side with the fat girl, despise her and admire her all at the same time. Continue reading “The Dos Passos Review – 2006”

Ellipsis, like many student-run literary journals, cleaves tightly to a sense of journalistic “normalcy.” It’s the type of journal in which you’re likely to discover solitary photographs of installation art projects hung out to dry on the spare end of an empty page, stories that sink into the easy chair of the quotidian, and poetry slouching towards the sentimental. Continue reading “Ellipsis – Spring 2006”

In a preemptory explanatory note, Fence’s editor seems slightly apologetic – and certainly nostalgic – as the magazine’s move from its New York City birthplace to the suburbs is explained. It may seem shocking that any journal as cosmopolitan as Fence was willing to migrate at all. Occasional bouts of realism may provide inroads into the altering psyche of the editors: they both mention children. Continue reading “Fence – Winter/Spring 2007”

This issue’s cover, graced by a cool-toned color photo of a flooded home on a river in South Dakota, is intriguing, and the writing inside eclectic. Perusing an issue of Flyway is like attending a series of author readings; each story, essay, or poem is followed by an author’s note that lets you in on what inspired the writer to write the piece, or what the work means to him or her. Continue reading “Flyway – Spring/Fall 2005”

“There are no more quiet places to read.” This is poem XI, by Joshua A. Ware, and it captures the essence of this issue of Harpur Palate. The journal begs to be read, it shouts, and even nags with lines like, “By now you will recognize / that I have taken some liberties… and that when / I describe the third most / happening bar in town I mean / this one,” from Jeffrey Dodd’s “Translator’s Note.” Continue reading “Harpur Palate – Winter 2007”

What are the implications of being human in a complex age? Interim offers a special feature on the subject, and it’s likely to stimulate debate as much as inform. Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover, partners in art as well as life, make cases for literature as an ancillary tool for improving the human person in an age plagued by deception and frivolity. Continue reading “Interim – 2006”

As Journal of New Jersey Poets quietly celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, something curious remains about the manner in which poets write about the Garden State. More than a locale but less than a state of mind, New Jersey is evinced in its most dignified sense: fond and often dryly ironical memories of family gatherings, wooded communities, and The Shore, The Shore, The Shore. Continue reading “Journal of New Jersey Poets – 2006”

There’s a lot of death in this issue. A lot of death. Also: depression, senility, thoughts (and acts) of suicide, and many, many old people. If, as Andrei Tarkovsky said, “the aim of art is to prepare a person for death,” you’ll get some good practice here. Personally, I prefer art that prepares me for something else. I don’t know what, exactly – call it mystery. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2006”

Meena is a literary journal that prints all contributions in both English and Arabic. This second installment of the journal focuses specifically on Hurricane Katrina, the ramifications of rising floodwaters, and related global political-environmental concerns. Its prose elements include a discussion on the anthropological significance of famous bodies of water (the Ganges as bringer of tranquility to the dying, the Volga as a “strong citadel in the face of invaders,” are only the two most obvious metaphors referenced). Through reading these, we learn that the allocation of the Nile River resources has become a major component of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after Sadat’s plan to enrich Sinai with an irrigation channel was stunted by Ethiopian resistance. It is now suggested that Israel’s impending water crisis – which already leads to enormous imbalances in usage – may furnish grounds for another war. A brief socioeconomic history of the now-notorious 9th Ward, and a speculative history of the death of Atlantis that’s really about New Orleans, aren’t far behind. Continue reading “Meena – 2006”

Driving on an Oakland freeway not long ago, a recent Iowa MFA graduate defined contemporary poetry as something that was less of a craft, than a handicraft: after adamantly denying my knowledge of the various journals where she had published, she described a world of self-made chapbooks distributed solely among “friends.” There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this, until one remembers that she and her “friends” have been granted inroads into the poetic establishment, its scarce jobs and grant monies. Continue reading “Melee – January 2007”

This issue of The Midwest Quarterly offers a broad selection of essays, beginning with Mark Glouberman’s “The Birth of Death in Athens and Jerusalem,” a comparison of death and origins in Homer’s Iliad and the book of Genesis. Continue reading “The Midwest Quarterly – Winter 2007”

I selected this attractive volume for its beautiful cover—aware of literary potential, of course, as Mississippi Review is one of the better-known journals—and opened it to find a masthead identified as “Actualization” and a collection of “prose poems.” Continue reading “Mississippi Review – Fall 2006”

This issue of the attractive journal, New Madrid – named for the seismic zone of the central Mississippi Valley and published by Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky – is devoted to writing by former teachers at Murray State. Continue reading “New Madrid – Winter 2007”

New Ohio Review (/nor) clearly states, “This year we are particularly, though not exclusively, interested in innovative and cross-genre work that blurs conventional boundaries and resists easy definition.” /nor succeeds on all accounts. /nor is allusive, elusive, packed with experimental poetry, essays, fiction, philosophy, and everything in between – at once lyrical and pushing the boundaries of meaning, drawing from any and every source, exploring as well as indulging the natural slippage of language and the shifty exchange of meaning and context, where form is often as informative as text. One such example is Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s poem,“Draft 68: Threshold,” wherein words and, increasingly, entire lines and almost whole stanzas are blacked out as though at the hand of a censor, some silencing Other. This censorship leaves a “twist[ed] discourse,” “obliterates statement,” but ultimately is self-defeating, as what is blacked-out – these “wordless words” – becomes more interesting and more beautiful than what neutralized scraps are left. Continue reading “New Ohio Review – Spring 2007”

Ninth Letter is an impressive machine. No expense was spared in design or production. A few ground rules before putting this thing in gear: No sipping tea or coffee while reading its contents, because, like piloting a big rig down the highway, Ninth Letter requires both hands. Open up and hold on. Your attention is no longer yours. Fiction takes off with Rachel Cantor’s “Zanzibar, Bereft,” the story of a story in search of and in conflict with itself, seeks growth and also desires the clean definition of identity. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2007”

Reading the latest installment of Noon, I began to frame the not-at-all-uncomfortable impression that this journal, strange as it may seem, shares its design aesthetic with McSweeney’s. This isn’t obvious from the content (though the likes of Tao Lin, Deb Olin Unferth and Sam Lipsyte, might encourage such misconceptions) as much as through Noon’s insistence on importing iconographic singularity (read: noble) into the chirographic (read: agricultural) sphere of influence. In McSweeney’s these concerns are presented dualistically; you have your journal, it comes in a box or an envelope or with magnets or paperclips, you recall Dada and Aspen Magazine, you chuckle, and move on to the stories. Noon’s format, by contrast, is relatively straightforward: cover art, stories, long photographic portfolio, occasional drawings. At the same time, the rhythm and tone of the stories give the impression of tiptoeing from painting to painting in a modern art gallery. Many movements tangle in Noon: minimalism (Tao Lin and Greg Mulchay), Dadaism (Lypsite’s “The Illuminated Aisle Carpet”), Pop-Art (Laurence A. Peacock’s “The Palmer System”), and, most impressively, Clancy Martin’s Art Brut-inspired “Dirty Work.” Swaddled in a heavy-paper cover and containing an addendum explaining typeface history, it seemed clear that this journal was striving to remain a lasting object itself. This is particularly rare in the realm of experimental literature, where venues like Conjunctions or Sleeping Fish are designed more to dissuade the power of the image or ignore it altogether, conceiving the book pragmatically, as a vehicle for the presentation of printed matter. Continue reading “Noon – 2007”

It is a tremendous effort to develop quality work like Open Minds Quarterly does, while focusing on the consumers and survivors of mental health services. Continue reading “Open Minds Quarterly – Winter 2007”

Oyez– “from the Anglo-Norman word for hear ye, the imperative plural of oyer, meaning to hear. It was used as a call for silence and attention in court and at public gatherings.” Continue reading “Oyez Review – Spring 2007”

Parnassus is beautifully constructed. First, there’s the odd but intriguing painting on the cover, Gustave Moreau’s “Oedipus and the Sphinx,” which forms part of the subject matter for one of the poems found inside – “To Constantine Cavafy,” by Richard Howard. Turns out Cavafy wrote a poem about this painting without ever having seen it. Continue reading “Parnassus – 2007”

The Pinch offers a strong variety of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction with a few interviews thrown in the mix. Although poetry is a strength of The Pinch, the narratives shine the brightest in this excellent literary magazine. J. Malcolm Garcia led off the issue’s creative non-fiction with “Leave Taking,” a retelling of his experience of going to a brothel simply “for a beer.” Continue reading “The Pinch – Spring 2007”

The advantage of a literary journal devoted entirely to one genre is the ability to explore and expand the possibilities of the form. River Teeth does just that. While most literary journals might publish two or even three nonfiction essays, River Teeth can include more than a dozen in each issue, a number that allows the reader to get a strong sense of just how many ways there are to approach the “truth.” Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2006”

This Santa Clara Review opens with MC Hyland’s Palm Poetry Prize-winning poem, an apt entry into this issue with its measured cadence and stark pronouncements: “God is blond, and loves you, though not as you are now.” Continue reading “Santa Clara Review – Fall 2006/Winter 2007”

A new journal is born, one with an ancient name. How does it merge the split-ends of legacy and innovation? It embraces the age-old tradition of straightforward storytelling and updating it with a solid cast of fledgling writers. Continue reading “Short Story – Fall 2006”

If poetry as a whole struggles to avoid becoming a minor art, prose poetry may be even more endangered; and what’s clear is that Sentence, like may contemporary poetry journals, sees its mission as much about preservation as promotion. With this comes anxiety: Contributing Editor Russell Edson declares himself “one of the established masters of the prose poem,” while Peter Johnson, also a contributing editor, sees the tradition of “publishing excellent prose poems” as dating back to the establishment of his own journal in the 1970’s. Clearly, biographical modesty has not made it to Sentence’s’s agenda. But while such arrogance generally confines itself to an enclosed academic establishment, I was happy to find many contributors living on wheat farms (Louis Borgeois), healing the ill (Cecil Helman) or posthumously honored with continued translations (Friedrich Hölderlin – 1770-1843). Continue reading “Sentence – 2006”

Sleeping Fish is, like many experimentally-based journals, not a collection of stories or even fiction in the traditional sense, but more the evocation and exploration of a single aesthetic premise: in this case, the unconscious mind at work. To say that its content is driven principally by wordplay goes without saying, even if titles like “The Mushroom Withdraws Among the Roots” and “The Bearded Favor” didn’t suggest this beforehand. Continue reading “Sleeping Fish – 2006”

It is hereby noted that Sojourn has everything in it. Consider it a digest of contemporary writing, featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translations, interviews (with poets Noami Shihab Nye and Ted Kooser), a play, and an array of photographs and paintings that build momentum from one page to the next. Yet in trying to be everything to everyone, Sojourn can feel incomplete and lacking in places. Continue reading “Sojourn – 2006”