Antioch Review celebrates its 65th year of publication with this fine issue’s eclectic collection of essays, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and et cetera, which includes Editor Robert S. Fogarty’s thoughtful editorial, “Nolan Miller (1907 – 2006),” on the last of the journal’s founding editors, and John Taylor’s “Poetry Today.” Thomas Washington’s “A Quarterly Reader (and Writer),” laments the absence of editorials in many quarterlies, as do I. If you enjoy sophisticated spy stories, you’ll love “Tunis and Time” by Peter LaSalle; Stephen Taylor’s “Bloomsbury Nights: Being, Food and Love” will bring you closer, perhaps (to a dictionary); “Odessa” by Rick DeMarinis will remind you of those among us who cannot sort things out. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Winter 2007”

When I was in college, the English majors and science majors just didn’t get along. Reading Zahir, I kept wondering what all that tension was about, since so many of this journal’s cross-disciplined writers are able to blend their interests in creative writing and science so well. My favorite piece in this issue is Jerry Underwood’s “Traveling Companion,” set in a world which is simply a very long train, constantly moving on a Track with no beginning or end in sight, inhabited by robots all named Bob (if male) or Bobbie (female). Continue reading “Zahir – Spring 2007”

If pop culture irritates and disgusts you, then this magazine is for you. If you’re a pop culture junkie and your admiration for Patrick Swayze and Mr. T is rivaled only by admiration for your father, then this magazine is for you. Equipped to satisfy the panoply of individual tastes, Barrelhouse brilliantly succeeds at “bridging the gap between serious art and pop culture.” With a wide range of fare – essays, interviews, poetry, fiction, art – Barrelhouse has it all. I mean, come on, who else is publishing poetry about Ed Asner? Exactly. Fiction in this issue is strong across the board, and to be fair, each piece deserves its own review. Melissa Yancey’s “Recommended if You Dig” is a perfect example of the Barrelhouse blend, where the young indie protagonist may finally have fallen in love but becomes obsessed with the fact that the woman he’s seeing does not share his love for Neutral Milk Hotel, and this seemingly irreconcilable difference threatens to be the deal-breaker. Another excellent piece is Wendy Wimmer’s “Billets Doux,” an art/fiction piece (Barrelhouse art director Kylos Brannon does a top-notch job laying this piece out) comprised of emails tapped on a Blackberry, offering verbal snapshots cumulating in a portrait of loneliness and desire. Continue reading “Barrelhouse – Issue 3”

The American Scholar celebrated 75 years with the publication of its winter issue. To mark this outstanding achievement, Robert Wilson, the journal’s editor of two years, asked two contributing editors to read every issue from the past 75 years (300 in all) and comment on the journey. The results are fascinating—both in terms of the writers who have written in The Scholar (e.g. John Updike, Oliver Sacks, Barbara Tuchman, Rita Dove, and Hannah Arendt), and in terms of how the journal’s contents trace larger social, political, and ideological movements. Wilson writes in his editor’s note that he noticed how “arguments became more specific, more rooted in particular cases or in personal experiences, more dependent on narrative” Continue reading “The American Scholar – Winter 2007”

Entering its tenth year of publication, this journal of the University of South Carolina at Beaufort offers readers fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry by established and emerging writers. Kathleen Rooney’s essay “Coy Mistress,” about her work as an artist’s and photographer’s nude model appealed to me, perhaps all the more so because I read it while sitting clothed in a paper gown on a physician’s examination table, and over the years, I’ve wondered how a person guards her/his composure while under such close scrutiny. Rebecca McLanachan’s essay, “Interstellar,” delves into the relationship between two sisters. Artfully structured around the recurrent image of double stars, it movingly portrays their changing relationship over time. In the short story “Uncle Will,” Ron Cooper convincingly depicts an irascible older man and his clever solution to the perennial problem of transportation. Poems by some two dozen authors take up half of the journal. They include works by Nelson James Dunford, Michael Johnson, Sharon Doyle, David Lunde, and Jane Sanderson. Standouts are Michael Bassett’s “Aphorisms of One Who Calls Himself Legion Because He is Many”: “The wounds we cannot live / without define us the way the night / sky outlines the stars.” Similarly, in her prose poem (or flash memoir) “Detour,” Sanderson powerfully depicts the feelings a person experiences upon visiting a once concentration camp, now memorial. Frederick Zydek’s “Dreams That Get It Right,” part of a collection-in-progress about dreams, also prompted me to think, with these lines: Continue reading “Apostrophe – 2006”

Stylish and quirky, BWR continually reimagines what it means to be a university-affiliated journal. Amid the chapbook and gorgeous art portfolio, Steve Davenport’s “Murder on Gasoline Lake” unfolds the toxic layers of his childhood spent in a refinery town and illustrates the ways home, even sludge and stink, gets graphed to us “whether we like it or not.” Angie Carter may have entered the world just as Elvis exited, but her nostalgic essay proves music and video as seductive as warm flesh to the obsessive psyche. While paragraphs labeled “First sight,” “First jealousy,” “Our song” suggest stalkerish fandom, Angie’s awareness of the absurd and coverage of other Elvis aficionados (freaks?) sweetens the insanity. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

The Canadian journal Brick is a slap in the face (with a brick) to mediocrity. Brick 78 is chock full of nuts: Robin Blaser, Robert Hass, Sylvia Plath, Ko Un, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Barry Gifford, and certainly more. This journal is not long-winded, and still Brick answers to some of the most interesting essays, memoirs, tributes and speeches, and of course, good poetry. The essays of Brick are always the most fulfilling. The piece “Milosz: The Conscience of Solidarity” by Peter Dale Scott is fascinating. A quote at the beginning of the essay by Adam Michnik should be of interest to poets and revolutionaries alike: “I remember that when I once was arrested the police found a box of treatises by Milosz in my apartment. And during the interrogation the officer was saying, ‘Mr. Michnik, do you believe that with the help of this little poetry you are going to win against Communism?’ And we won.” Continue reading “Brick – Winter 2006”

Talib Kweli sums up this issue in the final interview/article when he advises, “Make sure that you acknowledge, at all times, your history, your ancestors, where you come from and what you are responsible for, what people have done, how people fought, struggled, and died to get you to where you are.” Each and every engaging and diverse perspective in Callaloo’s issue on “Hip Hop and Culture” clearly sounds off on the importance of the roots of the culture, which entails those directly and indirectly involved in the music and culture. The authors manage to establish the importance of hip hop culture’s history through a variety of interviews, photos, poetry, and articles, not to mention the great front and back cover artwork. There’s nothing like seeing a respectable journal’s title in graffiti topped equally with city and island skylines, a meeting of the urban and the earth. The roots of hip hop and its culture also find an unexpected icon in Curtis Crisler’s poem, “Elegy for Mister Rogers: In memory of Fred Rogers,” which served “as a backbeat, before Run/DMC, Eric B. and Rakim, Tupac and Biggie.” Again the dominant theme for each poet in this issue is the importance and relevance of personal and cultural history in hip-hop. Regarding the critical articles, I found Wayne Marshall’s work on sampling’s relevance in hip-hop and Ed Pavlic’s exploration of the relationship between the DJ and audience the two most captivating pieces of criticism. Continue reading “Callaloo – Summer 2006”

After finishing the final piece “Punched” by Steven Cordova in the Cimarron Review, I was left with the line, “You were punched.” Indeed, I was. With each piece I was smacked in the face with a story and a perfect picture, like a movie reel with words streaming by at an almost overwhelming pace, leaving me breathless. The selection of poetry is inarguably strong. For example, “Nocturne,” by Nate Pritts, is based on the simple concept of night, in which he envelopes the feeling, letting each aspect out in short detailed descriptions such as, “Tiger lilies outside my window beat slow time // against the screen, six-petaled heads bobbing / burnt orange, mute tongues curling & streaked // like the sky…” “Aunt Catherine” by Yvonne Higgins Leach also shined, showing a sign of hope for a woman who only had time for herself when she was in the water. Continue reading “Cimarron Review – Winter 2007”

Just about to enter its fortieth year, Cimarron Review does not appear to be suffering from a midlife crisis—no new bells and whistles, just poetry, fiction, and essays. As usual, Cimarron Review excels with their selection of poetry. Emily Fragos delivers two devastating poems, “19 Chopin Waltzes” with its accusatory lines, “All the begetting: the weak limbs and soft bellies, / the faces elongated like the devil himself,” and “Insomnia” whose ending is one long shiver, “Even the chained lie down in the dark; / Soldiers, sick of shoveling muck and trench, dream of resting / Beneath blankets of snow. Continue reading “Cimarron Review – Fall 2006”

It’s to the credit of the editorial staff at The Cincinnati Review that the winter 2007 issue cannot be easily classified. The range of voices is as wide as the experience of the contributors. Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2007”

Judging by its title, which, next to the cover, is the greatest way to judge anything, I expected Driftwood to be a ragtag collection of literature in translation and experimental writing from the English writing world. Instead, Driftwood offers seven short stories featuring the sort of exoticism that has populated mainstream bookshelves for years, which, in effect, dilutes the very exoticism they originally brought to light. Once I got over my own preconceptions, I saw Driftwood for what it is—a fine literary magazine that caters to these types of stories. Continue reading “Driftwood Press – Spring 2006”

For readers not yet familiar with this wonderful journal: eco Greek oik-os, house, dwelling + tone tonos, tension. Thus an ecotone is a transitional zone between two communities, containing the characteristic species of each; a place of danger or opportunity; a testing ground. Ecotone the journal embodies all of these qualities: Its characteristic species are fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and interviews. Poet Sarah Gorham, in her illuminating essay, “The Edge Effect,” goes to great lengths to define and to help readers understand how such genres as the prose poem, short short, and lyric essay intermingle prose and verse and thus well represent the fertile concept of ecotone. In the process, she challenges writers and readers to greater levels of contemplation and creativity. The works in Ecotone are stylistic and thematic testing grounds for metaphoric maps, yet this issue also marks the debut of a genre new to the journal: literal, pictorial maps of places that are important to a writer (Aimee Bender “Three Maps”). Continue reading “Ecotone – Fall/Winter 2006”

Sixtieth Anniversary Congratulations to the editors and staff of The Georgia Review, long acclaimed as the best of the best. Correspondence—letters—beginning with the journal’s 1947-1976 archives (1977-2000 items to appear in Spring 2007) is the theme of this double issue of nearly 400 pages, perhaps in the hope aid and comfort for today’s writers would emerge (as it has: cover letters should self-destruct; also personal papers upon the writer’s death, if not before). Much has been made of the loss of the art of personal letter writing since the advent of e-mail, but Hugh Ruppersberg’s review of Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren offers insight regarding letters by literary figures: “Writers tend to reserve their intellect and energy for their creative efforts . . .” Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Fall/Winter 2006”

Gulf Coast does almost everything right, from cover to content. The magazine is even the perfect size: heavy enough to seem substantial, yet not injury-inducing, big enough to stand out on your bookshelf, but not so large as not to fit. The cover of this issue is adorned with one of Amy Blakemore’s haunting photographs. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Winter/Spring 2007”

Focusing exclusively on poetry, the editors of this privately supported journal offer readers a wide selection by such varied poets as Nicole Sprague, Marion Boyer, Richard Levine, Hal Sirowitz, Constance Norgren, Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons, Maria Terrone, Donald Lev, and Billy Collins. Indeed, there is something for everyone. For example, in “Guardrail,” Kathleen Flenniken captures an anxious thought to which many are prone, while in “Trash,” Ruth Bavetta meditates on how difficult it is to be rid of non-human and human garbage. Wendell Hawken’s “Trophy Buck” had me so drawn into the drama of the scene that I exclaimed aloud when I read the last line. Of course, being a writer who can panic at the blank computer screen, I found “Writer’s Block” by Matthew Spireng touching—and perhaps instructive. In it he depicts that bane of writers as a bat “hanging motionless in the light.” Continue reading “Heliotrope – December 2005”

I don’t know what mainstream literature is, but after reading Iconoclast #94, I know what it isn’t. “…whores never fare as well once the rumor gets around they thinking on starting a family. Customers tend to get nervous—and absent,” Laura Payne Butler writes in “Only Horses Run Wild in Clouds.” Continue reading “Iconoclast – 2006”

From its bright cover—red and blue feet on a purple background—to the wide pages and spacious spreads of its interior layout, to the quirkiness of the stories and poems found within, LIT shimmers with youthful energy. The poetry is plentiful and tends toward the surreal. Continue reading “LIT – Spring 2006”

Any journal sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is going to require a decent amount of attention to enjoy. And this issue seems to take academic contentiousness one step further by first devoting an entire issue to Virgil, and then, in the second paragraph of the introduction, claiming that Virgil’s influence in the practical arena has diminished to the point of irrelevance—not even Harold Bloom can find use for Virgil in his canon. If that sentence sounds like cannon-fodder for the deeply cynical, pointing to the essays may quiet the booms slightly. Why doesn’t Virgil appeal to us in these imperialistic times? To be perfectly (unfortunately) consumerist (or Franzenian) about it, perhaps it’s American pragmatism that’s to blame. We want our reading to “multi-task” for us. The Aneid, we know, is an analysis of Empire; and we, as readers, are interested in how his classical conception coincides with our image of America. However, we are disappointed to find that the Aneid is not prescriptive of Republican ideals of Government, as its conception of violence (a necessary prerequisite for Empire) is entirely unlike our own. It is seen primordial and incapable of destroying either the spiritual or physical sustenance of life: a literary, as opposed to lived violence, alien to a contemporary culture accustomed to conceiving of war as a totalizing experience. Continue reading “Literary Imagination – Fall 2006”

This attractive publication, an eclectic collection of fiction, essays, interviews, book reviews, and poetry, has—without the backing of a college or university—flourished for ten years under its original editor—quite an accomplishment. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Fall 2006”

Make has gone the route of Opium and Swink—championing shorter material and a more relaxed design style. For this, their international issue, they also include “sister city” book reports; Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code tops the list in both Jordan and Israel. Athens, Greece, appears to have far better taste— three Orhank Pamouk novels make its top six. Osaka, Japan appears consumed with captivating nonfiction titles like The Dangers of Induction Heating Cooking-ware—Electromagnetic Waves Could be the next Asbestos. A diatribe about the anti-gay culture of Poland follows. Occasionally this lackadaisical style grows tiresome; an “interview” with poet Gabriel Levinson allows exchanges like, Q: “What is memory?” A: “My best friend. My worst enemy.” to be less the exception than the rule. Continue reading “MAKE – Winter 2007”

The admirable literary venture that is The Massachusetts Review will soon celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Continue reading “The Massachusetts Review – Winter 2006”

New England Review is known for its excellence. A highly selective journal, the fiction and poetry found in its pages not only point to the writers who are at the fore of their genres but also to the direction the fields are heading. The editors seem to prefer poems and stories that break with tradition without sacrificing craft. Stephen O’Connor’s short story “Bestiary” would be an example. Continue reading “New England Review – 2006”