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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”

One of the steadiest journals of the past few years, Third Coast offers another set of quality poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction. If the consistency of Third Coast has become a bit expected, the work inside is anything but. One of Third Coast’s preoccupations, the natural world, is always viewed through an unfamiliar lens. Continue reading “Third Coast – Spring 2006”

With its charming mix of erudition and irreverence, Epicenter is an enjoyable read with a distinctly contemporary feel. This issue opens with Daniel John’s “Midden,” which at first glance appears to be a standard failed marriage poem, until five lines in, when “a cacodemon ripped / off [his] face.” Continue reading “Epicenter – 2005”

HFR presents a mix of fresh voices, unusual poetry, fiction, cool photography, and works in translation. I enjoyed almost everything here, but was particularly taken by all the very different stories featuring young protagonists. Robin Kish’s “In the Experience of One Girl” presents modern-day mythology in an awkward high school girl whose hair is turning into snakes. “Canticle,” by Kevin McIlvoy, takes place in a near-future in which the Patriot Act has degraded America into a totalitarian regime, as a pair of young revolutionaries are on the verge of both exposing a nefarious plot, and having sex for the first time. And then there’s Matthew Cricchio’s “All in Together,” in which a young soldier in the Middle East struggles to overcome thinking too hard about the consequences of firing on his enemies and to “unconsciously do as he was trained.”  Continue reading “Hayden’s Ferry Review – Fall/Winter 2005-2006”

The Bellingham Review, produced by Western Washington University, offers an outstanding selection of poetry in its fall issue. A number of the poems are inspired by visual art, such as Diane LeBlanc’s “Bardo,” Ricardo Pau-Llosa’s “Brujula,” and Matt Donovan’s “Guernica, First Draft”: “May 1, 1937, four days after the fact, / Pencil lead on blue notepaper, / contours, skeletal whorls.” Melissa Kwasny’s bold and sprawling poem, “The Waterfall,” is also a standout. The prose is strong as well, with a preference for straightforward, earnest narratives in fiction— Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Fall 2005”

If you think literary criticism couldn’t possibly appeal to anyone but other writers of literary criticism, this issue of College Literature  may change your mind. Serious readers and writers of poetry will be interested in Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle’s theory of metrical verse, presented in their essay “Metrical Complexity in Chrisinta Rosetti’s Verse.” Continue reading “College Literature – Spring 2006”

The Colorado Review, a handsome journal from Colorado State University, offers readers a quality selection of poetry and prose in the spring issue, demonstrating both a defined aesthetic and enjoyable diversity. The fiction (which includes a story from Alix Ohlin) features direct, third person narratives and a somber realism—stories that, in one way or another, start by laying a few cards on the table, the one exception being the energetic wordplay of Evan Lavender Smith’s “Based on a True Story.” Continue reading “Colorado Review – Spring 2006”

The new issue of Event, a Canadian magazine out of Douglas College, gets off to a promising start with the “Notes on Writing” section, a suite of brief essays that cover the perils of writing about one’s family, using the “cheese factor” as a means of evaluating poetry, the balance between “real life” and creative pursuits, pop culture, and the art of concentration. Continue reading “Event – 2006”

The spring issue, celebrating fifty-eight years of publication for The Hudson Review, is fiction free, focusing instead on criticism, cultural essays, and poetry. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Spring 2006”

It’s a confident mag that simply calls itself “The Journal,” as if it were the only one, but after 33 years of publication, The Journal has earned that right. Committed to publishing “writing not easily classified by genre,” this volume packs 132 potent pages. Continue reading “The Journal – Spring/Summer 2006”

The Kenyon Review can always be counted on for exceptional poetry and prose; their latest effort is no exception. A wonderful new section debuts in this issue, Andre Bernard’s “The Casual Reader,” in which the author discusses the books that found their way onto his reading list and struck a chord. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Summer 2006”

The poetry in The Louisville Review is accomplished-sounding, conventional and predictably “poetic.” The second piece attests to this: “Koi and goldfish drift in languorous bliss.” Continue reading “The Louisville Review – Spring 2006”

The always excellent Stephen Dixon leads off the seventeenth issue of Meridian with “Going Back,” the story of Meyer, a writer who gets his best ideas for stories right after he’s had sex with his wife. Continue reading “Meridian – Spring/Summer 2006”

In this issue’s engaging and entertaining interview with novelist Lance Olsen, conducted by Renée E. D’Aoust, Olsen dismisses prose he considers to be “the art of consolation and solace” and describes the texts that excite him most: “…the ones that impede easy accessibility, move us into regions of disturbance, make us feel the opposite of comfortable…I can’t imagine a more important role for writing. Wake up, wake up, wake up, the more important of it says.” Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Summer 2006”

This glossy, rightfully called “The New Yorker of the South,” has folded three times yet never lost enough of its creative momentum to keep it down. Dedicated to the “Best of the South,” this issue not only features colorful pieces by regular contributors, but defensive editor Mark Smirnoff actually kept his introduction short enough (Issue 52 featured a 7-page rant about a hoax) to fit a 25-page special section filled with inspired odes to the people, places and flavors that make the South distinct: a drive-in theater that also sells guns; a family of 16 eerie cemetery statues — including a horse, fox and deer — all facing east, in Kentucky; a quirky tribute to actor Warran Oates by hilarious and not-yet-adequately appreciated Jack Pendarvis; funeral culture and a dying relative; a butterscotch pie. Laced with luminous photographs, picking a favorite from these would like trying to pick your favorite single flavor in a bowl of jambalaya. Continue reading “Oxford American – Spring 2006”

This issue of Rattle includes forty-two poems in a “Tribute Section” celebrating the magazine’s 25th anniversary. Reading these poems, and William O’Daly’s brilliant essay, “Speaking Freely: Poetry, Torture, and Truth,” I was sorry I’d ever missed a single issue of the journal. (The essay is the second half of a two-part essay, which may be found in its entirety at www.poetsagainstthewar.org.) The tribute is introduced by editor Stellasue Lee, who describes her interaction with Rattle poets over the years and includes their thoughts on the poetic process (many of which are also included in the “Contributors’ Notes”). Continue reading “Rattle – Summer 2006”

Still in its infancy, Silent Voices, published by Ex Machine Press, is making its own foothold among the vast array of literary journals. Its fiction-only focus is a plus for those of us looking for contemporary story collections, and a welcome relief from some of the more popular “Best of…” publications that seem to have bottomed out in terms of presenting a variety of style. (And for short story/creative writing teachers out there using those publications in your classes, SV certainly offers an alternative that might be of more interest to your students.)
Continue reading “Silent Voices – 2006”

For its 25th Anniversary Issue, Sonora Review called on some of the University of Arizona’s MFA graduates and the journal’s previous staffers: Antonya Nelson, Tony Hoagland, Ken Lamberton, all of whom have gone on to successful careers. The cover features slivers of 37 past covers, all artfully arranged side-by-side in a bright stack of faulted literary strata. And although they couldn’t get Richard Russo and David Foster Wallace, also one-time SR staffers, this issue reaches lyrical heights without them. Continue reading “Sonora Review – 2006”

For how trim SHR is — barely over 200 pages — its 39-year-old mission to publish “fiction, poetry, personal and critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, cultural studies, and history” is grand in scope. Continue reading “Southern Humanities Review – Spring 2006”

A young journal — this is just the third issue — Tiferet has the solidity and self-assuredness of a more seasoned publication and its approach to “spiritual literature” is expansive. Take, for example, this poem by Helen Marie Casey, “Loaves and Pears”: Continue reading “Tiferet – 2005”

The new issue of the Bat City Review starts off strong with Michael Czyniejewski’s “Pleurisy,” a strangely moving story where the small lies of a marriage get reflected in the inconsistency of the family dictionary’s definitions and eventually other written materials in their home. Clocking in at only four pages, its slippery definitions haunt well beyond the story’s size on paper. Elsewhere, Maryl Jo Fox’s “Marker” brings us a post-apocalyptic tale regarding an artist’s capture and near-escapes from the vain dictator who rules her world. As the warlord stages twisted beauty pageants and forces refugee artists to paint her image, the narrator can do nothing but flee uselessly towards the borders of her failed society. Cruel and evocative, “Marker” shouldn’t be missed by anyone interested in the quickly emerging slipstream genre. In poetry, Stephen Dunn’s “How to Write a Dream Poem” brings a light tone to the difficulty of conveying a powerful dream to someone else, its advice wisely steering the dream-writer away from truth and toward the more profound potentials of story, feeling, and those ever present dream symbols.  Continue reading “Bat City Review – 2006”

I’m sure I finally understand the meaning of the term “fine etched” now, which I confess I wasn’t always certain I did, because I can think of no better phrase to characterize the luminous poems in this issue of BPJ. These poems are like this venerable journal itself, slender, deliberate, careful, and nearly perfect. Many are delicately wrought (poems by Sonja James, Marsha Pomerantz, Lynette Ng), others are urgent or exuberant, but never in a casual way (poems by Garth Greenwell and Anne Marie Macari), and a few are more direct, more immediate, and equally well crafted (poems by Kristina Martino and Malcolm Alexander). Poems by Aimee Sands, Robert Buchko, and B. Z. Niditch are a testament to the ordinary word’s exquisite potential, in the hands of a gifted writer, to reveal whole centuries, continents, and galaxies of thought in a few spare lines. Here is Niditch’s poem, “Holocaust and Art (Gorky, Celan, and Levi),” the last in the issue — a measure of how thoughtfully BPJ is edited, for what poem could follow? Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Summer 2006”

What I’ve come to expect of the Bitter Oleander is work that is unusual. Not odd or inaccessible or experimental, but unusual — poetry with unusual diction or an unusual tone and stories with unusual perspectives. This issue is no exception. I liked, in particular, poems by Shawn Fawson, George Kalamaras, and Kenneth Frost, and an amazing piece of short fiction by Michael Roberts, “Found in the Wreckage,” in which a man contemplates his own death in prose that is both chilling and lyrical. All of the fiction, in fact, is sharp, disturbing, and unforgettable. This issue’s special feature is a long interview with poet Martín Camps, conducted via email in English, and a terrific selection of his poems, translated from the Spanish by Anthony Seidman. (Camps was born and raised in Mexico; he studied in California where he now resides.) Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – 2006”

Barbeque, bottletrees, National Steal Guitars – if you’re looking for clichés, this isn’t the mag for you. Focusing on the seven-state Mississippi River Delta, Arkansas Review draws the humanities and social sciences in its interdisciplinary net to evoke the Delta experience. And although each issue contains fiction and poetry – 3 stories and 7 poems here—AR includes “studies” in its title for a reason. First, there’s the scholarly articles – about Arkansas State College’s early alliance with the Army and a transcribed lecture on Delta race relations—then the book reviews—17 pages of them, outnumbering any other single piece.  Continue reading “Arkansas Review – April 2006”

Being introduced to the literature of a foreign country is like finding a new wing on your favorite library. Every reader should take some time to wander through Chattahoochee Review’s Hungarian Fiction Issue. Work in translation often makes me feel as though I’m reading Ivan Drago’s lines from Rocky IV—clipped, simple phrasing—but the work here is uniformly gorgeous. Continue reading “The Chattahoochee Review – Fall 2005”

The “Hot Stove Issue” contains two fiction pieces, Michelle Von Euw’s “The Show,” and Billy O’Callaghan’s “The Game of Life.” O’Callaghan unfolds the relationship between a boy and his grandfather with the same steady pace with which the boy perfects his curveball. Continue reading “Elysian Fields Quarterly – Spring 2006”

With numerous journals and anthologies representing the South’s literary tradition, it’s about time the desert got a turn. For those not schooled ecologically, the “high desert” is that gray-green steppe between the Rockies and Cascades. Dry enough for rattlers, high enough for snow, it may not be flourishing farmland, but the sagebrush proves fertile soil for literary abundance. Continue reading “High Desert Journal – Spring 2006”

If Hobart’s Issue 4 was the magazine’s coming out issue (with stories by Aimee Bender, Ryan Boudinot, Rick Moody, and Stephen Elliot bringing a lot of attention to the young publication), then Issue 6 is the one where it fully reveals its own voice with its sixteen stories full of wit and wonder. Continue reading “Hobart – Summer 2006”

Main Street Rag publishes simple, solid, conversational writing without gimmicks. The layout has rather cramped pages and fuzzy artwork, but this can be overlooked. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Summer 2006”

Whoever made the sign adorning the building in Greg Otto’s pastel cover, which reads “The New United Church of Love and Deliverance Miracle Center” must have the same aesthetics as Passages North—there’s space available, why not use it? This massive 250-page paperback is filled with 100 pages of fiction, 30 pages of nonfiction, and 100 pages of poetry. I was a bit put off at first by the number of non-adult narrators in the fiction (half of the stories are told by children or teenagers), but each stands on its own. Continue reading “Passages North – Winter/Spring 2006”

Associate Editor Todd Moffett writes that the journal does not present themes so much as follows a hidden code, one that creates associations between the stories, poems, and essays in the issue “to delight not only us but our reading audience.” If part of my job as a reader is to discover the secret code in this issue, I’d say it was “mystery” starting with Michael Clure’s three “Mysterioso” poems (here is an excerpt from “Mysterioso Eight”)— Continue reading “Red Rock Review – Winter 2006”

For those of us tired of most literary journals’ slim nonfiction pickin’s, River Teeth offers not only quantity, but variety. Taking its name from David James Duncan’s genre-bending book, this all-nonfiction journal prints narrative reportage, essays, memoirs and critical essays to, as they put it, “illuminate this emerging genre.” In his 40-page memoir “Starting at the Bottom Again,” Dustin Beall Smith, a 57-year-old, cosmically disoriented key grip, follows a Lakota camera assistant from his world of New York City studio suck-ups down the rabbit hole of adopted spirituality and cultural collaging. Continue reading “River Teeth – Spring 2006”

There’s a lot of variety in these average-sized, unspiralled pages—from the elegance of Paul Yoon’s “So That They Do Not Hear Us” to the humor of Ladette Randolph’s wonderful “The Girls” to the stark descriptions of Natasha Radojcic’s “You Don’t Have To Live Here.” No single characteristic defines the stories other than quality. Continue reading “Small Spiral Notebook – 2006”

Versal is an attractive, large-format magazine, denser than its one-hundred pages would initially suggest and ornamented with full color art both inside and out. Most of the prose in the issue is very short, each story generally only a couple of pages long. Chad Simpson’s “Hunger,” for example, is one of the strongest stories in the issue despite taking less than a single page to convey a terrifying tale of a woman obsessed with eating after a move to a new house. Strong undercurrents of menace lurk between sentences, and the final line packs a surprisingly large punch, considering the story’s lean three-hundred-word body. Continue reading “Versal – 2006”

The Yale Review contains fiction, poetry, reviews and essays. The design, by Chip Kidd and Jayme Yen, is simple and unadorned, but eye-catching. Kidd’s imprimatur is noticeable, though it is also noticeably restrained; his transatlantic flights of fancy are shortened to mere layovers. Continue reading “The Yale Review – July 2006”

Call AGNI brain food. This issue is full of literature that is not meant for mere entertainment; it’s meant to be digested. “215. Philosophy is to the intellect what art is to the imagination; philosophy is—and ought to be a kind of art.” Parallels can be drawn to Issue 63; in addition to the art of story, this journal uses words to exalt all art. Vietnam and other wars are referenced in several pieces, and traditional themes like parents’ deaths are juxtaposed with a Slovenian parable, reservation blues and renderings of bats and witchcraft. The artistic references, especially in A.P. Miller’s “Blessing the New Moon” can be daunting more than esoteric—the contributors imbue so much passion for art that it never waxes on artistic pretension. Not art for art’s sake—art for sustenance and at over 250 pages it’s quite a helping. Paul Eggers’s “Monsieur le Genius” is, for instance, about a chess player who initially fools Burundi officials into believing him to be a master chess player. The insistence of the official to maintain the comic masquerade is undercut by the Hutu-Tutsi war that is spilling over the border from Rwanda. Continue reading “AGNI – Number 64”

It’s back. After an eight-year hiatus, American Short Fiction returns with a new publisher, a new design, an essay and a photo narrative, and an admission “to a certain amount of uncertainty.” The tight, 122-page journal includes five pieces of fiction that should assure readers that they “are concerned as always, and above all else, with fiction.” The writing is quality, the story-telling unconventional, the authorship distinctive though not necessarily American. Susan Steinberg’s narrator lurks in the parking lot, observing and obsessing over the “Court” of a basketball game, revisiting her past, reimagining the present. Steinberg’s style, witty and self-conscious, sparse but biting structure, elevates the undercurrent of sex and longing, brilliant and self-conscious, sparse prose-poem like narrative: Continue reading “American Short Fiction – Winter 2006”

A very special Swayze section, where contributors praise the mulleted icon from Dirty Dancing all the way to Donnie Darko. An action figure portrait gallery featuring Spiderman in repose, the Lone Ranger and Silver facing down the camera. A punk rock interview with iconoclast Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and five-dollar Fugazi. “We have a thing for pop culture.” Issue Two of Barrelhouse is fun. Though it tends to the silly side of kitsch, the comic eccentricities of some of the prose belies the quality and craft of the storytelling. With nearly all of the prose coming from male contributors, you can expect some father-son stories. In “Hey Now, All You Sinners” by Brian Ames, a father searching for his bipolar son drifts further back in time to the love of his life before he had a family. Putting his wife in a non-coma pales to the confession he must make about his past. Another son suffers his football coach father by shuffling his dead mother’s belongings from one corner of the basement to another in “Rivals and Hyenas Alike” by Sean Beaudoin. “Luck is for losers,” he reminds a girl, in a laconic, sparse style apt for the despondent narrator. Continue reading “Barrelhouse – 2005”

I love unassuming journals: those thinner, saddle-stitched endeavors with so few people working behind the scenes, I can count them on one hand. Some border on zine rather than lit mag, and it can be a hard call. With this publication, there is no question that this publication is right up there with much larger-staffed literary endeavors. With full-color throughout – photos, artwork, page design – this “little” publication is a huge feast for the eyes. As plagues fine art reproductions, however, there are some issues with resolution that I wish could be resolved, rather than holding the image at an arm’s length to limit the blur. The written works, poetry and fiction, are not to be held at arm’s length, but brought into close range. Not one piece in here I didn’t like for at least a line or stanza or image or feeling it dragged into me and out of me. Continue reading “THE CLIFFS “soundings” – Spring 2006”