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A slim annual, more chapbookish in its perfect-bound style, the content of The Eleventh Muse is anything but slim. The back cover gently boasts: “55 poems; 44 poets; 23 states; 4 countries.” What matters most to me is 1. Give me one great poem, and that makes my reading worthwhile, and this publication was more than worth my while. Continue reading “The Eleventh Muse – 2006”

Who could resist the cover art of this publication? Themed “Youth,” I had to keep reminding myself of that as I read the works in this issue, so varied were the contents and perspectives on this theme. Favs in poetry include “Why I Gave Up Mysticism” in thirteen parts by Sean Lause which combines concrete narrative with its own mystical rhetoric: “and ate Eskimo Pies / that wept down our shirts / as we listened to intricate crickets / design the dark.” And Ruth Kessler’s “Valediction” which presents the adult child’s departure from the parental point of view: “into your eager hands we would like to press everything we / have paid for so dearly at life’s roadside bazaar.” Michael Leong’s personification in “Blackboard” left me smiling, grade school memories replenished, while Jeremy Byars “The Last Time I Saw Her,” a boy’s recollection of most innocently being the last witness, left me haunted with so many childhood warnings about strangers. Continue reading “Gihon River Review – Spring 2006”

The Heartlands is bookended by poetic tributes to Sherwood Anderson, one a reprint, the other an original, both crying for ‘more, more.’ You hear Sherwood, you think Ohio, which is also home to the Firelands Writing Center, the producers of The Heartlands. The audience extends from the southern tip of Lake Erie, out to “Northwest Ohio, Ohio at large, the Midwest and the Nation…around our theme of Midwest Life and Art.” The community-minded publication includes photo essays from community college students to an essay by editor and teacher Larry Smith, who writes that the most important gift of writing is our intention, “If we can get out of the way (of our ego) our presence and our intent will come across quiet and clear. To do this we must be able to slow down and listen.” This idea, this community of sharing, from the classroom to the forest, courses through the black and white magazine-styled journal. Continue reading “Heartlands – Fall 2005”

Reading the 44th installation of this Chicago journal is an exercise in patience. Its stories start slow, build carefully, and almost always finish on a terrific note. The subject matter ranges all over the spectrum; the tone remains entrenched in realism. When this quotidian stylistic blend sinks too deep into structure the result can be a little workshoppy; oftentimes an OV story commits to a single metaphorical strand of development that, while turned smartly at the end, loses the reader before getting there. Even the principal exception to this rule – Tao Lin’s Daniel Handleresque “Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money than There Exists” – seems to be gazing playfully out at the rows of “normal” fictive prose lines which will follow it. What’s interesting is that Lin’s story, while wildly entertaining line-by-line, is also one of the few that fails to deliver a forceful ending punch. Continue reading “Other Voices – Spring/Summer 2006”

Ex Machina Press adds a new journal to the all-fiction genre with the debut of Silent Voices. The oxymoronic title is best defined by an excerpt borrowed from Isak Dinesen: “Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there in the end, silence will speak.” The loyalties range from the traditional to the experimental, stories of ghosts and toilet scrubbers, mad professors (“perhaps the jump from professor to career patient was not such a big one after all.”) and madder neighbors. Michelle Melon’s “Nameless,” winner of their first contest, refers to the book of names that a dying woman finds in the shack that used to be a church for slaves. Desperate to carve their names into tombstones, she hears their song and knows she is not alone. “ . . . she craves and fears the companionship they offer following the lonely, uncertain journey that lies ahead.” Raffi Kevorkian mingles with the afterlife in his parable, “Misfit.” The townspeople summon first the police, then the Der Hayr (an Armenian married priest), and finally a doctor who cannot help the man who carries his heart in his hand, a hole in his chest. Continue reading “Silent Voices – 2005”

Don’t read Alimentum when you’re hungry! On the second thought, read it when you’re very hungry—it will satisfy your appetite for good writing, as well as for good food (not to mention spirits). I was reading Sophie Helen Menin’s personal essay, “First Growth—An Essay on Love and Wine” on the bus and nearly leaped off, several blocks before my stop, when we passed a wine shop. Her essay about the wines her husband collects, and which they both savor, had me nearly desperate for a bottle of Barolo. Who knew it was possible to write such mouth watering fiction, or scrumptious poetry, or savory essays as the many appetizing works here by Michele Battiste, Patsy Anne Bickerstaff, and Jehanne Dubrow. Alimentum is more than luscious descriptions of great meals and the emotions they inspire, more than a whiff of fine coffee.  Continue reading “Alimentum – 2006”

The newest issue of Crazyhorse contains four stories, twelve poets, and an interview with Robert and Penelope Creeley conducted a month before Mr. Creeley’s death in 2005. The highlight of the issue is the four new poems by Dean Young, whose work the last two years (appearing regularly in places such as The Believer and Poetry) is potentially the best of his career. In “Home,” Young continues this newest surge, writing “Home is where you’re always wrong / but only in familiar ways,” kicking off his trademark rollercoaster of imagery and fast, vibrant sentences, circling the idea of homecoming and approaching it from a variety of angles that each feel equally true. In fiction, John Tait’s “Reasons for Concern Regarding My Girlfriend of Five Days, Monica Garza,” a story told in lists of insecurities, worries, and remembrances. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – 2006”

Diner, “a journal of poetry,” is impeccable in every sense; this is the single greatest issue of a literary review that I’ve ever read. Even the peripherals are outstanding: the cover design, the typeface choices, the layout; it looks as good as it reads. As for the poetry itself, Diner offers a surprisingly mixed bag of styles—editorial predilections don’t seem to divert quality work that exists outside certain rigid parameters, as so often happens. Continue reading “Diner – Fall/Winter 2005”

Fugue is one of the journals I turn to when I’m in the mood for something reliable and satisfying. I know I’ll want to read the whole issue, that I won’t be confused about the editors’ choices, that I’ll find writers whose work I’ve enjoyed before and a few I’m happy to encounter for the first time. The work is always solid, readable, and pleasurable. This issue is no exception. Continue reading “Fugue – Winter 2005”

The stories and poems in this issue are unpredictable and surprising. They move in unexpected and original ways and come to unimagined conclusions. Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – 2005”

Orchid “celebrates stories and the art of storytelling” and it is, indeed, cause for celebration. Here are a dozen rich, pleasing, readable pieces of short fiction; stories to sink your teeth into; stories to lose yourself in. They are wildly different from each other, which makes the volume all the more exciting. Continue reading “Orchid – 2005”

The “Low Carb Issue” of Pavement Saw is a tasty buffet of (primarily) narrative and list poems. The writing is concrete, unpretentious, idiomatic, unadorned and occasionally surprising, a welcome remedy for all the lofty, self-important abstractions found in The Paris Review and other journals. The writers follow Levine, Wakoski, Tom Clark. There are traces of Bukowski and Ginsberg. Continue reading “Pavement Saw – 2006”

Phoebe is a biannual journal of fiction, poetry, art and special features (interviews, art/text collages, etc.). It’s quite a prestigious review and, like others in this niche, features a certain kind of poetry. It’s Greg Grummer Poetry Award winner, Lynn Xu, epitomizes this. In “[Language exists because],” she writes: “Language exists because nothing exists between those / who express themselves. All language is therefore / a language of prayer.” Continue reading “Phoebe – Fall 2006”

N. Santilli’s essay introducing a feature on the prose poem in Great Britain calls the form one that “appears in print but is not formally accepted by its author or its audience, both simply accepting it for what it is.” More than anything, it seems the purpose of Sentence is to correct this assumption by building a formal set of both intellectual and artistic frameworks for the consideration of this form, as well as to highlight the work already being done in the genre. Continue reading “Sentence – 2005”

Before they have the craft mastered, most undergraduate students high on talent have to settle for publishing their work in a magazine that never makes it off campus, if even outside the dorm hall. The Allegheny Review remains the lasting outlet committed to giving them the better opportunity for wide circulation. However much its selections may be arbitrary, however abundant the sloppy typos are, the magazine still packs potential. The students write about what they know: meditation on the seasons; failure to communicate in relationships; a moment of doubt while in church. “Attempting Vipassana” by Kristel Bastian is a standout, using the slightly-less-familiar theme of experimenting with Eastern meditation, but still impressive:

Continue reading “The Allegheny Review – 2005”

If, as Christine Delphy writes, “We can only analyse what does exist by imagining what does not exist,” American Letters & Commentary #17 proves the verity of her words. While this sort of existential imagining does not occur without staring current states in the eye, there are innumerable ways to stare. And stare they do, each writer confronting their own serrated
truth(s) from a lens fitting their particular frame. Often, these truths relate in some way to current U.S. politics, as the issue’s special section, “Wedding the World and the Word,” asserts. Continue reading “American Letters & Commentary – 2005”

What I like best about Arts & Letters is that there is no best — everything is worth reading. This is sophisticated, polished work by experienced and accomplished writers. I’m not even tempted to skip around, but to read straight through from the Table of Contents to the Contributors’ Notes. This issue gets off to a quirky start: an interview with Bob Hicok whose answers to Jessica Edwards’s questions are similar in tone to that of his verse (“I’m not telling you what to do / anymore than I’m telling you what to feel, / I’m not telling you what to feel / because I’m not sure I feel anything, / I’m not sure there’s anything to feel / because I’m not sure language is real.”) Of course, the prize-winning short play by Phillip William Brock, three fascinating essays, the elegant translations by Alexis Levitin of poems from Portuguese by Eugenio de Andrade, the exceptional poems, solid short fiction, and book reviews that follow demonstrate not only that language is real, but really impressive in the hands of the right creators. If you’re a reader who skips around, don’t overlook Sarah Kennedy’s three entries for her “Witch’s Dictionary,” poems whose epigraphs link “current events” with eighteenth century “witchcraft” or Rebecca McClanahan’s moving personal essay about “My Affair with Jesus,” or Viet Dinh’s story “Faults.” You’ll appreciate just how real language can make an imaginary world seem with prose like Dinh’s: “The first thing I ever stole was a heart.” [Arts & Letters. Journal of Contemporary Culture, Georgia College & State University, Campus Box 89, Milledgeville, GA 31061-0490. Single issue $8. http://al.gcsu.edu/] —Sima Rabinowitz Continue reading “Arts & Letters – Spring 2006”

The continuing premise of the Bellevue Literary Review is to express, through words, all the emotion that is held within the manner of sickness. This is not an easy thing to do. Illness, as fiction editor Ronna Wineberg observes, “extends its tentacles past any single episode of disease. There is the crisis, and for those fortunate enough to withstand it, the aftermath.” The Spring 2006 issue promises to explore these two, crisis and aftermath. Among its pages, through fiction and poetry, both are found. Notable fiction entries are Judy Rowley’s “The Color of Sound,” and Joan Melarba-Foran’s “The Little Things.” Rowley writes of an implant that can bring sound to her deaf ears. Easy decision, right? Of literature, she explains, “I locked into the connection between the authenticity of a sound in the fullness of its color and the authentic voice, which exhibits the unique and colorful characteristics of its writer.” Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2006”

Black Clock is hands down the best looking literary magazine I’ve ever picked up. To begin with, it’s a huge 8″ x 11″ volume with full color graphics not only on the cover but throughout the magazine. The inside layout is both graphically intense and minimalist at the same time, visually engaging without distracting from the writing itself. Luckily, Black Clock‘s looks aren’t the only thing it has going for it—it’s got personality too. Continue reading “Black Clock – Fall/Winter 2005-06”

The closest this University of New Mexico journal comes to evoking the Southwest is in an “Elegy” for James Turrell, by Mark McKain, in which the author witnesses a sunset through one of the visual artist’s holed cathedral ceilings and comes to grips with his mortality. (Turrell is, of course, still very much alive.) Yet the format and style of the Blue Mesa Review is not out of place: it’s in the line of the coastal émigrés who have come to define the former frontier and brought their experiences with them. Continue reading “Blue MesaReview – 2006”

Great literature always seems, to me, to suggest a sort of other-worldly thoughtfulness. Everything, of course, requires thought of some sort, but those who write bring a little something extra into the world. This issue of Conduit provides rebellious proof. All that is contained within the covers – narrative, story, art, interview, and photography – is impressively different from anything, in memory, I’ve read. Continue reading “Conduit – Winter 2006”

First Intensity considers itself a magazine of “new writing,” and indeed, most of the writers here are new to me. The editor indicates that “due to illness and the press of deadlines” no contributors’ notes appear in this issue. This is actually quite freeing! Of the three dozen or so writers included here, whose names will I search for again, based on what I’ve read and appreciated, not on the credentials presented? Continue reading “First Intensity – 2005”

The Winter Reading Issue of The Oxford American opens with a caveat, in light of how a hip memoirist/music writer named J.T. LeRoy turned out to be a puppet in an elaborate hoax to which even this magazine fell prey. In this vein, there’s the cover shot of Tennessee’s Abigail Vona, the latest memoirist to heat up the publishing world. “At some point,” writes editor Marc Smirnoff, “you have to give up the ghost of hoping you can still be cool.” Continue reading “Oxford American – Winter 2006”

“What a lie a map is,” a character declares in Michael Daley’s near-epic poem. Indeed, how do drawn boundaries account for the diversity of cultures in the world, especially those transplanted from their homes? This “Speaking in Tongues” issue of The Raven Chronicles offers the best symposium for answering. Continue reading “The Raven Chronicles – Number 11”

As if Ploughshares weren’t enough work, Emerson College has its grad students doing their own thing. Like a number of young, urban lit journals, Redivider isn’t afraid of subverting pop culture while presenting fresh new modes of aesthetic philosophy that even the amateur types can “get” and appreciate. Continue reading “Redivider – 2006”

In reading this edition of The Journal of Ordinary Thought, you will find its writers’ thoughts on generation. They are, Luis J. Rodriguez writes in the foreword, the “inheritances of imaginations, gifts, capacities, poetics and dreams.” Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Fall 2005”

The New Review of Literature is filled with the usual suspects. You will find, of course, poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and even a little extra: an interview. And, upon closer inspection, you’ll note that this collection is the product of the Graduate Writing program of Otis College of Art and Design. What is unexpected, though, what sets this compilation apart from others, is that all the pieces that appear among the pages are extraordinarily intelligent and well-informed. Continue reading “The New Reviewof Literature – October 2005”

Poetry Kanto takes its name from the Japanese Kanto plain, but it’s hard not to think Canto in the Western sense of the spirited song. This journal, published by an American Baptist-founded university, features four translated Japanese and eight international English-language poets. It refutes the conception that Japan is still the isolated land of the tanka and haiku. Tanikawa Shuntaro, for example, is well regarded for his breadth of knowledge of American pop culture. Yet Kanto also illustrates where the gaps remain. Continue reading “Poetry Kanto – 2005”

The newest issue of Post Road is certainly ambitious, including not just fiction and poetry but also essays, book recommendations, a one-act play, photography, an interview, and even an index of all the characters in John Cheever’s short fiction. Highlights include Dan Pope’s story “Drive-In,” about a group of teenagers going to see a porno film at a drive-in, and Ralph McGinnis’s essay, “The Omission of Comics,” which makes a strong case for the inclusion of comics as modern art and also for their place in history as strong influences on Dadaism and Surrealism. Continue reading “Post Road – Fall 2005”

Born of a city remembered for its racial fissures, this newborn Birmingham journal acknowledges its Southern roots while stretching branches far as Colorado, New York, and Iowa. RMR‘s motif is unapologetically, if subtly, political, a tender piñata of a first issue. Jim Murphy’s poem, “Open Letters to James Wright,” reminds me how a good apostrophe is to be composed. Continue reading “Red Mountain Review – Fall 2005”

West Branch, published by Bucknell University’s prestigious Stadler Center for Poetry, isn’t a poetry journal, but poetry clearly lies at the heart of its editorial tastes. Clocking in at 134 pages and cloaked in a vibrant, gorgeously weathered oil painting cover, this issue boasts 19 poems, 4 stories, one essay, 2 book reviews and 2 translations. The nonfiction is a transcribed lecture, “On Sentimentality,” delivered at Vermont College in 1994 by poet Mary Ruefle—literary minutia to some, but likely many poets’ bread and butter Continue reading “West Branch – Fall/Winter 2005”