NewPages Blog

5 AM is in a newspaper format, but printed on the pages, instead of the latest (mostly disastrous) accounts of the day, are poem after poem – hip, edgy, funny – that are actually a pleasure to read. The tone in this Spring Church, Pennsylvania-based journal is often irreverent, political, or conversational; the names inside may be familiar with fans (like me) of Charles Harper Webb’s anthology, stand up poetry, like Denise Duhamel, Virgil Suarez, Lyn Lifshin, and Charles Harper Webb himself. I especially enjoyed several poems by Shao Wei, who was featured on the front page of 5 AM, and several poems by Reginald Harris, particularly “Dinah James.” Ron Koertge’s work was charming, especially “Lunch Hour in Macy’s.” Here are a few lines from that poem: “…Nearby, the pearly nurses of Dior / talk softly about flesh. Dark Stranger is / this month’s rage. Ten promos show a coarse / but sensitive roughly tender atheist…” This is one newspaper I would be happy to wake up to at 5 am. Let’s pour some coffee and read! [5 AM, Box 205, Spring Church, PA 15686. Single issue $5.] – JHG Continue reading “5 AM – Winter/Spring 2004”

This Canadian journal out of Nova Scotia features an eclectic mix of writing, a few translations, and the sprightly but thought-provoking poetry of Jan Zwicky. The mix of interviews, reviews, short fiction, and poetry is very balanced, and, as always when I read Canadian journals, I am surprised and impressed with the quality and diversity of the work of writers from Canada whom aren’t as well-represented in journals here in the States. One of the most interesting pieces in this issue was an interview with Heather Menzies, an expert on technology’s many impacts on social structures, particularly in the workplace. Much of the poetry featured here was well-crafted free verse, with many exemplary pieces, only one of which I have the space to quote here. A few lines from Myka Tucker-Abramson’s “Lot and Eurydice, Based on Akhmatova’s ‘Lot’s Wife’”: “If you turned around, I would lick the salt off your skin / before tumbling back like Eurydice into slush driven days. / You taste like fire and turn slowly away, while I speak / loudly as anguish…” Poems by Li Qingzhao, translated with skill by Allen C. West and Gundi Chan, are also exceptional. – JHG Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Winter 2004”

This double issue of Interim, out of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas English Department, features some names you will be familiar with (Cole Swenson, Donald Revell) and some you may not. Continue reading “Interim – 2004”

The Normal, Illinois-based Spoon River Poetry Review features some of the best writing from the Midwest and beyond. Continue reading “Spoon River Poetry Review – Winter/Spring 2004”

This issue of the venerable Ploughshares was guest-edited by Campbell McGrath, a poet famous for his exuberant descriptions of all things American, from pop culture to politics. You’re not in for a lot of surprises here as almost all the writers included in this issue are well-known quantities (Denise Duhamel, Stuart Dybek, Michael Collier, Rick Moody, Bob Hicok, Tony Hoagland, the ubiquitous Virgil Suárez…the table of contents reads like a directory of Poets and Writers magazine), but the quality is impeccable, and reading this cover to cover was enjoyable. And McGrath definitely makes an effort to include poets from a range of movements, from elliptical to expansive and everything in between. I particularly liked the tongue-in-cheek humor of Beth Ann Fennelly’s “I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese.” Other standouts include Cynthia Weiner’s ambiguously chipper story “Boyfriends,” the poem “Going Bananas” by Rita Maria Martinez and the poem “In the B Movie of Our Lives” by Dionisio D. Martínez. – JHG Continue reading “Ploughshares – Spring 2004”

Slim and lightweight with a plain purple cover, Iodine Poetry Journal isn’t much to look at. But it’s the perfect length, and depth, to tote along to Starbucks for a quick poetry fix. Continue reading “Iodine Poetry Journal – Spring/Summer 2004”

I don’t read literary journals for the reviews they publish, and I’m a little surprised to find myself mentioning them here—in a review. But I have to say that the three reviews in Tar River Poetry are themselves as compelling as the poetry in this small volume. Richard Simpson, Susan Elizabeth Howe and Thomas Reiter present careful, academic discussions of three new poetry volumes, discussions that presume a well-educated but not necessarily scholarly audience. Informative and never pompous, they are a pleasure to read.
Continue reading “Tar River Poetry – Spring 2004”

With so many outstanding stories in this journal, it’s hard to know where to begin. Does one talk about the honest, dead-on dialogue of Ron Rindo’s “Crop Dusting”? The dreamy and lyrical narrative of Anne Spollen’s “Fishdreams”? The landscape of losers in Andi Diehn’s “Burning Season”? It’s impossible to do justice to this fine fiction journal in two hundred words. Continue reading “Orchid – 2004”

I find it impossible not to love – or at least admire – Northwest Review for allocating an entire white page to this epigraph by Leonard Bernstein: “Our response to violence will be to make music more intensely, more beautifully and more devotedly than before.” Continue reading “Northwest Review – May 2004”

The edgy fiction in Zoetrope chronicles our hard-won (if dangerously tentative) status of humanity. Primal bullies lurk throughout the stories in this issue: a family simultaneously imprisons and abandons its defenseless, unmarried kin; a man exploits a toothless orphan reduced to turning tricks by the freeway, an anonymous driver works up a deadly malice. Continue reading “Zoetrope: All-Story – Spring 2004”

I’m hooked. I was a sporadic reader of Arts & Letters, but no longer. I’ve just finished this issue and I can’t wait for the next one. I read from cover to cover, not tempted to skip or skim or even come back to something later — every piece, from the A&L Prize for Drama winner, “Left” by Sourbah Chatterjee, to reviews of work by Judson Mitcham, Annie Finch, and Vivian Shipley drew me in and satisfied me. With so few opportunities to read new play scripts, I was thrilled to read Chatterjee’s clever one-act play about a family of siblings, abandoned by their father as children and their adult solution to father-less-ness. I’d call Chatterjee’s piece a highlight of the issue, if it weren’t for the fact that it is followed by fiction, nonfiction, and poems that could all easily qualify as highlights. There is a delightful interview with Janisse Ray, author of The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilting: Taking a Chance on Home; pleasing, read-me-more-than-once fiction by Janice Eidus, Barbara Haines Howett, Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer, among others; and read-again-and-again poems from Jesse Lee Kercheval, Roy Jacobstein and others, including newcomer, Israeli poet Rosebud Ben-oni. – SR Continue reading “Arts & Letters – Spring 2004”

VQR gets the award for the most evocative juxtaposition this spring — illustrator Eric Wight’s blond, broad-shouldered “Escapist,” from Michael Chabon’s comic book story (“The Origin of the Escapist”) practically leaps off the cover, heavy chains broken and loose in his hands, locks flying, white teeth gleaming, and then the first entry in the magazine, Carleton J. Phillip’s “Capturing Saddam.”  Continue reading “The Virginia Quarterly Review – Spring 2004”

This refreshingly energetic and well-produced journal from San Francisco State University may have a confusing table of contents, but once you find yourself between the covers, you won’t want to leave. The content is just as colorful – and at times as jumbled – as the image on this issue’s cover, “Cityscape” by Chris Johanson; this is a lighthearted romp rather than a doleful stroll through the works of the writers. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Winter/Spring 2004”

I read this San-Francisco-based journal, an eclectic grab-bag of West Coast writing, on a regular basis, because I have a vested interest in West Coast writing, but also because I am always interested in what will show up next. The editors always have surprising delights hidden among the pages, often in their “First Time in Print” section, where debuting authors are showcased. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Spring 2004”

The Bellevue Literary Review explores the connective tissue between the practice of medicine and literature in a way that is sensitive, surprising, and compassionate. I routinely read and love the work of this journal, in part because the subject matter is so intensely personal, the vulnerabilities of illness and injury, the uncertainties of working with the ill and injured. This issue is sprinkled with the work of well-known authors like Alicia Ostriker and Hal Sorowitz and focuses on the impact of relationships with others in a medical setting. Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2004”

This issue of the Minnesota-based Ascent is focused on the contemplative, the intellectual, and the spiritual – most of the pieces are focused in some way on individuals contemplating their world and their place in it. In one story, the balance of the universe rests on the subversive tendencies of a man at a newspaper who inserts people’s names into the text of classified ads; a poem compares the speaker’s actions as a new father with the actions of Caligula. Entertaining and somewhat erudite, I enjoyed Jean-Mark Sens poem “Doubling,” which begins: “Your mouth articulates / outside words: / and bit by bit you’ve grown / a guardian angel.” and the poem “Watching” by Jesse Lee Kercheval, about watching movies –  “…Now when the movie comes I’m already restless, thinking one step ahead. / I’m questioning everything even before the academy leader counts down. // Now when I’m watching a movie, it may happen that another movie / fills my head & keeps me from watching the movie I am watching.” I enjoy reading the new voices and new ideas found here. [Ascent, Concordia College, 901 8^th Street S, Moorhead, Minnesota 56562. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $5. http://www.cord.edu/dept/english/ascent/] – JHG Continue reading “Ascent – Winter 2004”

This issue of Kenyon Review might help a newcomer to the literary world learn who’s who; there are so many well-established poets and writers here: Alice Hoffman, Stanley Plumly, Marvin Bell, Carl Phillips, David Lehman…and the list goes on. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2004”

While it’s tempting for me to enjoy Conduit because we are of the same city, or because I think Conduit does many things tremendously well—among them risk annihilation, use words instead of page numbers, gather incredible poetry—the clearest reason in this latest issue to enjoy it is because of the poem, “My One Paneled Wall,” by Crystal Curry, though ‘enjoy’ is far and away far too weak a verb for this startlingly sharp and perfect poem, and she should, like many other poets within (C.G. Waldrep, Olena Kalytiak Davis, etc.), have whatever choice of beverage she prefers purchased for her. Continue reading “Conduit – Spring 2004”

I know it’s not polite to talk about politics, and there’s hardly a gray zone in the polarized debate regarding politics in this country right now, but the Long Story is specifically political, so it bears discussion. Continue reading “The Long Story – 2004”

Consistently one of the best, cleanest-looking, most affordable and most interesting literary magazines, Third Coast seems incapable of ever making a bad move. If you go to it for your fix of Bob Hicok, for example, you might get distracted by a story by Kieth Banner – lines like “I love her like you might love a stubbed toe if the rest of your body was numb.” Continue reading “Third Coast – Spring 2004”

The staff of Midnight Mind Magazine must have a great time at work. At least that’s the impression you get from reading their latest issue. Yes, it’s filled with fiction, essays, poetry and reviews just like all those other “little” magazines. But what makes Midnight Mind such a standout is the exuberance with which it’s all executed. A letter to the editor could be a yawner, but not when it’s written by a fictional character from the previous issue—and addressed to the “assholes at Midnight Mind.” Even the column of subscription information will make you smile.

Continue reading “Midnight Mind Magazine – Fall 2003”

If personified, Sewanee Review would be an accomplished scholar, wry professor and imaginative writer, persisting with an evening pipe and pale cardigan despite colleagues who have lurched forward into dark jeans and lunchtime smoothies. Indifferent to keeping up with any literary Cloneses, its spirited criticism, fiction and poetry abide no indulgent memoirs about tallness or the curse of an Irish childhood, no sneering hepcats, noble gang members or hyper-realist bodily functions. Continue reading “Sewanee Review – Fall 2003”

Because The Missouri Review has such a strong tradition of excellence, it is used by many of my friends as a sort of literary bellwether, a steady source of reading pleasure over the years. Continue reading “The Missouri Review – Volume 26 2003”

This somewhat conservative, glossy-covered journal publishes art, poetry, fiction and essays that focus (mostly) on the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but the work is surprisingly diverse and thought-provoking. (Production quality note to artists: The art work is featured beautifully in full color and heavy paper.) Continue reading “Image – Winter 2003”

Witness runs a lot of issues with political themes; the theme of this issue was “Ethnic America,” and contributors like Naomi Shahib Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, and Bib Hicok examine the lives of immigrants, of outcasts, of refugees, and of the assimilation of individual cultures. The history of American diversity has not been a happy one, and this issue takes an unflinching look the past and current realities of that diversity. Continue reading “Witness – 2003”

This slim quarterly, published by the Neighborhood Writing Alliance in Chicago, is one of the more fascinating literary magazines out there. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Fall 2003/Winter 2004”

A bizarre admission: I write and, much more often than not, read fiction and poetry, and Quarterly West, seemingly without intent, has made a nonfiction convert out of me. It’s not that I am not enthralled by the two novellas from the biennial contest within this issue (and pity Kevin McIlvoy for having to choose between these two, let alone however many countless others). Continue reading “Quarterly West – Fall/Winter 2003/2004”

I go back and forth about the debate regarding whether or not there are simply too many literary magazines. There’s the statistic that the majority of amateur authors spend more money per year on sending work out than they do on the literary magazines they’re so desperately trying to garner an acceptance from, and there’s the notion, to me anyway (an admitted elitist), that if there’s eventually a venue for every piece of writing, what does that do to writing overall? Continue reading “Iron Horse Literary Review – 2003”

Jeff Walt has written one of the sexiest poems about smoking ever and Jennifer Perrine makes me want to hold someone’s hand.  Continue reading “Harpur Palate – Winter 2003-4”

Tabloid sized, with its impressive, glossy jacket and hard cover, Tampa Review always feels like an extravagant gift (especially considering its unbelievably reasonable price). Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2004”

Ninth Letter is a vigorous and fearlessly enterprising magazine, unconventional in both appearance and content without lapsing from quality. Instead of the trade paperback format favored by most lit mags, the Ninth Letter editors have opted for an exhibition-catalog size printing, an eccentric incarnation that aptly suits the journal’s adventurous character and could easily inspire a wider scope of design among the lit mag community. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Spring/Summer 2004”

More alternative than academic, InkPot is a literary and art magazine of distinct voices, and few of them sound like creative writing instructors. Many pieces in this issue zero in on relationships, romantic and familial. Infidelities, love triangles, and stubborn family members all get their due. Continue reading “Ink Pot – March 2004”

The Southern Review is one in that clutch of legendary literary journals, which in many decades of existence have unfailingly proffered the work of America’s finest writers. Continue reading “The Southern Review – Winter 2004”

Established back in 1948, the tiny literary magazine known as The Carolina Quarterly is a model of humility: a pamphlet-style book not even a hundred pages long, yet filled with writing of such distinction that the reader is provoked to the kind of loving pondering elicited by publications of the snazzier variety. After careening straight through this winter issue, I found myself turning it over and over in my hands in wonder. Continue reading “The Carolina Quarterly – Winter 2004”

A wry anecdote appears in Ed Readicker-Henderson’s “How to Go to Hell” in this issue of Motionsickness. Continue reading “Motionsickness – Number 6”

The Laurel Review is unpretentious and reliable, qualities not to be underestimated in these precarious times, especially when that means poems like Susan Ludvingson’s “Barcelona, The Spanish Civil War: Alfonso Laurencic Invents Torture by Art”: “We know the body can be made / to lose its recollections birthed in music / its desire for bread / and sex, its only remaining wish / confession // Who’d have guessed how easily / the brain opens its many mouths / to red.” Continue reading “The Laurel Review – Spring 2004”

I have always loved The Antioch Review and this “All Essay” issue deepens my appreciation. The editors succeed in demonstrating that “essays…comes in all forms and about all subjects” and in meeting their goal to “highlight [the essay’s] diversity and vivacity.” This would make a fine volume for any workshop in the essay’s strengths and varieties and is exceptional reading for any devotee of serious nonfiction. The thirteen essays include political/social analysis (Bruce Jackson, Bruce Fleming, Michael Meyers and John P. Nidiry, Irwin Abrams), personal essays (Floyd Skloot, Nick Papandreou, P.F. Kluge, Paul Christensen, Carol Hebald), … Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Spring 2004”

With new editors each time, Hunger Mountain can be vastly different from issue to issue, and that unpredictability can be exciting. Guest editors Syndey Lea’s and Jim Schley’s vision for this all-Vermont special edition to “keep the door open” led them to the discovery of writers they had not known, a celebration of writers who seem “insufficiently applauded” and to what managing editor Caroline Mercurio calls “a few treasured Vermont favorites” (Ruth Stone, Hayden Carruth). Continue reading “Hunger Mountain – Spring 2004”

This issue features the winner of the magazine’s 2003 Maclean Hunter Endowment Award for literary nonfiction, an essay contest judge Andreas Schroeder calls “beautifully calibrated.” Continue reading “PRISM International – Winter 2004”

Field is a journal with an admirably clear and consistent editorial vision. Continue reading “Field – Spring 2004”

This spring issue of The Greensboro Review contains two short stories that are simply breathtaking: Adam Berlin’s “The Karaoke Bet” and Matt Valentine’s “Zohra.” Berlin’s piece, in its portrayal of a soulless, lustful bookie is worth close study by any aspiring short story writer, so perfect is its characterization, voice, plotting, and overall thematic significance. Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Spring 2004”

If you’ve ever wondered where all the Dorothy Parkers have gone, they’re submitting poems to Light, wearing glasses, seldom receiving passes, and all. Continue reading “Light Quarterly – Winter 2003/2004”

At first glance, Sycamore Review seems a typical literary journal, divided into the usual blocks: poetry, fiction, interview, review. A deeper look reveals an eclectic and engaging selection of work. Smart but not obtuse, the poetry is well-crafted with diverse subject matter – mortality, refugee camps, a child’s collection of pets – but my favorites are the witty pieces. One standout is Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s “On Being Asked by a Student How You Know When a Poem Is Done” (“I say, when you’ve given up searching / for something to rhyme with orange because / you’ve eaten the orange.”) Continue reading “Sycamore Review – Winter/Spring 2004”

Always surprising and unconventional, this issue of Salt Hill is even edgier than usual, with Thom Ward’s “imaginary” scholar Dr. Arnold Schnagel and Schnagel’s parody of reviews and critiques (like this one!) of the work of “imaginary poet” Jan DeKeerk whose very real poetry is translated here (from Flemish) by Schnagel; and Steve Almond’s interview with novelist and screenwriter Tom Perotta (“Q: But you don’t behave badly?” A: Well, I’m a fiction writer”); and Denise Duhamel’s poem “Lost Bra,” thirty-four couplets, every line of which ends with the words “Maidenform Bra.” G. C. Waldrep contributes three poems with his signature merger of the sacred and the profane (as it happens, a story about Waldrep’s conversion to the Amish is featured in the latest issue of Poets & Writers and provides a context for his work). Poet Miles Waggener contributes excellent translations from the Spanish of three poems by Jaime Siles — poems that at moments sound as raw as Peter Cooley, who also has a poem in this issue, and a verse or two later as erudite as Jorge Luis Borges: “Hace que deulen hasta los pronombres/It hurts right to the very pronouns.” There’s never a dull moment at Salt Hill. [Salt Hill,  Syracuse University, English Department, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $8. http://students.syr.edu/salthill/] – SR Continue reading “Salt Hill – 2004”

There is always something for nearly every serious reader in Prairie Schooner. It’s not because Raz lacks a consistent editorial vision. On the contrary, issue after issue the journal feels whole and unified. It’s more because her vision is large and generous. The prose is especially strong this issue, with a tender and memorable story by Tamara Friedman (“Stealing Sherisha”) and a fine example of literary journalism by David A. Taylor, “Nailing a Freight on the Fly: The Federal Writer’s Project in Nebraska.” Taylor’s essay is a solid and pleasingly humble combination of competent research, travel writing, and literary history. Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Spring 2004”

The same mistakes is not…a mistake. In fact, it’s a provocative and successful theme, beginning with editor Kent Bruyneed’s witty introduction and his description of these writers “doubting and soaring.” The poems and stories in this issue share a casual energy that is more difficult to achieve than it may at first seem, elevating mistakes to art. Continue reading “Grain – Spring 2004”

The poetry of Diner reflects the journal’s title: hearty, digestible, eschewing the frou-frou. Sometimes the fare seems a bit undercooked; you want to tweak a line here or cut a word there, but the read is a good experience. There are two featured poets/translators (Blue Plate Specials): Annie Finch and Dzvinia Orlowsky. Continue reading “Diner – Fall/Winter 2003”