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Size and shape matter — literally and metaphorically. And because they do, Sentence is off to a great start with this inaugural issue. The journal has an inordinately pleasing size and shape, both literally and metaphorically. With an announced bias for work that does not veer toward sudden fiction, editor Brian Clements describes the journal’s purpose as “a full-service forum for readers, writers, critics, and scholars of the prose poem tradition…critical and scholarly essays, translations, occasional interviews, a bibliography of recent criticism…and our ‘Views and Reviews’ section where you can vent your most dearly held opinions…Sentence will have the widest scope.” Continue reading “Sentence – 2003”

What Blue Collar Review succeeds in doing, I think, is putting a human face on nearly every problem you’ve seen on the nightly news in recent years. War, layoffs, violence, crap jobs, bad schools: these are the subjects of the poetry published here. I have to be honest: not every piece is very well crafted, but what some poems lack in skill they make up for in conviction. As I write this, the U.S. is attempting damage control on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, and Mike Maggio’s “Collateral Damage” is an impressive litany of mind-numbing public apology snippets that certainly fits this situation as well. An excerpt: “(we swear on our mothers) / (we swear on the flag) / (we swear on the bible) / (we swear on the corporation) / (we’re sorry).” Amy E. Oliver’s “Professional Chef,” about what really goes on in restaurant kitchens, took me back to my waitress years (“the sick onion grease stench” indeed!), and I admired the quiet dignity of Jeff Vande Zande’s “Losing Work,” about a laid-off man fearing loss of respect by his family yet finding support from his wife. If you like poetry by and for the people, you’ll want to pick up a copy of this magazine. [Blue Collar Review, Partisan Press, P.O. Box 11417, Norfolk, VA 23517. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $5. http://www.Partisanpress.org] – JQG Continue reading “Blue Collar Review – Winter 2003-04”

I had a sense of déjà vu while reading The Tampa Review. I held the large slim 7×11 hardcover and remembered beautifully illustrated fairy tales books from my childhood. Although The Tampa Review is not filled with whimsical tales, the cover artwork by Florida artist James Rosenquist along with the black and white photos in the journal creates a book of beauty. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2005”

My background for loving art is completely pop-music based, so of course some aspect of me is eternally High Fidelity bound to rank and list and award and order all that I read. It is in this vein that I have to be completely, over-the-top hyperbolic and reverent and honest: Swink is certainly the best new literary magazine of the year, and if the last few years hadn’t been so great (One Story, Land-Grant College Review, further back to McSweeneys and Tin House) this journal would take the prize for best in a few years. Continue reading “Swink – 2004”

High-toned and academic, I can rely on the Yale Review to update me on the latest theories about contemporary opera, dance and art, as well as literature. The poetry and prose here are fairly traditional in form and erudite (bone up on your mythology before reading) yet rewarding. Continue reading “The Yale Review – January/February 2004”

High-toned and academic, I can rely on the Yale Review to update me on the latest theories about contemporary opera, dance and art, as well as literature. The poetry and prose here are fairly traditional in form and erudite (bone up on your mythology before reading) yet rewarding. Continue reading “The Yale Review – January/February 2004”

In this issue of the feminist (and I use that term in the best possible way) journal Calyx, fertility, childbirth and motherhood are recurrent themes, in pieces such as the poems “Your Underwear Showing,” “Womb of Womanhood,” “Rags of the Moon” and prose pieces “Rest Stop” and “Forfeiting Motherhood.” Continue reading “CALYX – Winter 2004”

This issue of the Eugene, Oregon-based Northwest Review is heavy on short fiction and light on poetry, which I, as a poet with poetry-advocacy issues, must disapprove of. However, the fiction and essays are quite lively, including Michael Mattes’ wonderful “Miles and Miles” about a frustrated comic book artist attending a wedding in Chicago. Continue reading “Northwest Review – 2004”

For a magazine justly famous for pioneering the way for experimental verse, Fence displays a surprisingly delicate balance of avant-garde and traditional work, with poets ranging from Mary Ruefle to Nancy Kuhl to Ray DiPalma. So, those of you who shun the hip pyrotechnics of the cutting edge, do not be scared away; see as evidence these opening lines from the wonderful “Mr. Mann Finds a Photograph of Daedalus”: “He had always believed the old stories. / Wolves in the forest. Children eating / candy houses. The savage etiquette / of queens . . . ” Continue reading “Fence – Fall/Winter 2003-2004”

If you’re looking for perfect prose, look no further. This journal of short fiction has achieved a solid reputation in the literary field for good reason. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Spring 2004”

Beloit Poetry Journal excels at showcasing fresh voices with original and sometimes difficult things to say. They never exhibit the mediocre or merely pleasant, and I think that is a particularly trustworthy (and brave) stance for a journal’s editors. The dark side of sexuality and language is explored in this issue of the predictably good Beloit Poetry Journal, in poems like the exceedingly creepy “Molester” by Jeff Crandall and the delicate but heart-wrenching “Helen Keller Dying in Her Sleep” by Julianna Baggott. Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Spring 2004”

This new literary magazine, by the same people who run independent Red Hen Press, brings to life the vibrant literary scene of L.A. Continue reading “The Los Angeles Review – Winter 2004”

Clearly I can’t claim that Call is, as well, the best damn debut of the year, but an argument can and should be made that: 1. It’s very, very good, with some brilliant work within (this means you T. R. Hummer); 2. All this neighing about the poor state of the literary condition seem, if not exaggerated, then at least nonsensical: if Call and Swink can both debut, we’re all fine. Continue reading “Call: Review – 2004”

This is a very fine literary journal. It has solid, considered and considerable writing throughout, the presentation is clean, there’s a great section of photography in the middle, there’s a good balance of poetry and prose, there’s no one single style to force an analysis of what type of writing is being championed. It’s good. There are some pushes, too, of course, into stranger and murkier corners. Continue reading “Oyez Review – Winter 2003/2004”

The Georgia Review represents a conservative, old-guard-style approach to literature, and the names of contributors are among some of the most elite in the literary world – Richard Howard and Michael Collier among them. While nothing in this issue will shock you, The Georgia Review represents very fine work. Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Winter 2003”

The Sewanee Review, for those of you not familiar, is one of the bastions, along with the Southern Review, of regional literary culture in the South and one of the reasons people talk about “Southern writers.” I always read the essays in the Sewanee Review with as much interest as the featured poetry and fiction because they stand out as vibrant and gripping. Continue reading “Sewanee Review – Summer 2003”

This annual journal of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and photography, published out of the Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment, presents fresh voices that in this edition tend to focus on issues of social justice and responsibility, including, of course, environmental issues. I especially liked Susan Thomas’ poem “To Anna Karenina,” in which the speaker addresses and compares herself to Tolstoy’s famous tragic heroine, and Jendi Reiter’s poem “Hansel and Gretel: The Mother Speaks,” in which the speaker justifies to herself her decision to kill her children.  Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2003”

The eerie black and white cover photograph (“Drunken Dream, Fatigue, 1936” by Koishi Kiyoshi) of Hotel Amerika sets the self-conscious tone for this issue.  Only the sophomore issue from this new publication out of Ohio University, it includes poetry, fiction, translations and essays from a broad mix of emerging, mid-career and mature poets. Continue reading “Hotel Amerika – Fall 2003”

The Chattahoochee Review has put out a sparkling issue, with dazzling poems and evocative nonfiction. In “Swimming at Sounion” (in the Greek headlands), Stephan Malin paints a work of stunning description, creating the sensation of swimming through clear water surrounded by blueness.

Continue reading “The Chattahoochee Review – Fall 2003”

StoryQuarterly, an annual lit mag out of Chicago, is a tome of pure fiction that, if somewhat uneven, is never dissatisfying. Continue reading “StoryQuarterly – 2003”

This little journal is subheaded “The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic,” and the absolute best praise I can give is that I’m vehemently not a fantasy reader, but pretty much every story I opened to in the magazine kept me reading all the way through. Continue reading “On Spec – Winter 2003”

Unprepared for the edginess of this journal, I almost stopped reading Ink Pot less than a quarter of the way through. What a mistake that would have been. This is a journal brimming with life, its poems, stories and flash fiction crackling with energy. Continue reading “Ink Pot – December 2003”

Perhaps I’m just slow, but apparently Missouri, a state I know nearly nothing about, is where good writing, if not comes from, then at least is published. We all know the Missouri Review is the [insert whatever glowing adjective you’d like here] literary magazine in the world, but Pleiades, published in Warrensburg, Missouri, is a close close second. Continue reading “Pleiades – 2004”

Michigan Quarterly Review always features interesting essays, and this issue is no exception; my favorite was George Watson’s essay, “The Cosmic Comic,” on the life and writing motivations of Douglas Adams. Two new poems by Adrienne Rich appear here as well, and the rest of the (sadly, very few) poems are excellent, including Donovan Hohn’s “Ars Poetica” and Charles Harper Webb’s “My Wife Insists That, On Our First Date, I Told Her I Had Seven Kinds of Hair.” A few lines from that poem: Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Winter 2004”

If the heavy theme of this issue, Integrated Education in America, puts you off, the author of its first essay will draw you right back in. Toni Morrison’s memoir on segregation in the American South is characteristically unflinching and beautiful. Equally compelling is a collection of collages by Romare Bearden from the 1960s, which depict, cubistically, the agonies and ironies of the African American condition at that time. A suite of reactionary poems by Kevin Young accompanies them, adding an additional layer of interest. Included, presumably, by virtue of their merit, not their theme, Quan Berry’s poems are an elegant, tightly crafted delight. Continue reading “Virginia Quarterly Review – Winter 2004”

This is, in my mind anyway, the most classically high-brow literary-and-arts magazine on the market, though that opinion may only be because when I was in college I was not invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa society, the group that publishes this quarterly. And while I’m certainly a fan of ignoring those who snub you, it’s impossible to keep an antagonist front against this consistently brainy, ever clever, and intensely smart magazine. Two admissions: I’m bound to love anything Sven Birkerts writes, and his essay on Flaubert is, as ever, graceful and superb. I’m also, as of late and right along with most of the rest of the conscientious country, horrifically fascinated by all stories pertaining to farming in the US, particularly stories that detail the literally near-unbelievable industrialization and specialization processes that have taken place since, roughly, Nixon. So Richard Manning’s “Against the Grain,” the lead essay here, is disgustingly enthralling. But there’s plenty beyond that, as well. Richard Lucas’ visual essay “Roma Ineffabile” is ghastly and addictive and, like any good art, asks more questions of the viewer/reader, and acts as a vein in a copper valley. Kay Ryan’s “Nothing Getting Past” is, like all of her poetry, prickly, dense and wise, and Diane McWhorter’s “Talk” is great, great fun. The only bad part? Not enough new, unknown writers in this particular issue. Next time – always next time. – WC Continue reading “The American Scholar – Winter 2004”

This substantially-sized, yearly MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry encompasses a wide range of subject matter and styles, from experimental to traditional. Continue reading “MARGIE – 2004”

If the measure of a great record is the ability to play it straight through without skipping a track, the same rule can be applied to lit mags. Even the most highly-regarded among them are spotty, at times, best when read non-linearly, piecemeal. Not so with Glimmer Train, one of the most consistently edited journals out there. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Winter 2003”

Flyway is one of those literary magazines that you wish the better financed, sleeker, but ultimately less earnest journals would try harder to imitate. Continue reading “Flyway – Spring/Fall 2003”

Other Voices is the perfect title for this journal from Chicago, for a provocative sense of voice is exactly the thing one carries away from its pages. Of the eighteen stories featured in the Fall/Winter issue, thirteen are first-person perspectives, and the intimacy of these narratives is so cumulatively bewitching that one has the sense of having dwelt for a time in a chamber of souls. Continue reading “Other Voices – Fall/Winter 2003”

This issue commences with a wonderful essay by Jane Hirshfield on the nature of language, “Language Wakes Up in the Morning: A Meander Toward Writing,” which playfully begins by describing a personified language as it goes about its day. Guest poetry editor for this issue, Michael Ryan, chose a variety of poems about loss, from a litany of everyday lost things in a little girl’s life (“My Daughter’s Sadness, a Casual Analysis”), to a mournful meditation on the brief lifespan of a hummingbird (“Anna’s Hummingbird”), to the effects of the death of a loved one (“After Your Death,” “Poem for After Peter Dies”). The art work in this issue, Richard J. Murphy’s series of black and white photographs titled “Cancer Journal,” also chronicles loss in the photo essay that movingly portrays a woman’s struggle and eventual death from breast cancer. The work throughout the issue is full of arresting images and heartbreaking moments, especially “Autobiographical Raw Material Unsuitable for the Mining of Fiction,” the piece by Charles Yu about a young man’s relationship to his mother.  Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Fall/Winter 2003”

Seneca Review continues to showcase stellar poems and lyric essays by both unknown and familiar writers. Lucy Shutz’s poem, “The Philosophers Will Never Love the Poets and the Poets Will Continue to Smoke Cigarettes and Starve Themselves,” is adventurous and playful in style, while still dealing with some of the more serious problems of existence. Continue reading “Seneca Review – Fall 2003”

While writing about illness, as well as about practice of medicine, belongs to a long and respected tradition, recently there does seem to be increasing interest in publications that bridge this aspect of the art/science divide. This journal makes a worthwhile contribution to the field. Continue reading “The Healing Muse – Fall 2003”

Hunger Mountain takes itself seriously. Sophisticated and weighty, it has the appearance and feel of an older, more established journal, something it has managed to accomplish in a mere three issues. Continue reading “Hunger Mountain – Fall 2003”

Containing socio-political commentary, pop culture interest pieces, comics and even recipes, Kitchen Sink—something of a catchall—is aptly named. It’s more zine than litmag, though, and looks the part. Graphically stunning, the entire thing is printed in blue—a harbinger of novelty from the get-go. Right at home in indigo is “Out of Sight,” a poem by Jonathan Loucks that captures fabulously the not-quite-sadness of a man reflecting on the way a passionate relationship has become staider with time. As for the fiction, it has a highly Californian flavor, being full of heart but slightly left-of-center. More enjoyable are the delightful articles, especially “The Price of Parenthood,” which fairly addresses the ambivalence of modern would-be procreators. Another piece, about “why poetry readings suck,” is resonant with candor: Continue reading “Kitchen Sink – Summer 2003”

It’s incredibly, incredibly hard to pin down which aspect of this magazine works and sings best. The candy-striped cover with its ‘bubbles’ of text; the feature on “Senses of Humor” (featuring, at her and his best, pieces by Eleanor Wilner and David Rees, among plenty of phenomenal others), John Greenman’s “The Cowboy Poet,” Adam Dant’s mesmerizing art, G.C. Waldrep’s or Linh Dinh’s poetry (and about Waldrep: I mentioned his work from the fall Gettysburg Review without knowing that: (1) He’s in Iowa now, not N.C., and (2) He’s the 2003 winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry – remember that guy named Dean Young? Same award.). It’s a spellbinding read, this latest American Letters and Commentary, which is right in keeping with what this magazine does every time. Continue reading “American Letters & Commentary – 2003”

The winter issue of Prairie Schooner contains poetry, stories, and reviews, sprinkled with the names of literary stars like R.T. Smith and Alice Ostriker and some new voices as well. Particularly charming were Alice Friman’s imaginings on the biblical character Ruth in “Remembering in Lilac and Heart-Shaped Leaves,” and Annette Sanford’s story, “Spring ’41,” about a young girl whose beloved aunt comes to live with her in a conservative town – bringing an illegitimate baby with her. I also liked Steve Langan’s poem, “Apricots,” a sensual homage to William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say.” Here are a few lines from Langan’s poem: Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Winter 2003”

This slender journal from Ohio State presents well-chosen fiction, poetry, and a piece of non-fiction, mostly from well-known writers such as Robin Behn and Gary Fincke. Not a lot of surprises here, but you’ll find solid selections to sink your teeth into. Continue reading “The Journal – Autumn/Winter 2003”

This mostly-poetry journal (with a smattering of photos and reviews) out of Evanston, Illinois succeeds in bringing new voices from the poetry world to light. This issue considers the metaphysical questions of spiritual versus human nature, in which speakers deal with their bodies’failures (“What I’m Not Writing,” “How to Continue,” “The Robust Young Man Discusses His Burial”) and with the failures of their faiths (“God is Not Talking,” “Paris Does Not Exist,” “Recidivism”). Here are a few lines from Danna Ephland’s “After Surgery”: Continue reading “Rhino – 2003”

You don’t have to be a religious scholar to appreciate the essays, short stories, art and poetry found in Image. In fact, many of the individual pieces included would easily fit in “general” literary journals. As a collection, the text explores the relationships between religion (mainly Judeo-Christian), culture and art in contemporary times. This issue offers two enlightening essays on the work of artists George Gittoes and Eric Fischl (artist of last year’s controversial Tumbling Woman, which generated a debate of how artists should represent the horrors of 9/11). Continue reading “Image – Summer 2003”

Another disarming newsprint journal (as in: Aha! You may look as if you are reading a perfectly respectable newspaper, but instead you are subversively reading poetry without being ostentatious about it), the quality of the paper belies what lies within. The prose here is always fascinating, featuring interviews with well-known poets (in this case, Christopher Merrill) and critical essays. The poetry contributions usually lean heavily towards translations and prose poems, and this issue is no exception, with a series of poems by Jean Cocteau translated by Charles Guenther, four poems by Constantine Cavafy translated from the Greek by Aliki Barnstone, and some very witty prose poems by Jeffrey Skinner. The inside-joke humor of “Day One,” simultaneously complaining about the egotism of writers who write a poem a day and actually writing a poem about writing a poem a day, is contagious. His two poems exploring theories in physics, “Many Worlds” and “White Dwarf,” juxtapose mundane and extraordinary details effectively. The rest of the poetry, including works by the likes of Tony Hoagland, Chard DeNiord, Robert Bly and Toi Derricotte, is strong and engaging, all worthy of excerpting here if there were only space. Suffice it to say that fans of both poetry and poetics will be satisfied with this issue. Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – Jan/Feb 2004”

There are many beautiful things to be found within the pages of the magazine that celebrates words as they are written, poems as they are whittled out, and art as it is imagined and incarnated by women. There are stories of love, of love lost, of shame and regret, of redemption and celebration. Poems of all the same themes. And art of still the same, wonderfully rendered, including several paintings by talented artist Heather Horton, with cover feature “Cheltenham Eden.” In the artist bio, Horton says she paints with “recurring themes of isolation, anticipation and solitude.” In looking at the front cover, it is not hard to imagine any of these themes. Continue reading “Room of One’s Own – 2003”

This issue opens with a Q & A of poet Juliana Baggott, who has several poems featured here. Her responses are quick-witted and funny, quite, I imagine, as you’d expect a poet’s to be. When asked why she doesn’t write formal poetry, she responds, “I mistake quatrain for Coltrane, terza rima for tiramisu,” and, while she agrees that “there is desperation in numbers, an attempt to keep account like naming babies in an orphanage hospital,” she admits that she will “forever 1-2-3 a waltz.” Witty indeed, and her poems – beautifully imagined and written. For example, in “The Stolen Poem: My Brother Poem after Levine’s ‘What Work Is’,” she writes, “He won’t admit to rain. Only / A break in the sun to wait out / My brother wait for it to unwind / amid the no-no of children, jazz, Scotch.” Continue reading “Third Coast – Fall 2003”

This issue of the famed Antioch Review is subtitled, “Circuses and Art Museums,” and it does not disappoint on either front. In Cathy Day’s story, “The Last Member of the Boela Tribe,” circus life is explored in all its glory with its underbelly exposed as well. The same can be said for the essays on the state of museums in the world, such as Neil MacGregor’s “A Pentecost in Trafalgar Square” and “Pictures, Tears, Lights, and Seats” by John Walsh. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Fall 2003”

It’s a hard journal to gauge from the cover—a photo of, presumably, Shanghai, with a KFC billboard, Col. Sanders smiling from long past the grave, interrupting the Asian aesthetic. Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Fall 2003”

Oh Sally Bingham and William Wenthe! Oh John DeCaire and Kathryn Ma! Of the 28 authors with work in this journal, the sighing, huge vowel and exclamation could be used on just about any of them. The Southwest Review comes out of Dallas, Texas and while its cover trumpets nothing so much as a mature, almost National Affairs-esque sobriety (the lower half of the cover is a list of the work inside, and maybe it’s just me, but I’d take a cover like Tin House and get my ingredient list from the table of contents), the work within wanders different trails. Continue reading “Southwest Review – 2003”

What a find! This is as diverse a collection of writing as I have read in some time (with 42 entries on 60 pages – this is packed!). Anyone who has worked labor or second shift or a thankless-number-not-a-name job will find themselves within these pages. But don’t mistake the content (which is heavy on the poetry) as being all about work/ing. Oh, no –  there’s sensuality, as in Jillian Meyer’s “First Job” where she describes the post-shower relaxation that comes after work, the outdoor air blowing “gently into the warmer darkness behind my knees, / a drying breeze over a landscape not meant for fast travel / in the quiet of a night at home in my skin.” Natural imagery as metaphor roars in Cunningham’s “a hollow thunder” and walks us gently into the wood in Napolin’s “On Sunday.”  Continue reading “Blue Collar Review – Autumn 2003”

If you’re a literary traditionalist or an anal grammar/perfect-proof reader, leave. You’ll hate this publication. For the remaining (more forgiving) folks, let’s talk. The first section is a bit rough. I swear someone lost pages to the Manil Suri (“Death of Vishnu”) interview. But the “Letters to the Editor” start the engine purring. Look at these beginning sentences: “I love the rain / As a schoolgirl, I read the story of Hero and Leander for the first time in Arabic / I believe that human beings everywhere share similar joys and sorrows.” Continue reading “Thought Magazine – 2003”