Painted Bride Quarterly – 2004

A little thicker than Bridge’s double issue, PBQ is, for those of us not in the know (which includes me until recently), now entirely an online presence and then, once a year, published as a print anthology. I’ll fully admit to the prejudice: I love print journals, and am always somewhat nervous or anxious about online stuff.

A little thicker than Bridge’s double issue, PBQ is, for those of us not in the know (which includes me until recently), now entirely an online presence and then, once a year, published as a print anthology. I’ll fully admit to the prejudice: I love print journals, and am always somewhat nervous or anxious about online stuff. Which, thankfully, PBQ has cured me of. This anthology/annual/whatever is, literally, luscious: reading it solidly through seems a little reckless, but as a bedside book, as a couch-arm-rester, it’s right up there with any Best Of collection out there. Being so mammoth and covering so much ground, it’s hard to describe the range of contents within, so statistics might be easier: poetry slays fiction in terms of exposure (there were 6 stories in 69, twice as much as the runner-up), though nonfiction/prose pages are roughly equal to fiction’s. There’s no theme except for Issue 70, which is a New Jersey issue. Roughly every few pages you’ll be bowled over by some line (chances are, statistically, it’ll be a poem). It’s an elegant, generous volume, and strangely, despite its thickness, it feels like a bit of a secret, about which the less I say the better: open it, fall. [Painted Bride Quarterly, English Dept., Armitage Hall, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 08102. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $15. http://www.pbq.rutgers.edu] – WC