Tampa Review – 2004

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

Tabloid sized, with its impressive, glossy jacket and hard cover, Tampa Review always feels like an extravagant gift (especially considering its unbelievably reasonable price). And that’s before you even look inside. Eclectic as always, this issue contains impressive, distinctly varied work by Tampa Press favorites: “a portfolio” of poems from Tampa Review Prize poetry winner Julia B. Levine, and another of poems by Richard Terrill, along with poet Richard Chess and fiction writer Paul Rawlins. This issue also features wide-ranging work from a dozen and a half others. I was struck, above all, by M. K. Babcock’s surprising “Even As I Tell It, It’s Wrong or Lines, a String of” and Gary Fincke’s absolutely stupendous essay about compulsive writing, obsessive counting, and obsessive-compulsive memorizing. The centerpiece of the issue is poetry editor Don Morrill’s long, chatty interview with jazz musician, poet, and nonfiction writer Richard Terrill, whose Coming Late to Rachmaninoff was published by the press in 2003. I appreciated, in particular, what Terrill has to say about “artful” memoirs: “…while everybody’s life can be equally valuable, I don’t think that everybody’s writing is equally evocative…you can write about your own experience no matter how unremarkable it is…but the writing damn well better be good.” [Tampa Review, The University of Tampa, 401 West Kennedy Boulevard, Tampa, Florida 33060-1490. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $9.95. http://tampareview.ut.edu] – SR