If you appreciate finely-crafted stories that draw you into their worlds so that you become unaware of yourself as a physical being, then you will want to read this issue of CutBank. The poetry, nonfiction, and fiction pieces blend language and form in such ways that permit them to exist somewhere in a writerless universe where they come into being, yet seeming to have always been there. The writing is done with such skill and attention that makes it possible for readers to be unaware of the writing in a metaphysical sense. For me, this is the best type of writing: work that does not draw attention to itself as writing but rises above its own existence to breathe the air of higher altitudes; readers enter this oxygenated space for the duration.

I’m admittedly a bit of a homebody, but the idea of travel always sounds exciting, and Cargo Literary offers up that exciting feeling of going somewhere new, all from the comfort of your computer chair, or, if you’re less of a homebody than I am, your airplane seat on the way to your next destination.

The annual literary magazine Cherry Tree was founded three years ago by Maryland’s Washington College. Several longer stories dominate their plump 2017 issue, one of which is R.M. Fradkin’s stand-out “Out-of-Office.” If you have ever been frustrated by your email system, you will identify with her story-in-reverse about a librarian named Shavani and a gentleman, Valentine Izzo, who has an overdue library book.

One of my favorite David Bowie songs and music videos is “Loving the Alien” from his sixteenth studio album Tonight. The silver, almost robot-like characters in the video and haunting lyrics (“And your prayers they break the sky in two / Believing the strangest things, loving the alien”) invoke feelings of awe and discomfort about those who are different or “other” from ourselves. The Fall 2016 issue from Conjunctions literary magazine mirrors the powerful emotions of Bowie’s work in “Other Aliens.”

American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman once said, “War is Hell,” but Consequence magazine takes the hellish landscape of war and transforms it into inspiring works of art, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Consequence is “an international literary magazine published annually, focusing on the culture and consequences of war.” The cover art of the current volume of Consequence exhibits this goal in a powerful illustration of life and beauty rising up from a mouth of suffering alluding to Picasso’s Guernica.

Issue 62 of Creative Nonfiction (CNF) is dedicated to Joy. The published essays can be divided into two segments: essays about the craft of writing and essays following a more literary and narrative vein. Both segments best utilize the theme of joy when the authors bring the reader into the moment so we experience joy by their side.

In a tribute to the major changes the United States has undergone since the election last November, the editors of Camas chose to make this issue one that commemorates the many beautiful aspects of our country. Through poetry, art, photography, fiction, and nonfiction, each piece celebrates the beauty of nature, diversity, and the true American spirit.

The Fall 2016 issue of Copper Nickel from the University of Colorado Denver features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and folios of works in translation. All the contributions are worth noting for the broad range of talent and skill, beginning with the variety of poetry, which is definitely of the quality we expect from this selection of experienced poets.

Recently I was fortunate enough to attend a reading by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham (The Hours, The Snow Queen, A Wild Swan and Other Tales). The reading was inspirational not only for the works read but for the Q&A period following. Responding to a question about process and the willingness to pursue writing in spite of setbacks or crises of confidence, Cunningham made clear the importance of writers and their works to the world and how engaging in the pursuit is next door to alchemy. One begins with the same words accessible to everyone and creates something new on a page where there was nothing before. This is what each of the poets represented in this issue of the Columbia Poetry Review have done.

It’s been quite some time since I have been able to write a review for Carve—in fact the last issue I did review was Summer 2012, their final issue before moving to and including the new[ish] premium print edition—but I’ve been itching to do so for quite some time as I follow along with the places it is going. Although all stories are still available to read online for free, “because good honest fiction should never disappear into obscurity,” trust me when I say you’ll want to go ahead and purchase the premium edition.

Humanity has always been fascinated with death and invented stories to explore the possibility of life beyond death. Gilgamesh, distraught over Enkidu’s death in one of the world’s oldest bromance stories, dives into the underworld to unlock the secret to eternal life, but is outsmarted by a clever snake. Orpheus nearly resurrects his dead lover Eurydice after a private concert for Hades and Persephone, but fails because he can’t resist sneaking a peek over his shoulder at the last minute. Our fascination with death and resurrection continues to this day in popular culture, where superheroes are killed and brought back to life more times than that fellow from Nazareth. The summer 2016 issue of Conduit magazine, Digging Lazarus, presents a selection of talented writers who add their voices to the ongoing exploration of death and resurrection.

This issue of Creative Nonfiction focuses on the sacrament of marriage. But if you think you’re in for an issue of romantic tales and happily-ever-afters, keep in mind that this magazine is nonfiction. While the wedding itself and much of a marriage can be happy, real life happens, and like anything lasting or worthwhile, it has its ups and downs. This issue explores many angles of marriage including “non-traditional” marriages, spur-of-the-moment marriages, fifth marriages, same-sex marriages, marriages that work, those that don’t. Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth’s (of Tugboat Printshop) beautiful and intricate woodcut prints are featured throughout the issue to tie it all together.

The design of The Conium Review itself has a simple beauty. The design element of octopus tentacles wrap the outside white cover, and is repeated inside for each story title page. On the flipside of the story title pages, readers see what was on its other side, backwards and fading, as if looking out from inside a shop’s window—inviting readers to enter into the story to look at it from the inside out.

True to its name, this journal’s stated ambition is to provide college instructors with new ways of organizing their material for classroom presentation. Comprised entirely of literary essays, I was often hard-pressed to find evidence of the CL’s pragmatic impetus, which was often sequestered in the endnotes, or tacked on as an afterthought in the concluding paragraph. Cross-pollinatory or not, the essays in College Literature are recommendable on their own merits; Zora Neale Hurston finds her home in a multiplicity of pedagogies, while Russian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin’s prejudice against the poem (too self-assured to be a truly dialogic, and thus vital, enterprise) is called into question. D.H. Lawrence, LeRoi Jones, Brigit Pegeen Kelly also make appearances.

Call doesn't include contributors' notes, but few of these poets require them. The twenty poets represented here include Diane Wakoski, Annie Finch, Peter Gizzi, Virgil Suarez, Rachel Hadas, Nathaniel Mackey, Cole Swenson, Mary Jo Bang, and Jerome Rothenberg, among other poetry greats.

This slender, elegant prose poetry journal is full of rhythmically lucid, semantically challenging works. The digital ululations of Andrew Zawacki’s “Roche Limit” crackle with imagistic suggestiveness never yielding to static; Jason Zuzuga’s tight-lipped description of abandoned cargo containers in “Donald Judd” proves that “nothing” can be bordered, defined, organized, and given a delightful shape. Most successful are David Lehman’s wry facsimiles, particularly “Poem in the Manner of Ernest Hemingway.”

Since 1976, CALYX has published art and literature by women. Senior editor Brenna Crotty describes this issue as a “search for meaning and identity.” More specifically, this issue resembles Cindy Cotner’s cover art, “Becoming.” The contributors examine how we become who we are, even as we grapple with the fact that often there is no recipe and no completion. Becoming is a continuous process.

This last issue to be edited by David Milofsky ("…it's important to know when to write the conclusion…") is a study in contrasts. For the most part, the fiction is plainspoken, colloquial, and of the moment. The poetry, on the other hand, tends toward the abstract, fragmented, and difficult, with marvelous syntactical configurations in poems both long and short.

Based at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Cream City Review is a fun, slim publication that opens its pages wide to different aesthetics and styles. There are magical stories set side-by-side with realist flash fiction, and in the middle of the issue is a special feature on Native writing. It’s rare that I’m able to say I have no clue what to expect from one page to the next in a literary journal, but in Cream City Review, that’s absolutely the case. This is not a criticism, though: instead of seeming scattered or overloaded, the journal is a merry-go-round of brightly colored poems and stories.

The first and most obvious thing to notice about Conjunctions is that its biannual print anthology is enormous. This issue is more than 300 pages, featuring work by Brian Evenson, Laura van den Berg, Robin Hemley, Gabriel Blackwell, and others. The theme of the issue, “exile,” is addressed both literally and figuratively, with work often revolving around ideas of social exile and self-exile as well as physical displacement.

An understated sophistication distinguishes The Common. At only its seventh issue, it has the tone of one who is confident of its place in the world. Many times, I paused in my reading to savor the ingenuity of a conceit or turn of phrase, but I never felt as if anyone represented in this issue was trying too hard to impress. They don’t have to: firmly in control of their craft, they steer the reader to exactly where they want her to go.

One cannot help but be carried along in the surprising and delightful rhythms of the “speechifying” of the non-native English speaker, or perhaps a native speaker of a variety of South Asian English—certainly as much a standard as any in this age where English is the world’s dominant lingua franca—in Manohar Shetty’s poem “Toast.

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.