Issue #4 of the online lit mag Ekleksographia is a special issue: The Emerging Native American Voices, guest Curated by Ann Filemyr and Jamie Figueroa.

In the introduction, Ann Filemyr writes: “Twenty-first century Native American literature is vibrant and evolving. It invites us into the creative lives and ideas of writers whose cultures are demonstrating an incredible capacity for cultural survivance against all odds.”

Art, poetry, and prose contributors include: Ungelbah Daniel-Davila, Anna Nelson, Ruben Santos, Paige Buffington, Nathan Romero, Vernon Begay, Sara Marie Ortiz, Alice M. Azure, Ann Filemyr, Jamie Figueroa, Celeste Adame, Autumn Gomez, Evelina Zuni Lucero, and Marcia Smith.

Cover Image: “Timeless” by Marcia Smith

Fresco Fine Art Publications produces unique books and catalogs for artists, galleries and museums throughout the United States. Fresco was founded in response to the need in the Santa Fe art community for “beautifully designed art books and catalogs that could be produced at a cost that was affordable, and within a time frame that kept the project fresh and enjoyable.”

Recently featured publications include:

Tom Kirby Light Passage, with inspiration for his work drawn from extensive travels throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and North Africa. “Tom’s work is distinctly modern yet deeply influenced by past masters, most importantly, Carravagio. His work is a synthesis of expressionistic and minimalist influences.”

Art alive! A Fresh Approach to Teaching the Basics: The Teaching Techniques of Sally Bartalot

With work by almost 100 artists, Visual Journeys: Art of the 21st Century edited by Nina Mihm and Mary Carroll Nelson is a publication of The Society of Layerists in Multi-Media, an international group of artists sharing a holistic world view. The thought that unites the society is, “We are all connected. There exists a oneness and unity to everything, everyone, and the whole.” This philosophical premise distinguishes it from other art societies that are based on a single medium.

Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction is trying out a creative approach to publishing. The magazine had appeared in print three times a year from 2000-2009, but in 2010, moved to publishing quarterly online. However, the full content of the four online issues is now available in print as an anthology and can be ordered through Creative Space and Amazon.

The anthology (at 302 pages) includes stories by Sarah Cornwell, Jefferson Burson, Trent Hergenrader, Kim Goldberg, Richard Wolkomir, Alexander Weinstein, Jennifer Griffin Graham, Vishwas R. Gaitonde, Susannah Mandel, Andrew Hook, John Brantingham, John Zackel, Thoraiya Dyer, William Alexander, Daniel Brugioni, Dallas Woodburn, Nick Jackson, Kevin Frazier, Joseph R. Quinlan, M.Lamaga de Sanchez, N.D. Segal, Lawrence Buentello, Jeffrey Greene, and Roderick B. Overaa as well each each of the four “cover” images by artists Alyson Lamanes, Dan Ruhmanty, Adam Yeater, and Yael Degany.

West Branch Wired is a distinct quarterly extension of the West Branch semiannual print magazine. Issues are released on the solstice or equinox in March, June, September, and December and feature poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that are exclusive to WBW. Book reviews and columns run in both WBW and the print magazine.

Guest edited by Deb Olin Unferth, the first issue, Fall 2010, includes an interview with Orlando Menes, poetry by Brian Barker and Doug Ramspeck, and fiction by Patrick Dacey. Also featured are reviews by Matthew Ladd, “To a Green Thought,” an annual column from Garth Greenwell, and Marginalia – recommendations from contributing and advisory editors.

The Sound of Poets Cooking edited by Richard Krawiec is a collection of poetry, poetry-recipes, recipe-poems, and just outright recipes. Five dozen poets are featured in the anthology, and the recipes range from spicy hard-boiled eggs to balsamic mangoes to Malaika’s crockpot Irish stew to Aunt Wilma’s coconut cake – 54 recipes in all. The impetus for the book – to feed readers as well as writers while doing a good turn for the community. Proceeds from the sale of the book will be used to pay writers a stipend to teach poetry workshops to underserved community groups. Included in the book is an application for writers interested in offering workshops – though published by Jacar Press in North Carolina, there’s no specifics on where the workshops will/must take place. For further information and/or to purchase a copy of the book, visit the Jacar Press website.

“You know who’s got a brand new book in the bookstores right now? Snooki. Snooki is a published author. I’m blaming Sarah Palin; she lowered the bar.” David Letterman

And from Sarah Crow: Read Excerpts From Snooki’s Book, Prepare to Have Mind Blown

“Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald may be widely acknowledged as America’s preeminent literary talents, but none of them have gotten down with The Situation in a hot tub. This is where Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi enters the equation.

“The Jersey Shore star’s first novel, A Shore Thing, is scheduled for release this week and early buzz has contenders for the National Book Award shaking in their boots.”

And then Crow goes on to compare lines from Polizzi’s book with writing by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Didion, and Faulkner.

At least it’s been worth the laugh.

Reversing the print-to-online trend in literary magazines, biannual online lit mag Able Muse has come out with its inaugural print issue of poetry, prose and art with its Winter 2010 publication (different from its print ‘best of’ anthology). Some online content from the issue is open (including some audio), the majority of it is accessible to subscribers only.

Volume 12.1: Winter 2011 of Beltway Poetry Quarterly is a Langston Hughes Tribute Issue co-edited by Katy Richey and Kim Roberts. The publication contains 34 poems inspired by Hughes’s legacy, commemorating his residence in DC in the early days of his career. Featured authors include Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Holly Bass, Remica L. Bingham, Derrick Weston Brown, Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Kyle Dargan, Hayes Davis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Brian Gilmore, Reginald Harris, Randall Horton, E. Ethelbert Miller, Gregory Pardlo, Joseph Ross, Dan Vera, and many others. This issue also includes an essay by Kim Roberts on the places in Washington, DC where Hughes lived and worked, with a map by Emery Pajer.

To start our new year with a strong literary framework, I offer an excerpt of Nathan Perry’s comments from his Editor’s Note to the Winter 2010 issue of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review:

“We so easily doubt the things we love. While it is often those who don’t read poetry who distrust its motives or dismiss any notion of its utility, many writers and serious readers of poems . . . also wonder what good poems can really amount to, if they really can be enough. Poets are accused of not being political enough. Poets are accused of being too political and not timeless enough. Poets are accused of hiding in their stanzas and not being civic enough. Poems are accused of being too plain and poems are accused of being too cloudy and unclear, of deliberately hiding their meanings. I’d argue that all such fussing at least belies that we acknowledge some underlying importance, and thus usefulness, in poetry. Others agree: Hayden Carruth chides, ‘Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us,’ and Frost famously has it that any ‘little form’ (and we can read here, poetry) should be ‘considered for how much more it is than nothing.’

“But still, why should we care about a poem about an owl, or the drift of pollen, or chickens in the street, or ageing drywall, or tinnitus? Well, for the same reasons we care about a poem about the recent oil spill, or a poem about perfidy in Washington DC, or a poem about war and the television’s witness. William Carlos Williams asserted, in his oft-repeated maxim, that we come to poems not for the usual news, but for something less tangible, with mortal stakes. I think what he did not say is that we come to poems for the world itself, not just the human headlines, and that ignoring the world around us always has mortal stakes.”

The full text of Perry’s editorial is only available in print.

Janine Pommy Vega author of eighteen books and chapbooks since 1968, including The Green Piano (2005), her first CD, Across the Table, recorded in Woodstock, and from live performances in Italy and Bosnia (2007), and an Italian translation of her travel book Tracking the Serpent (Sulle tracce del serpente, Nutrimenti, Rome – 20007) died peacefully at home on December 23, 2010.

Vega performed with music and solo, in English and Spanish, in international poetry festivals, museums, prisons, universities, cafes, nightclubs, and migrant workers’ camps in South America, North America and Europe. She was the Director of Incisions/Arts, an organization of writers working with people behind bars; she taught inside prisons for more than twenty-five years, and taught a course in poetics for Bard Prison Initiative. She worked as well in creative writing programs in public schools, elementary through high school-all grades for over twenty years.

Information from Janine Pommy Vega’s official website. Photo by John Sarsgard, 2009.

Amanda N. Simons grew up in a small town north of Flint, Michigan and is now an artist and educator in Michigan. I happened to view her art at a poetry reading at Court Street Gallery in Saginaw, and immediately fell in love with her collage style, including the use of sewing patterns in her artwork.

Humanity: A Celebration of Friendship, Family, Love & Laughter is a collection of photographs compiled by publisher Geoff Blackwell of “images revolving around the universal subject of ‘the fundamental human capacity and need for love'” and that capture “spontaneous human moments of intimacy, laughter, and kinship.” An online photo essay of some of the 17,000 photographers from 164 countries is available at Yes! Magazine.