After hungrily reading each word of the featured works published on the Crazyhorse website, I was more than excited to get my hands on the entire Fall 2017 issue. Through Shane Brown’s “Blue Hole,” a cover art piece, I fell into the wonderland of prose and poetry. Jonathan Bohr Heinen, the managing editor, notes that “art isn’t some frivolous reflection of aimless escape.” While this issue’s pieces take us on a journey, they nevertheless offer a reflection of reality. As Heinen puts it, “It’s the light that shines so brilliantly and helps us make sense of the world we inhabit. It’s truth.” The editor’s insight offers an entry point for readers as they carefully tread the pages of the 92nd issue seeking “the light.”

Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Fall 2017”

Perhaps my favorite poem in this issue of Crazyhorse is the “Poem for the Giraffe Marius,” written by Christopher Kempf. The poem details the death of Marius, a giraffe who was executed via a bolt gun at the Copenhagen Zoo, “Because they said genetics [ . . . ] inbreeding. Because when the steel bolt retracts, the giraffe’s / skull crumpling // on itself like a cup.” Kempf continues, “There is [ . . . ] an element / of cruelty rooted in every spectacle.” Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2015”

Crazyhorse has been so good for so long, I opened the pages of this issue expecting to be bored by its brilliance. Instead, Crazyhorse Number 70 features stories that are so fascinating that boredom is out of the question. Crazyhorse does not rely on heavy plotting; the plots are, in fact, fairly mundane. It is the writing that contains much of the appeal. Fiction Prize Winner “Dog People” by Steve Mitchel tells the story of a divorced father and his children, love life, and ex-wife. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Fall 2006”

The latest issue of Crazyhorse has everything we expect from the best literary magazines, from familiar authors’ names—then those same authors delivering in expected and surprising ways—to previously unknown writers delighting with the same energy as those more widely known. I even learned a few things, seeing new ways to break and enjamb poetic lines, and new ways to use space and silence and sequence in verse and prose. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Fall 2013”

This issue of Crazyhorse is full of interesting, off-beat writing, as befits a magazine with the journal’s oversized design. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2012”

Crazyhorse, its pages wide, heavy, and flexible, curls over the hand. The paired-down design seems to say, “let the work speak for itself.” And the work does just that. A well-handled mix of genres, styles, and subjects makes this issue of Crazyhorse exciting to read and disappointing to finish. Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Fall 2011”

One of the things I have always appreciated most about Crazyhorse is Crazyhorse’s appreciation of the capacity of language’s glorious limitations, the way in which what we cannot say, must say, do not say, and end up saying anyway comes to life in the hands of a gifted writer. Here is Jennifer Militello reassuring me that this issue won’t let me down in her poem, “A Dictionary at the Turn of the Millennium”: Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2010”