NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

6×6 first caught my interest with its zine-like appearance. I don’t mean zine-like in the sense of something badly copied at Kinko’s, but zine-like in the sense of a magazine carefully and lovingly put together with limited funds that manages to look much better than most of the big-names. This issue is bound in felt paper and held together with a thick rubber band, yet still looks nice and professional. The name 6×6 refers to the format, which is six poets with six pages of poetry each. This normally means six poems a poet, but not always. Dorothea Lasky, for example, offers up one, long six part poem. The highlight for me was Laura Sims’ minimal and idiosyncratic pieces from the manuscript “Practice, Restraint.” Her poems are extremely short, but suggest whole worlds: “At the east branch- // One empty room / And another / Abandoned /// By Spaniards.” Each of the six poets it working in their own distinct style and yet the whole issue feels strangely cohesive. If I could make one complaint, it would be the lack of biographical information, but overall this is a strong collection of contemporary, avant-gardish poetry, and if that sounds interesting at all to you, why not drop the mere three dollar cover price and give 6×6 a try? Continue reading “6×6 – Fall 2004”

This issue of American Poetry Review, the bimonthly newsprint journal that keeps its readers on the cutting edge of poetry criticism, features poems by Donald Revell, translations of Vallejo by Clayton Eshleman, a review of Michael Ryan and a smattering of his poems, and several excellent poems by Anne Marie Macari, but the standout features for me were two essays. One was Dana Levin’s perceptive essay “The Heroics of Style” on the effects of stylistic pressures on the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and the other was John Yau’s piece, “The Poet as Art Critic,” on John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara’s writing on art criticism. Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – June 2005”

This issue of Arts & Letters, an attractive glossy, 7×10 twice-yearly journal with a spacious, easy-to-read layout, is dedicated to Susan Atefat-Peckham, who is eulogized touchingly in an essay by Poetry Editor Alice Friman. The issue also contains an excerpt, called “Grandmother Poem,” of Donald Hall’s upcoming memoir about his wife, Jane Kenyon. Very high quality fiction and poetry throughout the issue, including “Esther the Golden,” by Yona Zeldis McDonough, which tells the story of beautiful and devout Esther, who rebels against her close-knit community of faith in order to embrace a wider view of the world, and Margot C. Kadesch’s “Mate Selection,” about a biologist who is torn between her married boss and studies of sex-driven chickens and her business-oriented boyfriend. Also fascinating were poems by Minnie Bruce Pratt, especially “Shopping for a Present: The Repository of Human Flesh and Blood” and poems by Tenaya Darlington, who won the Arts & Letters Prize for Poetry, especially “The Oldest Living Bombshell Bares All,” whose lines echo Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” especially the ending:“And yet she rises, //batting her eyes, / cracking a whip with aloof va va voom, / the woman who strips down to her death, / then ignites herself again.” Excellent work in an attractive package, Arts & Letters deserves a place on your literary magazine shelf.  Continue reading “Arts & Letters – Fall 2004”

This twice-yearly perfect-bound journal, which focuses on the practices and experiences of medicine, illness, and related topics, always contains touching fiction, non-fiction, and poetry of high quality. The knockout story for me in this issue was a delicate story of class, race, and responses to miscarriage, titled “Baby,” by Lois Taylor, and the poem “Being Nursed by Walt Whitman,” by Jennifer Santos Madriaga, about the experience of teaching poetry to dying students: “My father asks me what it’s like to teach / writing to dying people. ‘Are you afraid?’/ ‘Dad, we’re all going to die,’ I say. / ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘You’re right.’ / There’s a brief silence as static crackles / on the long distance telephone line./ ‘You’re right, absolutely right.’” Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Spring 2005”

Black Warrior Review does everything right. They consistently publish great fiction and poetry while doing things differently and standing out from the crowd. The most obvious example of this is their chapbook series: each issue includes a full-sized chapbook in its pages. The current issue is excellent from start to finish, and it seems impossible to decide what stands out the most: Julie West’s eight gorgeous full-color paintings? The minimal, haunting line-work of Richard Hahn’s comic? Adam Prince’s hilarious short story “The Triceratops”? One thing I feel compelled to comment on is G.C. Waldrep’s chapbook, “Precision Castanets.” His prose-poems here are written in dream-like prose with a strong inclination towards humor and absurdism. Maybe a cross between Ben Marcus and Dean Young could give you an idea. An excerpt from “Fight or Flight”: “The latest fashion was antlers. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2005”

Calyx, “A Journal of Art and Literature by Women” produced out of the Pacific Northwest, has a gladdening grab bag of known and unknown authors and artists, as well as some interesting reviews of poetry books by both local and national writers. As usual, the art in Calyx is fascinating, particularly some portrait/collage work by Sara Paulsen, whose images of haunting faces marred by various layering techniques (watercolor, computer graphics) are compelling. Continue reading “CALYX – Winter 2005”

Clackamas Literary Review, a yearly glossy out of Oregon, features accomplished, edgy work that approaches difficult subjects with verve. Mir Emampoor’s short fiction piece, “The Snake,” elegantly and poignantly tells the story of a young man struggling with doubt, faith and the influence of friends during Ramadan. Continue reading “Clackamas Literary Review – 2005”

A chemotherapy ward is transformed into the visitation grounds of the Angel of Death. A game of American Indian wars interpreted by German boys is played while a real war wages in the background. A Kansas farmer anticipates her horse’s foaling while caring for her old friend, an aerial photographer sensing early signs of brain damage. These stories highlight Crazyhorse 67, whose style can be spelled out with traits—rural, man-versus-nature, agrarian mysticism, even the very presence of horses—but for all of which the prime mover is always the imagination. Christopher Burawa’s “Visitation of the Chemotherapy Angel” is a meditative prose poem; Maria Hummel’s “Peter at the Stake” is a fictional memoir inspired by true events; and Andrew Malan Milward’s “The Agriculture Hall of Fame” is a story about memory—narrated, to surprising effect, backwards and in fragments.  Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2005”

Great fiction enables us to see the world with fresh eyes, as the editors of Inkwell remind us, and they have reason to be proud. Continue reading “Inkwell – Spring 2005”

Modern Haiku is everything its name would suggest: a magazine devoted to traditional Japanese poetic forms, but with a modern approach. Continue reading “Modern Haiku – Winter-Spring 2005”

Well, issue number 50 decides it. I can’t put off buying a Judy Budnitz collection anymore; her stories are just too good.

Continue reading “One Story – 2005”

This issue of the venerable, well-respected Ploughshares was guest-edited by poet and essayist Martín Espada, and many of the poems and prose he picked for the issue pack incisor-sharp observations and an emotional wallop. The table of contents boasts so many poetry luminaries I can’t list them all, but here’s a partial list: Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Creeley, Gary Soto and Sharon Olds.  Continue reading “Ploughshares – Spring 2005”

An annual poetry journal out of the underrepresented Los Angeles area, POOL comes with two surprises. The first is its structural egalitarianism: the poems are arranged alphabetically by author, encouraging readers to pick through the mag in any order or style they so please. And the reactions to these customized readings, those are the second surprise. Continue reading “Pool – 2004”

“My name is Damien Echols, and I am a poet, author, and death row inmate who is currently awaiting exoneration through D.N.A. testing.” That’s how one handwritten cover letter addressed to Porcupine began, and when the editors read it, they knew that merely considering Echols’ poems for publication wouldn’t do him justice. Echols’ is a well-known reputed case of wrongful imprisonment (as one of the “West Memphis Three”) and his professed innocence has created a minor cause celebre among activists. But what’s really moving here is the personal account of the psychological horrors and spiritual growth experienced behind bars. Continue reading “Porcupine – 2005”

The magazine formerly known as the Beacon Street Review has gotten a makeover by the grad students at prestigious Emerson College. The latest offering of Redivider is a joyful romp through the peaks and discontents of American pop culture from the fringes to the mainstream. Continue reading “Redivider – 2005”

Something about a Southern poetry journal, especially one with cream-colored pages and chapbook binding, makes the day pass by slowly. Tar River Poetry is never morbid, never too light, often ironic, often chatty like a friend sitting on the porch during a barbecue. I love, for example, the assonance of William Trowbridge’s “Foolish Tears”: “Tonight, Fool’s sobs / blort through the dark as dog’s bark and big rigs / blast across the overpass.” Continue reading “Tar River Poetry – Spring 2005”

The question of national literature is never without debate, and in Canada there’s always plenty of discussion going on about what it means to be truly Canadian. While the debate doesn’t end with The Antigonish Review, it’s a very good place to begin it. I find much of the literature here to be decidedly traditional: it belongs to the outdoors, to fishing and heron spotting and crafting driftwood into spirit masks. Like Anita Lahey’s “Cape Breton Relative,” these works paint a colorful but sometimes sobering portrait of a rural landscape distinctly belonging to Canada (or at least Nova Scotia and, on occasion, Vancouver Island). But this is “Canada’s Eclectic Review,” and there are also many fine turns and surprises. In “Impaired,” Devin Krukoff hits an emotional chord by viewing the world through the eyes of suffering: “The moon is split clear through the center, / a severed tongue on the plate of my window, / while across the world the sun climbs over Africa, / a continent shaped like a spear.” Kevin McPherson’s story “On Stilts” finds a man on the edge of his sanity after his wife’s death in a car crash, using long, run-on fragments to convey grief and vengeance: “My legs threaten to betray me they want to go AWOL head for the fence but I force them back in line.” And Thomas Trofimuk’s “unfolding” is a passionate and strange tale of a poetic one-night stand whose nervous rush still makes it hard for me to let go. As it turns out, there’s a worthwhile reading venture to be had here. [www.antigonishreview.com] — Christopher Mote Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Autumn 2004”

This handsome new journal, from its burnished full-color matte art-adorned cover (beautiful work by painter Gaither Pope) to the last page, left a surprisingly pleasant impression. The roster of contributors includes a diverse but impressive set of writers, including David Lehman, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Pulitzer-winner Robert Olen Butler, just to name a few. I especially enjoyed Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s poem “At Medusa’s Hair Salon.” Here’s an excerpt: “…I say to Henri, Cut it, // cut it all. It’s clear no one in the salon knows / how Medusa even became a Gorgon;…who would want her hair cut to stun / men into giant concrete tongues, lapping / for air.” I also very much enjoyed the poem that answers that largest of questions, “Why So Many Poets Come From Ohio,” by Margo Stever, especially the line about “why shopping malls built to last / for centuries.” Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Spring 2004”

It might behoove the honorable editors of North Dakota Quarterly to realize that this magazine too closely resembles a college catalog from the outside. (It probably doesn’t help that one can open up and find a registrar-esque listing of grad school dissertations!) Continue reading “North Dakota Quarterly – Fall 2004”

Southwest Review is already one of the most established journals in the U.S., but this issue receives a commemorative boost with the recent passing of the great Arthur Miller: “The Turpentine Still,” one of his last works, is included here. Through the eyes of Levin, a 1950’s ex-radical, the novella ventures into the pine mountains of Haiti around one American’s quixotic dreams of industrializing the country. Continue reading “Southwest Review – Spring 2004”

StoryQuarterly magazine is neither a quarterly nor really a magazine. Rather, it is an annually published tome of fiction. Issue 40 clocks in at 563 pages, almost triple the average lit mag length and about the same price. You might assume that with so much fiction it couldn’t fail to have enough good work to justify the price, and you would be correct. There are several good short-shorts here such as Nathan Alling Long’s somber “Between” about a son who only knows his father through the prison bars when he visits once a month. Steve Almond has an interesting one titled “At Age 91, Anna Smolz of the Gmersh Unit Speaks.” This issue also includes a great group of color photos all taken in the Midwest as well as a long interview between Tom Stoppard and Charlie Rose. However, my favorite piece in StoryQuarterly 40 was Rebecca Curtis’ idiosyncratic, pseudo-fairy tale, “The Wolf at the Door.” Here is a snippet to catch your interest: Continue reading “StoryQuarterly – 2004”

An incredibly strong awards issue with work that is funny, moving, surprising, and memorable, and, though I mean this in the most positive way imaginable…strange. If you’re tired of coming-of-age poems or skeptical about poems that work to be humorous, Christopher Bursk’s “E Pluribus Unum” (chosen by Lucia Perillo for the 49th Parallel Poetry Award) will forever alter your view of poems about adolescence and the use of humor in poetry. Creative Nonfiction Judge Paul Lisicky says Bonnie J. Rough’s winning essay, “Slaughter: A Meditation Wherein the Narrator Explores Death and the Afterlife as Her Spiritual Beliefs Evolve,” “shines with its fusion of gravity and wackiness.” Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Spring 2005”

When a magazine reaches its fourth issue, it’s safe to say that the editors have learned how to bridge their own literary vision with a corresponding body of work. Continue reading “Cranky / January 2005”

I realize that, as far as profits go, lit mags are like lemonade stands among the blue chips of the publishing industry, but I’m no better than the next guy: I don’t think twice about a 60-page booklet with a seven-dollar price tag. Continue reading “Fine Madness – 2005”

The New England Review is a larger-than-usual 7”X10” magazine, and with good reason: you’re likely holding in your hands one of the half-dozen best quarterlies out there. I don’t know where to begin with my impressions. I could take the international perspective: an interview with filmmaker Lars von Trier, a study of Orwell’s personal library, a zany around-the-world short story on the intellect by Gregory Blake Smith. Continue reading “New England Review – 2005”

This glossy black-and-white journal of poetry, prose and art work showcased some fantastic photography of human female subjects in Old Havana, Cuba, by Karen Keating (especially moving: a portrait called “Fidel’s Granddaughter,” a wide-eyed toddler with her hand on her hip, and “Teenager on Cuba Street,” a pensive girl in a tight, revealing outfit) as well as literary work of equal merit. Particularly interesting was a non-fiction piece on the tragic life of Modigiliani’s final mistress by Jacqueline Kolosov, “Seule: The Story of Jeanne Hebuterne, Modigliani’s Last Mistress.” Continue reading “So to Speak – Winter/Spring 2005”

I wish there were more “international journals” and am pleased to see that this one has survived another year to bring us a fresh new issue. An eclectic and generous editorial vision brings together spectacular photographs of Palenque on the Atlantic coast of Colombia by Oscar Frasser with a respectful view of the “precarious and disadvantageous conditions” of the region, a previously unpublished interview with Paul Bowles (who died in 1999) conducted by Ramon Singh, a journalist, fiction writer, and teacher of American literature who currently lives in Greece, elegant, powerful drawings of the human form by award-winning artist Jeffrey Barrera of Madrid, as well as poems, prose poems, stories, a scholarly essay, a political manifesto, and other offerings in the “galería del arte.” Continue reading “Terra Incognita – 2004/2005”

Interviewers Amanda Rachelle Warren and Roy Seeger ask terrific questions of Mary Ruefle whose terrific answers include this characterization of a writer’s work: “…an artist…is on a very personal journey in an extremely un-personal world.” Fortunately, the sixteen poets, seven fiction writers, and three creative nonfiction contributors represented here know how to link the personal and “un-personal” to bring us work that is both fresh (as in honest and authentic) and refreshingly free of gimmicks and empty rhetorical devices. Continue reading “Third Coast – Spring 2005”

“I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole / of the rest of the earth,”—could any “dead poet” be more, for lack of a better word, relevant? It’s not hard to understand why VQR has devoted a whole (glorious and gorgeous) issue to honor Walt Whitman on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass. The issue includes essays of various styles, lengths, and intents from twenty-five American poets and writers and five beautifully reproduced sets of photos of Whitman with commentary by Ed Folsom, adapted from the gallery section of the Walt Whitman Archive. Continue reading “Virginia Quarterly Review – Spring 2005”

Yes, after sixty issues, AGNI is still going strong, but more importantly it’s still finding new ways to reinvent itself. The theme here is “reading at the limit,” inspired by Katherine Jackson’s rendering of written text into “liminal” (i.e. at the surface) visual art. If you want to test the limits at the reading level, there’s no going wrong with Robert Olen Butler’s “four pieces of Severance,” a group of concept sketches best defined as “beheading monologues” that you’ll have to read for yourself to truly appreciate. Among the poetry, I enjoyed the account of innocence lost in Richard Hoffman’s “Gold Star Road”: “Ignorant // as goldfish in a plastic bag, / as mayflies mistaking the road for the river, / we assured one another, // keeping up our spirits / as we had long been taught.” The fiction has something for everyone, but the nonfiction has the most room to challenge our notions of limits and categorization. Joshua Harmon, in “The Annotated Mix-Tape,” weaves an eclectic music review of the Scud Mountain Boys’ “Massachusetts” with his own memories of his native Bay State. I was quite amused by his treatment of my native Pennsylvania as foreign to his New England sensibilities. (Full disclosure: Harmon taught at Bucknell University while I was a student there.) Needless to say, AGNI is strangely exotic to my own eyes; it knows how to skew the current times while demanding to be re-read through the backdrop of future ages. And even when rereading, as Jackson says, “aren’t we always reading everything for the first time?” Continue reading “AGNI – Number 60”

Ah, Portland. Village on the Willamette. Microbrewery capital of the world. Stumptown. Rip City. And, of course, the Rose Garden—and what an intriguing assortment of roses to be picked. Taking a trip through the latest issue of eye~rhyme is like having an impatient child pull you through a circus of kerosene-doused cannibals at a Sunday stroll’s pace. Continue reading “eye~rhyme – 2004”

Gargoyle 48 confuses me. The cover is entirely taken up by a photo of two women in low cut shirts looking like they want to punch me. On the back, I see names such as E. Ethelbert Miller. The first page is a long political quote from Gore Vidal. The non-fiction reads like fiction, the poetry reads like prose and prose reads like poetry. I think Gargoyle would be pleased with this review. They seem to strive to be surprising and fresh. Their website explains that issues have been published on cassette tapes and that others have featured writers from Charles Bukowski to Rita Dove. Continue reading “Gargoyle – Number 48”

It’s probably redundant to elaborate on a short story titled “Death Is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way.” Forgive me for trying: I can’t get enough of this meditative piece by Yiyun Li, a memoir of life in a Chinese commune in the 1970s, and the plight of an educated man rendered useless by the Cultural Revolution, as witnessed by the narrator as a child. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Spring 2005”

At a time when many of its academic colleagues are revamping themselves with colorful up-to-date looks, The Hudson Review remains the same monochrome-cover journal with solid helpings of criticism and literature from the high establishment. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Winter 2005”

“Tell me about loneliness,” begins Peter Selgin’s arresting short story, “Color of the Sea.” Continue reading “The Missouri Review – 2004”

As far as fiction goes, this issue of The New Quarterly is in a class of its own. The prose was consistently precise and original, the stories themselves well-crafted and well-developed. In fact, as I read these stories in a chronological order from front to back, it repeatedly seemed as if the following story far outshone the previous, as if the magazine simply surged forward with an ever increasing and ever impressive quality. Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Fall 2004/Winter 2005”

I found this volume of Room of One’s Own to be a fifty-fifty combination of really good and then really disappointing poetry and prose. The good stuff was so good that I would be doing a great disservice not to recommend the magazine, but the bad stuff was so predictable and bland that I have to temper my recommendation with reservations. Continue reading “Room of One’s Own – 2005”

What really drives my exploratory urges through the realm of literary magazines is the chance of finding one journal or another which seems in every way a representation of a real America. Appalachian Heritage is just that kind of publication. The journal’s handsome, down-to-earth appearance alone is a refreshing contrast to the often overly cerebral or academic format of so many American literary magazines. And the work featured here has a wonderfully unassuming quality about it: short stories, memoirs, poetry and photographs all unified by a down-home style that authenticates the journal’s eponymous claim to represent a bona fide heritage. In three short stories—by Lee Maynard, Patty Crow, and Sharyn McCrumb—the reader finds a lively, earnest narrative style that holds so faithfully to the clean, basic arcs of classic storytelling that it hearkens back to the rural oral tradition upon which so much of America’s contemporary literature is based, in whatever deviating forms. This issue’s featured author Sharon McCrumb (paraphrased by editor George Brosi) speaks to the very heritage alluded to in the journal’s title: “…[There is] a split between the ‘folk’ and the ‘fine,’ but there is no reason that our ‘folk’ traditions should have any less literary merit than those of Homer, the first epic poet…” This comment met with my emphatic underlining, so aptly did it express the reason for my own appreciation of Appalachian Heritage. Not often while reading literary journals do you get the feeling that you’ve happened upon a publication completely free of the corrosions of pretense, completely at ease with itself, and completely authentic. Appalachian Heritage is the real thing. Read it and find yourself relieved at the incontrovertible evidence it offers that, though big-money publishing may run the roost, the center of the literary universe is not characterized by The New Yorker.  Continue reading “Appalachian Heritage – Fall 2004”

The debut of a new literary journal always causes me a small pang in the breast. It can be such a vicious world for these little literary nestlings. A trim, handsome journal out of Greensboro, North Carolina makes its debut with this Fall 2004 issue, and if Volume 1 Number 1 is any indication, the folks behind Backwards City Review should be assured that, whatever perils await them on the road of financing, distribution, sales, etc., they’re well ahead of the game in the editorial department. This inaugural issue is happily modest, but by no means meager, in its offerings: 4 short stories, 1 nonfiction piece, 26 poems, 3 fascinating comics, and as a delightful bonus: a facsimile of a hilariously pungent dispatch from the famous Kurt Vonnegut, answering the query: “Where do you get your ideas from?” Michael Parker’s story “Results for Novice Males” pictures in restrained (but never constrained) prose, the sticky relationship between two fledgling triathlon competitors, each struggling through dysfunction from opposite poles of class, and takes its thematic cue from the compelling idea of “junk miles”—“the mileage one accumulates without actually getting better, stronger, faster.” Alix Ohlin’s “Local News,” concerns a TV reporter who dreams of a better, happier, more successful life, and finds herself dramatically subject to the maxim of her journalism teacher: “When you…break all the rules I’ve taught you, then you’ll know you’re working in news.” And Adam Berlin’s unique story “Speeding Away” portrays the mean-spirited machinations of two bachelor protagonists as they wriggle their way out of a promise to drive an annoying friend of a friend home to New York from an Indiana wedding.  Continue reading “Backwards City Review – Fall 2004”

For those still Stone Age enough to think of Texas poetry as an oxymoron, welcome to Austin. Alex Grant’s “Vespers” offers home and peace and space and the beautiful old word quieten. Kelle Groom’s poems find the soul of things and help us hear the faint but heartfelt dialogue between the living and the dead: “I wonder / If they are always talking behind the glass, / Full of joy for us, if they are in the trees, swinging, / Smiling, saying live, live, live, & on this side / We hear birds, / Songs from far away.” Brenda Ladd’s photo series gives us lost-(or perhaps found) in-performance soul glimpses of the likes of B.B. King, Abbey Lincoln, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. (A white light shot of a joyful Ray Charles graces the issue’s cover.) Weston Cutter’s wondrous strange, down on all fours and calling “Same Animal” reminds us that evolution of the human kind can be a tricky proposition. To delight you even as it makes you weep that we’ve all but lost to computers the handwritten record of our writers’ painstaking choices is the manuscript page of Walt Whitman’s lovely “unpublished, undated, and perhaps unfinished fragment” “In Western Texas”: Continue reading “Borderlands – Fall/Winter 2004”

Two engaging personal essays, one by newcomer David Harris-Gershon and the other by award-winning essayist Floyd Skloot land side-by-side and are emblematic of the issue as a whole—expertly crafted work by new and more established writers who know how to link their personal stories or perspective to the larger world. Even work poetry editor Donald Revell labels as an unexpected revision of the confessional mode, Jenny Mueller’s “Lyric,” reaches beyond the confines of experiment or solipsistic musing to offer a broad, surprising, and accessible world: “The cicada orgasms / sing, cease. A knock and a bruise / is this afternoon, its approaches // by lapses. A blast at the sills: it’s the earth, wanting in, heat-zonked / and spoiling, prodigal.” Continue reading “Colorado Review – Spring 2005”

The interviews (sometimes a dull spot in literary magazines) are a highlight of this issue of Columbia. In Mary Phillips-Sandy’s talk with culture critic Camille Paglia, high priestess of free associaters (think female, literary Robin Williams), Paglia offers an energetic mix of liberal, conservative, and crackpot views—the dead giveaway of an open mind at work. She compares Stephen King to Edgar Allan Poe, to the glory of both; takes a passing whack at Joyce Carol Oates’ prose style (“I can’t believe she just throws that stuff out there!”); and is a great proponent of the Web, for which she began writing “early on,” but admits to composing her first drafts “by hand with a real pen on real paper.” Continue reading “Columbia – 2004”

Twenty-four prose poems and one interview in a handsome, elegant little volume—CUE is a find. In editor Morgan Lucas Schuldt’s e-mail interview with award-winning poet Karen Volkman, Volkman writes: “…poetry should make us more conscious of how we think and structure our experiences and sensations, and provide new possibilities.” Continue reading “CUE – Winter 2005”

This is the annual creative non-fiction awards issue, but every issue of Event is a winner from what I’ve seen. Continue reading “Event – Spring 2005”

What makes this issue of Green Mountains Review especially appealing is the range of styles and tones represented here. Maureen Seaton is as quirky, irreverent, playful, and original as ever in several pieces that defy classification. Erick Pankey is as solemn and soulful as we know him to be in three self-portraits composed of exacting, carefully calculated language. Lola Haskins is, as we expect her to be, both lyrical and sharp-tongued in “Parsing Mother” (“You’re the twig that slashed my eye as I pushed through the branches. / Why I see cracks, faults, flaws, in every vase and daughter. O / Mother how declensions abound: nominative sun accusative moon.”). The fiction follows suit, with solid, conventional short stories by Jenna Terry and Daisy Tsui; a lyrical folk-tale style offering by Christopher White; and stories I am tempted to categorize as “sudden fiction” or “short shorts” by Francine White. Among the many memorable and noteworthy pieces in this issue is one I simply cannot refrain from mentioning— Eamon Grennan’s marvelous poem “From the Road,” which begins: Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – 2004”

The cover means to draw us in by announcing work from Jorie Graham, André Aciman, Honor Moore, Kenneth Burke and theirs is certainly worthwhile. One of the most gifted writers on place, Aciman never disappoints, and I loved this essay on New York. Moore’s piece on Lowell is marvelous—she is such a fine essayist I would read her on any subject, but she is especially satisfying when writing about other poets. Continue reading “Harvard Review – 2004”

Now this is a great magazine. Short, quirky writing that takes itself seriously but is not without a sense of humor. Think of it as a McSweeney’s for very short fiction (most of the stories here are between two and six pages). Perhaps the similarities are due to guest editor Ryan Boudinot, a McSweeney’s contributor who includes two excellent Icelandic authors in this issue who also appear in the new McSweeney’s. Continue reading “Hobart – Winter 2004-2005”

If you are like me, the multitude of literary reviews named after universities or geographic locations tend to blend together in your mind. However, for me, the Indiana Review just ceased to be one of them. Indiana Review is one of the only university affiliated magazines I’ve read that publishes great edgy and risky writing. Continue reading “Indiana Review – Winter 2004”

With two traditionally constructed short stories, a meta-fictional batch of autobiographical “contributor’s notes” by writer Michael Martone, and a nonfiction piece excerpted from the personal notebook of author M.V. Clayton, this issue of The Journal is slim on its prose offerings, leaning almost entirely toward poetry. Continue reading “The Journal – Autumn/Winter 2004”