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Poetry Northwest Winter & Spring 2015 issue is the first since founding editor Carolyn Kizer passed away October 9, 2014. The issue honors Kizer’s vision and legacy, as Editor Keven Craft writes in his introduction, in that “the majority of the poets in this issue are women. The majority of men herein write about (or through) a particular she. Or contend with otherness in other forms.” The publication is entirely devoted to poetry, “including a substantial section of poetry in translation, reflecting an important part of Kizer’s early attempts to internationalize Poetry Northwest.”

Issue 44.1 of George Mason University’s MFA-student-run Phoebe includes a special feature Poetry Editor Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes first starting mulling over as “disparity.”

She writes, “So many of the struggles in my life and the lives of people I see in the world seem to revolve around some sort of disparity: of place, of mind, of circumstance. After speaking with Qinglan Wang, my assistant editor, I realized I was less interested in the ‘parity’ and more interested in the ‘dis-‘ – in poems that explored disability, in poems that confronted things that dissatisfied or disappointed, and in poems that grappled with disaster.”

Authors contributing to this special dis- poetry feature include Catherine Pierce, Stacey Kidd, Richard Greenfield, Dorothea Lasky, Matt Bell, Martha Collins, and Adam Clay.

I enjoy reading editor introductions to publications as much as the content itself sometimes. Readers and writers alike can be duly informed of the ‘sensibilities’ of a publication based on what they’ll find in those brief opening notes. In her opening letter to the Fall 2014 Catamaran Literary Reader, Founding Editor Catherine Segurson gives much to inform as well as contemplate:

“The freedome to move, to travel and explore, is core to our being. Pulling up roots and heading off to parts unknown frees us from our patterned lives and promotes growth. The journey can be both liberating and terrifying, filled with wonder and potential dangers, every step a lesson about the world and about ourselves – how we deal with the unexpected, how we cope with not knowing what the next turn in the road will bring.”
. . .
“We don’t have to travel halfway around the world or to distant planets to experience the wonder of what it means to be alive. As long as we are fully aware, even a walk around the block can inspire us; closely studying the structure of a primrose can add to our view of the world. These are lessons we learn from art and litearature as well. Writers, artists, and scientists are in the business of examining life and revealing what they’ve discovered – this, in turn, benefits us as readers and gallery visitors.”

Following these sentiments is much to support Segurson’s perspective, in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art (including photography, sculpture, paintings, mixed media, and more – all in full color!). Samples of the artwork and written works published in this issue can be read on the publication’s website.

[Cover art: Candy Tree by Michael Cutlip, 2011, mixed media on panel, 40 x 48 in]

Whitefish Review‘s most recent issue, themed “The Geography of Hope,” includes a feature entitled “Freeflow: Getting into the minds and hearts of Whitefish High School students.” The editors worked with WHS teachers Nikki Reed and Eric Sawtelle to gather students and “gain insight on their sense of place in the mountains and the work they do with Project FREEFLOW (Flathead River Educational Effort for Focused Learning in Our Watersheds).”

Coupling literary magazines with young activists to support their work, give them an audience, and create a bond with the printed arts is a great concept other publications could emulate. In addition, while Whitefish Review charges a nominal fee for submissions, there is no charge for writers high school age and younger, encouraging their participation.

This is especially good to know, considering the publication’s latest call for submissions for a themed issue: Mythic Beasts & Monsters. If THAT doesn’t encourage young writers, I don’t know what will!

Until March 15, 2015: “Whitefish Review wants you to dig into supernatural history: Nessie, Sasquatch, and cousin Yeti—the Brontosaurus still rumbling somewhere deep in the Congo’s swamps. Fairies, Trolls, Dragons, Gods ‘n’ Demons. Our own Flathead Lake Monster. What natural models are these beasts based on? What human hopes and fears? Why do we seem to wish that those creatures are really out there? How big and strange is creation anyway — the real pageant of creatures? What about all the bizzarro beasts that are stranger than any legend? (Thank you to Douglas H. Chadwick for the writing prompt.)”

The most recent issue of Cincinnati Review is unique for a number of reasons. The issue comes with a separately printed, full-color graphic novel, Moth: The Play written by Declan Greene and illustrated by Gabe Ostley. Check out this sweet YouTube video The Making of Moth for a teaser.

The publication also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that allowed the editors to focus on longer forms. “In fiction, this includes several extended stories. In poetry, sequences and long poems lead off each section.” In total, this issue offers almost one hundred additional pages of fiction and poetry.

And finally, the magazine features a unique partnering of music and poetry. Award-winner composer of chamber works Ellen Ruth Harrison has created music to express three poems by Jakob Stein, originally printed in the Summer 2008 issue. The full score for “Sefiros” appears in this issue along with the reprinted poems and introduction by Poetry Editor Don Bogen. Additionally, the art-song will be performed in the Robert J. Werner Recital Hall at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music on Monday February 16, 2015 at 8 p.m. A podcast of the performance will be posted on the publication’s website following the event.

I think that’s quite enough to recommend, don’t you?

The newest issue of Valley Voices (Fall 2014, published by Mississippi Valley State University) is a special issue focused on New York School and Diaspora. Guest Editor Angela Ball writes in her introduction that she hosted a symposium on New York School Poetry and the South and extended the conversation of that gathering with this special issue, including the works of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, and David Lehman, who had originally attended the symposium.

David Lehman agreed to join the project as Associate Editor, suggesting Angela Ball include blog entries she had written for Best American Poetry discussing the “big four poets of the New York School”: Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler.

Also included in the issue are student essays and comments written as part of a seminar Ball was teaching at the time, “The Poetry of the New York School.” Ball writes that these “record what graduate students in poetry writing, fiction writing, and literature have to say about the special qualities of the New York School that make it a potent force for leavening and enlivening contemporary poetry in the South and elsewhere.”

It was the change in format that first caught my eye with the new KENYON Review. Editor David H. Lynn comments on this altered physical appearance, but also a great deal more about how he and the staff and editors at Kenyon Review looked at the changing landscape of its readers to update the publication:

“I am delighted to present this first issue of a new volume year and with it the boldest revisions of design and frequency in the seventy-five-year trajectory of the Kenyon Review. Even that last ‘the’ has been challenged. More on that later. But note, please, that not only the look and feel of our magazine are dramatically new. It will now appear every two months, six times a year, rather than the quarterly iterations of many decades. All of this comes after two years of questions and debate and planning.”

Read Lynn’s full commentary here (and how he got cheeky with the “the”).