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The issue contains both poems that address current events and poems with timeless themes. The best poems, as often happens, combine both the relevant and the timeless aspects. Bob Hicok, a professor at Virginia Tech, writes such poems, their main focus his silent student who became a killer: “[…]the code for language= / sight. Even now, I go back and listen / to what he was saying by not saying, I look / at my memory of the unsounding / […]but there’s nothing, no knob of sound” (“Mute”). After describing the particular murderer, he asks the general question that all witnesses ask: “why did this happen,” – a common enough question in the aftermath of any tragedy, but poignant nonetheless because no one has yet given a satisfactory answer. Susan Stewart’s response to another massacre – this one in the Amish community – is to use the victims’ names as a refrain throughout her poem. Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – Sept/Oct 2007”

If you’re looking for writing that skirts, tunnels under, or transcends the ordinary, open any issue of The Bitter Oleander. Beyond any other criterion, this journal prefers provocative work – work that engenders a change in the mind of the reader, whether that change involves heightened sociopolitical awareness, or simply a gorgeous revolution of one’s perception of words and sound. Indeed, the best indicator of The Bitter Oleander’s character may be the uncompromising language found on nearly every page. Consider a sampling of lines from this issue’s poetry selections: “Your face breaks open to light” (Jacob Russell, “The Sea Bandits”); “the incarnate heart in your mouth pricks you” (Estrella del Valle, “My Room and Justine”); “Every morning the sun rises behind the guardhouses / wearing filthy hospital pajamas” (Titos Patrikios, “Habits of the Detainees,” in translation from the Greek). The short fiction offers similar raw intensity in lines like these from “Tale of a Long Winter” byAllen Kesten: “She remembered standing on her head after she had cut away the skin from her thighs, rivulets of blood running down her body and drying like prison bars on her torso.” Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Spring 2007”

I’ve recently begun teaching in the inner-city, so I thought I might find reading material for my freshman from the Bronx Biannual: The Journal of Urbane Urban Literature. Although I soon discovered that the explicit content guaranteed that these weren’t stories I’d casually give fourteen-year-old students, this issue contains great reading for the more mature reader. Continue reading “Bronx Biannual – Number 2”

Prose poetry is a genre I was introduced to a year ago when reading poetry by James Galvin. His poems intrigued me and forced me to ask what the definition of prose poetry really is. The guest editor of CUE’s thin volume (the entire journal can fit snugly into the pocket of my fall coat), Jason Zuzga, defines it as being the “self in process […] in prose proper […] something like Montaigne thinking on the page in an essay.” His words are an apt description for the prose poetry in this volume. On an initial glance at the form of these seventeen poems, some look like carefully placed lines of free verse and others appear almost as stream of consciousness paragraphs. On further inspection, all contain writers’ detailed observations – though maybe not quite as astute as Montaigne’s – on the visible universe that enlightens the invisible thoughts and emotions. Continue reading “CUE – Winter 2007”

Making good on its name, Dislocate does not identify genres, leaving it to the reader to discern each work. The second print issue features the usual suspects – poetry, fiction, essays, interviews – as well as a one-act play by Monica Hill and reprinted poems by John Berryman. One story, “Double Concerto” by Robert Wexelblatt, is ideally suited to the issue’s format, as it uses a point-of-view shift to play with genre expectations. Other prose offerings are more straight-ahead but no less rewarding, especially Michael Sower’s essay “Writing Notes: the Chateau and the Chalkboard,” about a different kind of dislocation: that of moving from lawyering to writing and teaching poetry. Continue reading “Dislocate – 2006”

With this issue, Fourteen Hills has captured at least one more subscriber for itself. Both the fiction and the poetry are innovative and powerful. This is business as usual, judging by previous reviews here on NewPages. In “Population One” by Don Waters, winner of the 2007 Iowa Short Fiction Award, we find a story Cormac McCarthy might write if he wrote short fiction. As a trip through the murderous heat of the desert turns disastrous for the two main characters, we are reminded of how the innocent and the guilty are each a little bit of both, and, in the end, chained to the same fate. John Henry Fleming contributes to this issue with his beautiful and mysterious story entitled “Cloud Reader.” The cloud reader, a humbly Socratic, Christ-like figure, struggles not to betray his convictions when instead he could take the easy way out. This is after the townspeople turn against him only days after they sought (and even paid for) a prophetic word from the mysterious wanderer. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – Summer/Fall 2007”

This issue of Inkwell contains a batch of strong short stories, many of which focus on the female psyche. Besides a couple lapses into a male’s perspective in the opening story by Alethea Black, Peter Selggin’s novel excerpt and Anthony Roesch’s “Two Good Dogs,” the remainder of the stories are told about females or from a female’s point of view. These stories are not necessarily feminist; many simply deal with problems often attributed as “female issues”: Kathryn Henion’s “Translating Silence” with jealously; Amy Ralston Seife’s “What We Do” with depression; Edward Kelsey Moore’s “Ruth and the Beer” and Susi Klare’s “Cosmo” with unhealthy attachment; and Melissa Palladino’s “Spring Cleaning” with guilt (among other issues). Continue reading “Inkwell – Spring 2007”

“Mandorla,” the Italian word for “almond,” refers to the almond-shaped intersection between two overlapping circles. An ancient symbol of the union of opposites, the mandorla has represented, throughout the history of both Eastern and Western cultures, a sacred space within which a mortal being can realize his or her divine potential. Continue reading “Mandorla – 2006”

A fanciful painting of a woman dressed in a flowing blue brocade-patterned gown and an elaborate masquerade-ball mask, her mouth jet-red and her head tilted coyly, graces the cover of The Missouri Review’s summer issue, which bears the tag “Truth in Fancy.” The work inside lives up to this promise – especially the fiction, the surreal cast of which mirrors the lush strangeness of Ray Caesar’s cover painting. Continue reading “The Missouri Review – Summer 2007”

Appropriately, this issue begins with Jan Wildt’s brief but interesting essay on the intersection between mainstream literature and science fiction. Justifiably vaunted writers such as Pynchon, Vidal, Atwood and Lethem have been shortlisted for the Nebula Award, yet few would label them as SF writers. Does genre fiction deserve a different standing in our contemporary canon? Continue reading “New Genre – Spring 2007”

As a student of both Russian culture and language, I was pleased to read the explanations of icons by both John Kinsella and Alexander Deriev in this issue of The Notre Dame Review themed “Icons & Incomings.” Even Russian natives debate endlessly the definition and purpose of icons, so it was helpful that this issue contains some of Deriev’s icons and Russian poems to illustrate and enhance Deriev’s observations about icons. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Summer/Fall 2007”

Once again, Salt Hill upholds its tradition of publishing fresh, flavorful, innovative fiction and poetry. The Hill serves up an invigorating trio of poems by Amit Majmudar. Reading “Merlin” is like watching a movie that never once disappoints the imagination, except that it ends too soon. The images powerfully evoke the collective pathos of human history, making this easily one of my favorite poems. The wise wizard found that “Histories resolve more justly [. . .] when you study them being rewound.” So that’s what he did. Merlin “saw the hanging before the crime” and how “fire collected smoke to build a hut, / and bums arrived to live in it.” Merlin witnessed in Dachau as “A muddy field ruptured. / Jews sprang irregularly, / flowers that they were, / the roots of their necks / sucking up blood / by capillary action / down to the last fleck, / risen rosebuds. / They grew healthy / and donned their rightful clothes / and went home wealthy / to readied ghettoes.” Merlin saw men grow young and return to the womb, being unborn, “savored,” “digested,” and so on. He eventually went back to witness the first cave paintings, back before language gave birth to history, hoping to finally make sense out of “all he has witnessed.” Continue reading “Salt Hill – 2007”

This issue contains seven essays, all extremely diverse in subject matter. From Susanna Ashton’s essay about Booker T. Washington’s use of language to Catherine Himmelwright’s argument about Kingsolver borrowing from both the Western and the Native American myths, this issue’s articles show the interplay between great Southern writers and the historical period in which they wrote. Continue reading “The Southern Literary Journal – Spring 2007”

In a beautifully designed issue devoted to the war in Iraq, The Virginia Quarterly Review makes a compelling case for why literature matters. The editor’s note, “The Dreadful Details: The Problem of Depicting War,” addresses the history of representing war’s carnage in photographs and the writing of witness, taking the position that “We must continue the painful work of bearing witness for posterity, of looking with the camera’s unblinking stare at the horrors of humankind.” Continue reading “The Virginia Quarterly Review – Summer 2007”

Smokelong Quarterly publishes flash fiction – the whole range from plot-driven mini-stories to language-twisting prose poems. Reading a new issue is strangely addictive, a bit like opening a box of chocolates and trying to eat only a few: before you know it, you’ve eaten (or rather read) it all, the box is empty, and each chocolate tasted perfect in its own way. What I like about a Smokelong-style flash is a sense of closure, of minimalist perfection. The pieces don’t feel slight or unfinished – they feel complete. If you want to know what this flash/micro/”sudden” fiction thing is all about, check out this publication. Continue reading “Smokelong Quarterly – 2007”

Storyglossia is the online magazine I turn to if I feel like reading long short stories – rich, complex stories that feel old-fashioned in the same way original wooden floors are old-fashioned: darkly lustrous and strong enough to carry some weight. The magazine’s sparse, easy-on-the-eyes layout (large font, no frills, cream-colored background) resembles a plain book page, aptly enough, since the stories compare to the offerings in printed magazines both with regards to style and length. Not very flashy, perhaps, but so satisfying! Continue reading “Storyglossia – October 2007”

VerbSap, an online magazine, publishes Concise Prose – Enough Said: Fiction and creative non-fiction, and very occasionally a poem. Work found here tends to be on the short side (at most 3000 words long), and all pieces have that surprising, jolting quality that comes from very close observation and the writer’s unwillingness to settle for the second best word. There is room for the unusual and disturbing in VerbSap‘s selections, but you’ll search in vain for gimmicks or sloppiness. Each large issue should be consumed in small sips, since these concentrated bits of fiction resonate a long time. Continue reading “VerbSap – Fall/Winter 2007”