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At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Books :: Dafur Diaries


Darfur Diaries
Stories of Survival
Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro
Published by Nation Books

In November 2004, three independent filmmakers traveled to eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur. Improvising as they went, they spoke with dozens of Darfurians, learning about their history, hopes, and fears, and the resilience and tragedy of their everyday lives.

In February of 2003 following years of oppression, the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government. The response to the rebellion was a brutal campaign by the government and allied militias of mass murder, rape and the wholesale destruction of villages and livelihood. Millions of people were displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed.

This book introduces us to those who remain: the refugees and displaced people, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders, whose collective testimonies provide the heart of Darfur Diaries. Their stories, interwoven with the filmmakers’ own personal narratives and conveyed with political and historical context, provide a much-needed account to help understand the tragic situation in Darfur.

Books :: Humanitarian Imperialism

Humanitarian Imperialism
Using Human Rights to Sell War
by Jean Bricmont
Translated by Diana Johnstone
Published by Monthly Review Press

From the MRP web site: Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world’s leading economic and military powers-above all, the United States-in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention-discovering new “Hitlers” as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.

Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.

Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont’s book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.

Poets Wanted :: Library of Congress Reading Series

The Poetry at Noon Reading Series at the Library of Congress seeks submissions for the 2007-08 season. To apply, pick one or two themes from among these: “Magic and Magicians” (reading Oct. 9), “Love Poems (reading Feb 12), or Family Names and Nicknames (reading April 22). Include a cover sheet with the theme as the title; list your name, address, phone, and email; include a one-paragraph bio. Submit 2 of your own poems on the theme and 3 by other poets. Open to poets who have not read in the series in the past 3 years. Deadline: July 15 (postmarked). Send to: Patricia Gray, Library of Congress, Poetry and Literature Center, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20540-4861.

NewPages Recognized in UTNE Reader

Let’s REVIEW
Publications that help readers navigate (and evaluate) the indie press
by Danielle Maestretti
UTNE Reader, July/August 2007

“NewPages is the web’s alt-press playground. It’s tough to stop by for a quick visit; you may go for the reviews, but you’ll stay for the guides, with pages upon pages of links to alternative magazines, small book publishers, and independent bookstores…”

To read more, pick up the latest issue of UTNE Reader – or better yet – SUBSCRIBE!

Resources :: Academy of American Poets

The official website of Academy of American Poets (sponsors of National Poetry Month), Poets.org offers hundreds of essays and interviews about poetry, biographies of more than 500 poets, almost 2,000 poems, and audio clips of 150 poems.

For Educators, the Online Poetry Classroom offers a wealth of resources, including Discussion Forums where teachers can share ideas and seek help from colleagues; Pedagogical & Critical Essays about poetry; extensive links to relevant websites; Curriculum Units & Lesson Plans; biographies of hundreds of poets; and over 2,000 poems.

For Writers, visit the Publishing FAQ, which provides reading resources for the budding poet and answers questions abouts where to submit your poems, what poetry scams to be wary of, and where to get good feedback on your work. There are also more than 400 essays and interviews on Poets.org, and many of them deal with the writing process. Read prose pieces that discuss poetic techniques, interviews about the writing life, and browse our glossaries of poetic terms and concepts.

Visit Poets.org today and consider joining the Academy of America Poets.

Brilliant Book Art :: Nina Katchadourian


Sorted Books Project
“The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.”

DeBoer Distribution…or not

Upstreet publisher (Vivian) provides an intense three-part blog on literary magazine distribution woes, and calls out DeBoer for unethical behavior, but not without fairly assessing the why and what she has chosen to do about it. Lit mags looking for distribution may want to take close note: The Upstreet Fan Club blog

Submissions :: Maya Angelou Reference Book

Facts On File, a New York publisher of reference books for schools and libraries, is seeking a scholar to write a one-volume reference book on Maya Angelou, focusing on critical analysis of her works. The ideal author will have a Ph.D., broad knowledge of Angelou’s life and works, and an ability to write clearly and succinctly for students in both high school and college. This large project (250,000-300,000 words) must be completed within two years. Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines will be required. If interested please send letter and cv, preferably by e-mail, to Jeff Soloway, Executive Editor Facts on File, Inc., jsoloway@factsonfile.com.

New Lit Site :: Video Poetry

The Continental Review “The web’s first forum devoted exclusively to poets and writers on video. It’s a continuously updated journal of video-readings and video-interviews with some interesting and well-known members of the literary community. Our launch, for example, featured vids by the likes of Linh Dinh, Noah Eli Gordon, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Allyssa Wolf, and Tom Beckett, and we’ll soon be broadcasting an interview, direct from Paris,with the great Cole Swenson, as well as many other new episodes.”

E-Books :: Snow Monkey

When the editors of Snow Monkey “feel a need to concentrate on a certain something, they produce an eBook”; in collaboration with Ravenna Press, the following are available via Adobe Reader download and are (as far as I can tell) chapbook-size collections of poetry: Music Volleys Through; Gustatory in Nature; To the Music of Mid-November Rain & Snow.

To download and view, visit Snow Monkey: An Eclectic Journal

Million Writers Award Winners Announced

The winner of the 2007 Million Writers Award for best online short story is “Urchins, While Swimming” by Catherynne M. Valente, published in Clarkesword Magazine. Valente’s story received 31% of the public vote. The runner-ups were “All the Way to Grangeville” by A. Ray Norsworthy (Eclectica Magazine) and “The Infinite Monkey Theorem” by Marshall Moore (Word Riot).

Poetry Anthology :: American Muslim and American Jewish 9.30.07

CROSSING LIMITS is a community outreach project of both the American Muslim and American Jewish Communities. It invites poets who locate themselves within the broad cultural, secular and/or religious contexts of the Muslim and Jewish communities to submit original poetry for an upcoming anthology. There are no subject matter restrictions. Previously published poems are acceptable IF author owns rights or provides permission statement(s). Simultaneous submissions are also accepted. Please paste 1-5 poems as text into the body of an e-mail to:CrossingLimits2(at)aol.com(replace (at) with @) OR submit by land mail to: Crossing Limits, P. O. Box 81268, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. Deadline: September 30, 2007.

Open Letters Quiz :: Piggies!

“There’s nothing quite like a good quiz, but they’ve become intensely problematic in this age of instantaneous Internet content. Google and Wikipedia are pirate-coves for the lazy and the cheatful, and so the monthly Open Letters quiz will rely entirely on the honor system: readers are expected to rely on their memories alone. And no quiz would be complete without incentive! The first reader to respond with the highest number of correct answers will receive a book in the mail, courtesy of the editors at Open Letters.” Take the quiz on Open Letters – and let us know if you win (esp. since I couldn’t get past the first question!).

College Prep Egyptian Style

Education Ordeal
by Dena Rashed
Al-Ahram Weekly, June 28 – July 4, 2007

“Looking at Sahar Zakaria, a mother of two, you’d think she was the one taking the thanawiya amma (TA) exams. It’s actually her daughter. For two years now Zakaria has been following up on her daughter’s studies, making sure she does her work and, well, worrying. For her part Heba Khaled, said daughter, is significantly more relaxed: “I’ve been TA mode for two years, I’m sort of used to its kind of stress by now.” But having obtained an average grade of 64 per cent last year, Khaled is already aware that her state-university options are already limited…”

Read more on Al-Ahram Weekly

New Issue & Contest :: The Mad Hatter’s Review

The Mad Hatter’s Review, Issue 8
Stop for tea and stay a while!

From Carol Novack, editor and publisher:
“We’re extremely pleased to present our most extravagant and colossal uber issue to date, overflowing with wondrous featured art, music and writings. Many of the written offerings (in our main issue) were chosen by our guest editor Debra Di Blasi in concert with our literary editors. Our guest editor was also responsible for introducing us to solicited offerings by several cutting edge writers, as well as the very fine art of Anne Austin Pearce and the stunning music of Christopher Willits. As usual, we are offering new and updated columns, book reviews, cartoons, custom-made art and collages, videos, a featured country or part of country section (in this issue, Part I of the already much e-buzzed about ‘Eclectic England’).”

The Mad Hatter’s Review also offers a biannual contest for written works inspired by the current image on their site.

The Mad Hatter’s submission period is open September 8 – 22, but as any good writer knows: READ BEFORE YOU SUBMIT!

Postal Hiked Up My…

I received this correspondence in response to my letter writing to express concern for the fate of the small press if postal rate hikes were to go into effect. Bottom line is: rates went up, and the “incentive” the postal service means to provide is a euphemism for “screw ’em.” Any publishers/small press folks out there want to respond – please write me and I’ll post commentary here – maybe I’m way off on this, and we’ll all be just fine…

(Oh, and my favorite part of this was undergoing gender reassignment…)

***

UNITED STATES
POSTAL SERVICE

June 12, 2007

Mr. Denise R. Hill
Editor
NewPages
Post Office Box 1580
Bay City, Ml 48706-1580

Dear Mr. Hill:

This responds to your recent letter to Postmaster General John E. Potter concerning the approved rate increase for Periodicals.

While most United Postal Service price changes and new mailing standards went into effect on May 14, 2007 (including the 41-cent price for First Class Mail stamps), the Postal Service Board of Governors delayed the implementation of new Periodical prices and mailing standards until July 15, 2007. The delay will give mailers and the Postal Service more time to prepare for the new pricing structure recommended by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The United Postal Service has proposed revisions to the Periodical (magazine and newspaper) portion of its mailing standards that will accompany the new Periodical pricing that will go into effect on July 15, 2007. Periodical mailers will have new incentives to use efficient containers and bundles, and copalletization (publishers/printers merging bundles from separate publications or titles on the same pallet) becomes a permanent offering to encourage more publishers to combine mailings.

You may visit our website at www.usps.com for the proposed revised standards. This site also contains rate charts and other helpful information for mailers.

You can be assured that we will continue our efforts to keep our cost as low as possible while continuing to provide the American public with consistent, reliable, and economical mail service.

Sameatria Morton
Consumer Research Analyst
Reference: HQ31719362

***

Is it just me, or does “copalletization” sound smutty?

Writers Revealed

Join host Felicia Sullivan (editor and publisher of Small Spiral Notebook) each week in a new kind of Sunday Book Review. Participate in live discussions, book giveaways, and opportunities to get between the sheets with some of today’s most buzzworthy writers. Writers Revealed is not about name-dropping obscure authors and talking about the “process” of writing – this show is all about the hilarious and heartbreaking stories you can relate to. Archives available on podcast.

Coming up:
Sunday, July 8 – I Love You, Let’s Meet
@7PM EST / 4PM PST
Virginia Vitzthum

Sunday, July 15 – Ace of Spades
@7PM EST / 4PM PST
David Matthews

Human Rights Watch

“Human Rights Watch is the largest human rights organization based in the United States. Human Rights Watch researchers conduct fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in all regions of the world.”

Recent Photo Essays:
Gay Rights Under Attack in Russia
Wal-Mart Denies Workers Basic Rights
Iran: Release Women’s Rights Advocates
Sri Lanka – Karuna Group Abducts Children for Combat
…and dozens more archived.

Recent HRW Publications available online, print, or as .pdf download:
Indiscriminate Fire: Palestinian Rocket Attacks on Israel and Israeli Artillery Shelling in the Gaza Strip
Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines
Unfinished Business: Serbia’s War Crimes Chamber
The Poisoned Chalice: A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper on the Decision of the Iraqi High Tribunal in the Dujail Case
Bottom of the Ladder
Exploitation and Abuse of Girl Domestic Workers in Guinea
…and many, many more.

Poet’s Favorite Movies

Visit Speechless: Straight out of L.A.—the oddest little literary magazine on the Web

Suzanne Lummis invited a select group of poets to “name their ten favorite movies—or twelve, or seven, or fifteen, or however many they had…” with the resulting opinion that “now we know how different the Top Grossing Movies of all Times list would look if poets would just spend more money attending the ones of their choice—or, if the world had more poets. No Titanic, no Star Wars sequels, no Passion of the Christ…”

Each poet is given their own page on which the movies are listed and comments noted. Some of the poets include: John Allman, Ellen Bass, Wanda Colean, Allen Ginsberg, Terence Hayes, Philip Levine, Judith Taylor, and a couple dozen more.

Visit: Poet’s Favorite Movies

zines we got :: July 2

The Cupboard, Volume 8

dig, #12
Jennifer Love Grove

Galatea’s Pants, #20
Lauren Eggert-Crowe

Jesus the Non-Denominational Robot, Volume 1
Ryan Sotomayer

miss karen is stylish
manda hadley

Pudd’nhead, #3
Mike Pudd’nhead

The 7 Habits of Highly Negative People
Lev

underworld crawl, number five
R. Lee

Words and Pictures
Andy C.

Zen Baby, #17

Beyond Sicko

Michael Moore’s Sicko
by Christopher Hayes
The Nation
Posted June 27, 2007 (July 16, 2007 issue)

“In what may be a tacit acknowledgment of this unfortunate fact, Sicko is different from Moore’s last two efforts. Not just because of an absence of gimmicky gotcha moments, or a reduction in screen time for Moore himself, but because its topic isn’t fundamentally polarizing in the way his previous works were. There’s a whole lot of Americans who love their guns, and in 2004 there were a lot of Americans who loved their President, but it’s pretty hard to find anyone who loves their health insurance company.”

Read the rest at The Nation

Hip-Hop and Politics

Hip-Hop Dogmatism and Potential Problems for Political Organizing
by Matthew Birkhold
June 8, 2007

“Over the last few months hip-hop has been under attack in the mainstream media. However, the political hip-hop community (PHHC) — a group comprised of socially conscious hip-hop fans, grassroots activists, prominent hip-hop generation artists and intellectuals — has not been silenced. We have defended hip-hop from outside and feel confident in our defense. Unfortunately, most of our attempts to defend hip-hop have deflected valid criticisms of the music and culture. In response, this essay argues that being hip-hop is often a roadblock to intellectual honesty and hinders political organizing by allowing us to deflect critique.”

Read the rest on Wiretap

Story Podcasts :: McDermott

Winter of Different Directions Blog/Podcast
by Steven J. McDermott
Each week since mid-January, McDermott has read a story from his short story collection Winter of Different Directions. These can be accessed free as an mp3 you can listen to from your browser or download into your mp3 player. In addition to the podcast, McDermott has posted commentary on the story over in the Storyglossia litblog: “The Story Behind the Story.” This includes history on where the story came from, why he wrote it, how it changed in its various revisions, as well as some of the craft issues he was working on in the story.

Student Free Press Rights

Virginia High School to Revise Policy After Controversial Articles Published
June 28, 2007

VIRGINIA — A Fairfax County high school has removed a newspaper adviser and said it will revise school policy on student publications after the student newspaper released two controversial issues in March.

The Lake Braddock High School student newspaper, The Bear Facts, landed itself in controversy when it published its March 2 issue that included articles on homosexuality, transsexuality and review of a documentary about bestiality, and its March 30 issue that carried a story on Post Secret, a Web site that posts anonymous contributors’ secrets displayed on homemade postcards. Although the school did not punish the student newspaper staff for circulating these issues, faculty member Daniel Weintraub has been removed from his adviser position and the school has signaled that it plans to modify student editorial policy for the upcoming school year.

Read the rest as well as other articles at the Student Press Law Center

New Issue Posted :: STORYGLOSSIA

Storyglossia Issue 20 2007
If you haven’t been reading along as each story has been released, the full Issue 20 is now available featuring stories by: Conor Robin Madigan, Eileen Corder, Elizabeth Ellen, Myfanway Collins, Jocelyn Johnson, David Michael Wolach, Marcela Fuentes, Mark Spencer, Shubha Venugopal, Jacquie Powers, Michael Wigdor, Sabrina Tom, Julee Newberger, and Priscilla Rhoades.

Lit Mag Mailbag :: July 1

Fourteen Hills
Volume 13 Number 2, Summer/Fall 2007

Grain Magazine
Volume 34 Number 4, Spring 2007

Jubilat
13, 2007

Minnetonka Review
Issue 1, Summer 2007

Missouri Review, The
Volume 30 Number 2, Summer 2007

Poetry
Volume 190 Number 4, July/August 2007

Virginia Quarterly Review
“Framing the War”
Volume 83 Number 3, Summer 2007

How to Save the World

A book worth note in these days and times of “woe is me” and “what can I do about it?” and “I have to do SOMETHING!”

Building Powerful Community Organizations
A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World
by Michael Jacoby Brown (Long Haul Press)
A guidebook for people who want to make a difference in the world and know they can’t do it alone. This new book, with stories, personal exercises and lessons learned, provides detailed information to help you build a new group or strengthen an old one to solve problems in your community, workplace or the world. It includes details about how to:
Take specific steps to build an effective group from the start
Revitalize an existing group
Tap into the special resources and talents of your particular community or group
Recruit participants and keep them active – so that all the work does not fall on your shoulders
Inspire others to take on tasks and responsibility
Structure the group so that it runs the way you want it to
Foster members’ passion for the cause
Run meetings that engage your members and achieve your goals
Raise money to keep the work going
Plan and carry out effective actions to win improvements in the real world
Reflect and learn from your actions to build a powerful group for the long haul
Build a sense of caring and community within your organization

Poem: Christine Boyka Kluge

The Way Fire Talks to Wood
by Christine Boyka Kluge
“In front of me in line, a man hisses at a woman. I can’t distinguish all of the words, but the words don’t matter; his voice crackles and stings. He talks to her the way fire talks to wood…”

Read the rest and more on Pif, “one of the oldest, continually published literary zines online.”

A Public Space – Winter 2007

For those who enjoyed the first two issues of A Public Space, get ready for more of the same. The journal has settled into a steady routine: its “If You See Something, Say Something” department contains a mélange of cultural criticism and ruminations on environmental changes; its comics confront the potential disunity of strict cultural roles; its poetry is experimental and edgy. It’s the poetry which is most improved, particularly Eugene Ostashevsky’s “DJ Spinoza” and Anne Carson’s “Zeus Bits” (the latter a series of lighthearted fragments worthy of Fence). In fiction, Martha Cooley’s “Month Girls” features three word processors (April, May and June) telling the stories of their names to an orphaned coworker; the arbitrariness of a name provides a smooth segue into emotional indifference. Continue reading “A Public Space – Winter 2007”

Bathtub Gin – Spring/Summer 2007

Despite an impending hiatus, Editor Christopher Harter is optimistic that Issue 20 will not be the last batch of Bathtub Gin. The challenges of producing a lit journal be damned: Harter expects Gin to reach legal drinking age. The stapled, zine-sized journal features new and familiar artists contributing pieces on war, work and marginalization. Carmen Germain’s broken verse gets better with each read, specifically in the fight between a homeowner and a nest-building wasp in “Work Like This”: “Work like this makes / work. I aim the garden // hose, sorry that killing / comes to what’s / mine, what’s yours.” Continue reading “Bathtub Gin – Spring/Summer 2007”

Birmingham Poetry Review – Summer/Fall 2006

BPR is one of those slim, no-nonsense poetry journals that publishes a strong selection of the best work that comes their way, followed by several book reviews. No filler, no academia, no kidding. In that spirit, I’ll just get down to a couple of the poems I admired most, starting with James Doyle’s playful “Magritte,” in which “an admirer / has slid the skeleton of a pheasant” through the surrealist painter’s mail slot. Continue reading “Birmingham Poetry Review – Summer/Fall 2006”

CALYX – Winter 2007

I’m happy to report that there are some absolute gems in this issue of Calyx. I particularly enjoyed the fiction; many of the stories here feature strong, distinct voices and new approaches to common themes. Raima Evan’s “Gittel and the Golden Carp” is a fish-out-of-water tale which presents us with a Polish-American immigrant who feels uneasy in her new country, but whose strange encounter with a talking carp from the butcher’s helps her come to terms with it. Another sharp tale is Annie Weatherwax’s “Eating Cake,” which features Missy, a young adult whose homosexual brother has been killed in a hate crime; in Missy’s small town full of people intolerant of boys who meet other boys in the woods, sympathy is often laced with judgment. Missy is wry, she’s smartmouthed, and she’s almost moved to violent retaliation against a closed-minded church lady who insults her brother’s memory. This is a perceptive look at lives left behind by murder, as well as an acknowledgment of the potential for rage and violence in all of us. Continue reading “CALYX – Winter 2007”

Circumference – 2007

Sometimes, when you’ve read a large number of literary magazines, you begin to feel that one seems much like another. There is no danger of that happening with Circumference. This lively journal of poetry in translation presents a variety of poetic voices, languages, and styles through the ages. Continue reading “Circumference – 2007”

The Florida Review – Spring 2007

At 170 pages, The Florida Review provides a little something for everyone: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, and book reviews. Some stand-out pieces include poems by Denise Duhamel (“Spoon” and “A Flower of Fish”), and an interview with poet Peter Meinke, who talks about his love for Donne’s “mixture of wit, formalism, and passion.” Continue reading “The Florida Review – Spring 2007”

Review :: Fourth Genre – Spring 2007

Fourth Genre is the cacophony of reality sifted through arcs of narrative. Each issue raises the bar of representing reality, because it gives a new slice of it to the reader. Good fiction aches for verisimilitude or its opposite, and this issue of Fourth Genre proves that the rules are applicable to both life and the “unreal” life of fiction. This issue contains the editors’ prize winning essays, Nedra Rogers’s first place winner “Mammalian” and Casey Fleming’s runner-up piece “Take Me with You.” “Mammalian” begins with bodily concerns and ends with a flourish of quotes, including Erich Fromm’s famous: “Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.” A fixation on the concept of physical self pervades many of the creative nonfiction pieces in the issue. “Alone in Amsterdam” by P.M. Marxsen begins with a quaint conversation between the characters of a painting and its attendant observer, a woman “alone in Amsterdam.” Rebecca J. Butorac’s “A Self-Portrait of a Woman Who Hates Cameras” has a body-oriented narrative interspersed with pictures of her feet, shoes, and the various personalities of the combinations possible therein. Susan Messer’s great story, “Regrets Only,” focuses on the need for a group of people to get away from their troubled friend. The narrative shakes the reader out of lethargy and then further into shock. The reader begins to think, “Is trouble contagious?”

Continue reading “Review :: Fourth Genre – Spring 2007”

Image – Spring 2007

For a literary journal that is “informed by – or grapples with – religious faith,” Image is really “with it”. Editor Gregory Wolfe’s introductory essay “East and West in Miniature” is a discourse on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent controversial lecture, and meditates on the issue of Islamic extremism in the light of some mystic concepts. Continue reading “Image – Spring 2007”

Isotope – Spring/Summer 2007

If you ever thought science and literature didn’t get along, Isotope will prove you wrong. Non-fiction is the strength of this issue. Much is similarly styled in the use of densely layered narratives which are both story and informative (science) writing. David Gessner’s essay, “Field Notes on my Daughter” is as much about his daughter and the family of foxes he observes as it is about his being a father, a scientific observer, a writer, and what all of this means together in one human existence. It’s an amazing piece that, like the observation notes he writes and analyzes, becomes its own surprising creation. So, too, are non-fiction works by Bonnie J. Rough (“Looking for Sacajawea”), Jeffery Thomson (“Turbulence”), Pete Gomben (“Succession”) and George Handley (“Eddies”). If I had been able to learn natural science and history from reading these works in high school, I may have had a much greater appreciation for the discipline – or at least higher grades. As it is, with bare minimum science knowledge, every piece in this magazine is accessible, educational and enjoyable. Continue reading “Isotope – Spring/Summer 2007”

Journal of Ordinary Thought – Winter 2007

Test the weight of your best thoughts. If they are turgid with inspiration, and quotes like “To be or not to be,” then you are beyond the ordinary good writer. The Journal of Ordinary Thought (JOT) is for those writers who realize that editing is half the writing, and to get to the level of an everyday Shakespeare, there are many thoughts that need to be discarded or reshaped. JOT imagines the landscape of thought as one where no words should be culled. All the ordinariness of language is settled here like the surface of a sea of jetsam and flotsam. Sounds bad, right? But the effect is quite the opposite. In her short essay “Me and Time,” Pennie Holmes-Brinson begins: “Time and I don’t get along well.” She continues the personification of time with sentences like “Then it stands there with one hand on its hip, pointing at its wristwatch with another hand, and reaching out at me with yet another hand!” JOT is littered with such gems, and they all lie on the surface. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Winter 2007”

The Kenyon Review – Spring 2007

This issue of The Kenyon Review contains three absolutely delicious article-length book reviews of collected letters: The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005), reviewed by Willard Spiegelman; Love Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt (2005), reviewed by Sam Pickering; and A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (2005), reviewed by Saskia Hamilton. (Hamilton’s review is double, covering also the 2005 Selected Poems by James Wright.) These critiques of three great 20th century poets emphasize the personal letter—that intimate form of correspondence, sadly retired in our internet-driven world—as an art form. The reviewers’ insights into the life and work of Lowell, Clampitt, and Wright renew my reverence for them; yes, I will read the letters and return once again to their poetry! Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Spring 2007”

The Meadow – 2007

While the title may give the impression of wide open spaces, this publication is anything but in its content. A mere 87 pages is packed with over 30 contributors of artwork, poetry, prose (fiction/non-fiction? can’t always tell), and an interview with Ellen Hopkins (author of the poetry novel Crank). The authorship range is varied, with contributions coming from Truckee Meadows Community College students to such well knowns as Suzanne Roberts and Lyn Lifshin (“I Remember Haifa Being Lovely But” reprint). Part of the Hopkins’s interview focuses on the Ash Canyon Poets, some of whose work is featured. Hopkins agrees with the interviewer that the poets’ focus on place is “fed mostly by this stunning place where we live.” Continue reading “The Meadow – 2007”