Literary Magazine Reviews
Posted November 15, 2012
Alligator Juniper
Issue 17
2012
Annual
Review by Julie Nichols
Like the magazine, the alligator juniper tree is native to
Arizona (the journal is a yearly publication of Prescott College),
but, as its unusual name implies, the magazine “invites both the
regional and the exotic.” What sets this journal apart from other
lit mags is that the only avenue for submission—open to all levels,
emerging, early-career, and established—is through their national
contests. These include a general one for fiction, creative
nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and a separate Suzanne Tito
contest for fiction, CNF, and poetry...
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American Letters & Commentary
Issue 23
2012
Annual
Review by Julie Nichols
American Letters & Commentary defines itself as “innovative,” “challenging,” “daring,” and “diverse.” In this issue, John Phillip Santos reviews the poetry of John Matthias, saying that his “work imbeds us in his mind’s ceaseless flow of intimate memories, archival citations, insurrectionary readings, free associations and liberated play that seeks to unsettle the unexamined phenomenology of the reader’s attention to the world.” These phrases characterize ALC 23 as a whole...
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American Literary Review
Volume 23 Number 1
Spring 2012
Biannual
Review by Mary Florio
In The Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (January, 2006), researchers argue that “emotion enhances remembrance of neutral events past.”1
Investigators speculated that the reason for this might have to do
with more pointed attention during the coding process or enhancement
after the event, but what they showed more centrally was that
emotion enhances long-term memory, “determining what will later be
remembered or forgotten…
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Beloit Poetry Journal
Volume 63 Number 1
Fall 2012
Quarterly
Review by Charles Davenport
Whenever I review a poetry journal, I look for one or two poems that stitch all the poems to each other and, ultimately, to the fabric of my conscience. I trust the editors, whenever possible, to produce a publication that ties itself together with a common theme, a certain style, or a period in literary history, to name a few of the devices at an editorial team’s disposal. If I leave myself open to all the ways that such a “stitching” can happen, I am almost always pleased—as I am with the Fall 2012 Beloit Poetry Journal, which is a gem of a journal. …
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Blue Mesa Review
Issue 25
Spring 2012
Annual
Review by David R. Matteri
Blue Mesa Review, a product of the creative writing program of the University of New Mexico, almost did not see publication this year. Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Rose Richardson reports that her fellow editors had to fight to keep their magazine alive during their school’s funding crisis: “They organized fund raisers, attended countless meetings, and they brainstormed in order to bring you this very issue you’re holding. Each editor gave above and beyond to ensure this issue had a chance to make it.” The folks at Blue Mesa
have a lot to be proud …
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Chinese Literature Today
Volume 2 Number 2
2012
Biannual
Review by Charles Davenport
In his editor’s Note, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Jonathan C. Stalling
explains that part of the publication’s mission is to offer “to
non-experts a multifaceted portal into contemporary China through
literature and literary studies.” To do this, he refers readers to
the issue’s featured scholar, Yue Daiyun, whose work in comparative
literature has led to the conclusion that the traditions of the West
and those of China (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) no longer
exist independently of the other. …
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Harvard Review
Number 42
2012
Biannual
Review by Cara Bigony
Reading the Harvard Review was a pleasure. I could read this journal anyway I liked. I could freefall, flipping forward fifty pages at a whim, and know whichever piece I landed on would catch me. The obvious wow-factors include Spain’s poet laureate, Vincente Aleixandre; Antoni Tàpies, a Catalan painter whose work has been displayed at the most prestigious museums around the world; and Charles Simic, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellowship recipient. …
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jubilat
Issue 21
2012
Biannual
Review by Sarah Carson
Jubilat 21 is an eclectic issue packed with both surrealism and honesty, insight and fun. I’ve always loved jubilat for the bold, inventive work it features, and this issue is no exception.
Oddly enough, I think my favorite piece in the issue is an essay by
Lee Ann Roripaugh called “’Poem as Mirror Box: Mirror Neurons,
Emotions, Phantom Limbs, and Poems of Loss and Elegy.” I say oddly
enough because …
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The Labletter
2012
Annual
Review by Cara Bigony
The Labletter is the product of a small group of artists in Oregon who wrote together for ten years before inviting formal submissions. At its core, the Lab was a place where artists could experiment with their work and benefit from the group’s diverse mediums. The journal’s fourth annual issue stays true to its Oregon Lab roots—it is steeped in nature, whether captured by the photographer, the novelist, the poet, or the painter. …
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The Los Angeles Review
Volume 11
Spring 2012
Biannual
Review by Aimee Nicole
This issue of The Los Angeles Review is packed with
nonfiction, fiction, poetry, interviews, reviews, and even a special
feature on John Rechy. At just under 300 pages, it is truly a wonder
how the editors were able to include so many genres and forms. Rechy
was impossibly lucky to have the first piece of fiction he submitted
be published. He was a gay hustler who needed physical affection,
even after becoming a successful writer. His writing is poignant,
vivid, and mesmerizing …
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Palooka
Number 4
2012
Biannual
Review by Kirsten McIlvenna
The cover art for this issue—“The Little Prince” by Andrew Robertson—speaks greatly to the aura of the writing held within. The Little Prince stands on his asteroid, back turned to us, with just his rose. The fiction, poetry, and nonfiction held within the magazine emit these same senses of loneliness and solitude, though in a way that is both beautiful and poetic. …
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Redivider
Volume 9 Issue 2
Spring 2012
Biannual
Review by David R. Matteri
Redivider releases their spring 2012 issue loaded with a mix of strong and diverse works of fiction and poetry. From the absurd to the tragic, this issue was a pleasure to read from beginning to end.
“After School” by Matthew Baker is about two siblings waiting for
their mother to pick them up after school. Time goes by, but their
mother never shows up. Something is wrong. The youngest sibling, our
narrator, thinks that maybe their mother simply forgot …
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Rhino
2012
Annual
Review by Mitchell Jarosz
It’s Rhino. I don’t know how long it’s been around, but it is one of the best annual collections of poetry you can find. Once you know the quality is there, what would you like me to tell you? It’s always good. If you are not familiar with it, you can count on it to enrich your day and entertain your evening. If you are familiar with it, you look forward to it. So, what did I do?
…
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Sakura Review
Volume 3
Spring 2012
Biannual
Review by Sarah Carson
Upon reading Volume III of Sakura Review, I had an immediate interest in finding out what the word “Sakura” referred to. I, of course, went first to Wikipedia where I learned that “sakura” might refer to “the Japanese term for ornamental cherry blossom trees and their blossoms.”
“Ahhhh…” I said to myself (ok, not literally), this made sense not
only because the cover of the issue featured a little pink flower …
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Southern Humanities Review
Volume 46 Number 3
Summer 2012
Quarterly
Review by Mary Florio
When money’s involved, what constitutes a document can be volcanically contested. Prior drafts, letters of intent, symbols sketched on a corner of a tablecloth are material one way or the other, if at all. Not so with every literary magazine. The summer 2012 issue of Southern Humanities Review
is the first out of maybe twelve issues that I’ve reviewed that is
curiously harmonic …
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upstreet
Number 8
2012
Annual
Reviewed by Kenneth Nichols
What makes the lit mag experience special? Editor Vivian Dorsel provides one interesting answer in the short introductory essay that opens this issue of upstreet. Dorsel describes the experience of arriving in Bermuda for a vacation. The narrow Bermudan roads wind you “through a landscape both commonplace and exotic—simple cottages and family homes and forms and hues foreign to your native New England, palm trees in myriad sizes, shapes and shades of green whose fronds clatter in the gusty wind . . .” …
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