The winter issue of The Shore marks our two year anniversary! It features engaging and moving poetry by Doug Ramspeck, A Prevett, Donald Platt, Jane Zwart, Iheoma Uzomba, Aiden Baker, Jennifer Loyd, Jane Satterfield, Emry Trantham, Dylan Ecker, Trivarna Hariharan, Karah Kemmerly, Su Cho, Laura Minor, Hannah Bridges, Eileen Winn, and more. It also features haunting photography by Ellery Beck. See a full contributor list at the Mag Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Rain Taxi Review of Books
Rain Taxi Review of Books is proud to cap off its 25th year with our 100th issue, now at the Mag Stand! For those who know the magazine, many things about it are the same—issue #100 features dozens of reviews, interviews, and essays by a wide variety of contributors discussing an astonishing array of aesthetically adventurous books. It also includes special features like a full-page poetry comic by Gary Sullivan and a letter from editor Eric Lorberer reflecting on Rain Taxi’s life at this odd but exciting time. See the complete table of contents at our website, and join us on the ride!
NewPages Mag Stand: Cleaver Magazine
In the newest issue of Cleaver Magazine, now on the Mag Stand, find: poetry by Meggie Royer, Amy Beth Sisson, Heikki Huotari, and more; nonfiction by Jinna Han, Christina Berke, Susan Hamlin, Claire Rudy Foster, and others; a visual narrative by Michael Green; short stories by Dylan Cook, L.L. Babb, and Mike Nees; flash by Steve Gergley, B. Bilby Barton, Darlene Eliot, and more; and paintings by Morgan Motes.
NewPages Mag Stand: Persephone’s Daughters
Issue Seven is three issues in one—a poetry issue, a prose issue, and an art issue. This is our largest issue to date, filled with art, poetry, and prose from domestic and sexual violence survivors, child abuse survivors, and harassment victims. Work by Taylor Drake, Sky Dai, Emma Jokinen, Elena Fite, Siri Espy, Isabella Neblett, Charlotte Kane, Carly Hall, Melanie Ward, Rachael Gay, Mae Herring, Miriam Leibowitz, Mars Rightwildish, Ranjeet Singh, and many more. We were also fortunate to be able to interview Lori Greene for the issue, who created the artwork for the United States’s first permanent memorial to sexual violence survivors. Find this issue at the Mag Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Hippocampus Magazine
For the last issue of 2020 we’re continuing to feature our Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction winner, runner-up, and finalist stories. You can find these at the Mag Stand. Also, in celebration of our Pushcart and Best of the Net nominees, this month’s content also elevates a few of our favorite archived stories back to the homepage.
What’s in a Name?
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
Not to be missed in Issue 212 of The Malahat Review: “It’s Here All the Beauty I Told You About” by Shane Rhodes.
This piece is an excerpt from a manuscript in progress. In it, Rhodes explores Shane, a 1949 Western pulp novel by Jack Schaefer; the origins of given names; and the ways in which Western novels continue to “obscure and rewrite the history of North American colonization and settlement and the racism that fuels them.”
This excerpt combines written work, cut-outs of overlapping book pages, and handwriting. Rhodes collects copies of Shane and is drawn to “the most abused copies” with writing in the margins, underlined words, browning pages, and this excerpt adopts this feeling of a much-used book. Each page offers something new and arrests the eye, a real treat to read through.
Readers can get an idea of Rhodes’s style by checking out recently published work from the same manuscript in progress in periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics.
News from The Louisville Review
The Louisville Review has some announcements! In addition to the release of Issue 88 featuring poetry, short fiction and (K-12) poetry, the editors have also announced their Pushcart nominees:
Poetry
from The Louisville Review, No. 87, Spring 2020
“If a Fox” by Luke Wallin
“Institutional Lies” by Frank X Walker
Fiction
from The Louisville Review, No. 88, Fall 2020
“Mama, I Need Some Money” by Jim Bellar
“Let No One Fear Me” by Lori Ann Stephens
Poetry
from The Louisville Review, No. 88, Fall 2020
“Rebuilding the Temple: Higashi Honganji, Kyoto” by Greg Pape
“Human Head, Dream” by Milica Mijatović
Congrats and good luck to the nominees!
Of Love and Revelation
Guest Post by Michael Hettich.
Denusha Laméris’s Bonfire Opera, a book of surprising, deeply moving personal lyrics, is a stellar example of what’s best in contemporary mainstream American poetry. Published in the ever-more-impressive and various Pitt Poetry Series, the poems in this book are masterfully crafted, emotionally challenging, and accessible—capable of speaking powerfully to both poets and general readers alike. While her poems break no new ground, the news Laméris brings us is intimate, timely, and often profoundly revelatory. [Read more…] about Of Love and Revelation
‘The Lost Grip’ by Eva Zimet Is Not for the Faint of Heart
Guest Post by Scudder H. Parker.
Opening Eva Zimet’s first book of poetry The Lost Grip makes the reader feel drawn unexpectedly into a Tango lesson offered by a skilled instructor who is also a Zen master.
You can’t stand back and watch. Your hand has been taken; an arm touches your back lightly; you are drawn onto the floor. You feel the pain the writer has known, but you are not allowed to step back and offer comfort. You must feel and share it in the dance.
This delicate, piercing volume sometimes confides, sometimes spins you around, sometimes tugs you back in close, sometimes pauses and stands there with you waiting.
In “A Dreamspace For All of Us,” Zimet writes: “I dreamed of a space for us / any of us, all of us.” But instead of some comfortable, welcoming home, she concludes:
The floor is wide-planked and smooth.
The space is otherwise empty.
I sleep against the wall.
Daniel also slept by the wall in a studio, and he survived.
We are the most intimate, in that.
The book is haunted by violence and the struggle to recover trust and intimacy. Sometimes it is brusque and almost protective in tone. In “Risk,” Zimet writes: “I wanted to share the freefall of intimacy / with you. Didn’t happen.”
The poems reveal again and again a guarded strength that will not be overwhelmed by loss. In “Three Jewls: A Commentary,” Zimet concludes:
I am still with the contents of this emptiness,
no relic, no recognizable thing.
There was nothing there after all,
but my gift.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but when you stick with it, it sticks with you, and in its own spare, powerful way offers unexpected comfort.
The Lost Grip by Eva Zimet, Rootstock Publishing, December 15, 2020.
Reviewer bio: Scudder H. Parker lives in Vermont and is a poet and author of Safe as Lightning.
NewPages Mag Stand: Superstition Review
The Fall 2020 issue features art by Mary Hope Whitehead Lee, fiction by Khanh Ha, nonfiction by Eric Tran, and poetry by Quintin Collins. Plus, Interview Editor Kendall Dawson speaks to Danielle Evans about the meaningfulness of writing, the process of self-questioning, and Zora Neale Hurston. Find it at this week’s Magazine Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Still Point Arts Quarterly
This issue’s theme is “Food and Memory.” Featured writers include Anne Payne Barker, Jessica Chu-A-Kong, Susan Knox, Angela Borda, Harvey Silverman, Wally Swist, Heather M. Surls, Evelyn Louise May, Tina Blade, Madelaine Zadik, and more. See other contributors at the Mag Stand.