New England Review Volume 41 Number 3 is at this week’s Mag Stand. Featured work by May-lee Chai; Jeneva Stone; Laurence de Looze; Alyssa Pelish; John Kinsella; Clifford Howard; and translations of Scholastique Mukasonga, Karla Marrufo, and Nelly Sachs. Fiction by Kenneth Calhoun, Meron Hadero, Kate Petersen, and Kirk Wilson; poetry by Anders Carlson-Wee, Victoria Chang, Justin Danzy, Elisa Gabbert, torrin a. greathouse, Christina Pugh, and more; plus cover art by Heidi P.
New England Review
Childhood Crushes & Dentist Fanfiction
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Who didn’t have an embarrassing crush growing up? For thirteen-year-old Chava in “I Love You, Dr. Rudnitsky” by Avigayl Sharp, her new crush is her titular dentist.
Chava, deep in the throes of the brutality of puberty, falls in love with her dentist one day. Her newfound crush with its accompanying fantasies serves as a respite from her real life: being Jewish and bullied at her Catholic school, a disconnect with her distant mother, and disgust at her own body—her weight, her body hair, her budding sexuality.
Sharp gives Chava a voice that’s somehow both humorous and tragic, bringing me back to those awkward days of adolescence and the torturous process of puberty. She’s upfront and honest, telling us truths she doesn’t admit to others, while simultaneously wrapping us up in one lie after the other. By the end of the story, it feels like we’re reading her Dr. Rudnitsky fanfiction she’s posting on some secret blog. One can’t help feeling sympathy for Chava, for wanting to sit her down and give her a hug and some advice, and we can thank Sharp for creating such a cringe-worthy yet completely loveable character.
NewPages Mag Stand: New England Review
The summer issue extends deep into the past, with translations from ancient Greek, historical fiction featuring Alfred Nobel, and an essay/collage about Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. It imagines the future with speculative fiction, and crosses the Atlantic to bring together 15 contemporary poets from the UK. Fiction by Hugh Coyle, Rachel Hall, Laura Schmitt, and more; poetry by Emma Bolden, Jehanne Dubrow, David Keplinger, Esther Lin, Joannie Stangeland, and others; and nonfiction by Indran Amirthanayagam, Zoë Dutka, and more. Find out more about the issue at the Mag Stand.
Best American Essays 2020 Sponsor Spotlights
Congratulations to two of NewPages sponsored magazines for having selections included in the Best American Essays 2020 due out on November 3, 2020. This year’s anthology was curated by guest editor André Aciman and series editor Robert Atwan.
“My Pink Lake and Other Digressions” by Alison Townsend was originally published in an issue of Cimarron Review. Jerald Walker’s “Breathe” was featured in New England Review 40.3.
NewPages Mag Stand: New England Review
In this issue of New England Review, featured this week at NewPages, find fiction by Maud Casey, David Allan Cates, Nandini Dhar, Elin Hawkinson, Christine Sneed, and Lindsay Starck; poetry by Su Cho, John Freeman, Rodney Gomez, Zach Linge, Vandana Khanna, Joanna Klink, Philip Metres,, Maura Stanton, Emily Jungmin Yoon, and more; nonfiction by Kazim Ali, Jennifer Chang, Ching-In Chen, Julia Cohen, and others; and Max Frisch in translations, translated by Linda Frazee Baker. Plus cover art by Brian Nash.
New England Review – Polish Poetry in Translation
Magazine Review by Andrea Diamond
Ellen Hinsey and Jakob Ziguras were invited to assist the New England Review in compiling a collection of poems written by previously untranslated Polish authors in a special issue titled “Polish Poetry in Translation: Bridging the Frontiers of Language” (Volume 40 Number 2, 2019). No doubt, Ellen Hinsey, who had previously used love as her guide to identify works to include in her book Scattering the Dark: An Anthology of Polish Women Poets, was chosen for her care and attention.
The introduction to Hinsey’s anthology is referenced in an editor’s note in this issue and highlights difficulties that translation presents. Hinsey describes how even best efforts are often unable to fully create expressions and understandings in English that exist uniquely in Polish (and other languages) while also preserving beauty in the verses. [Read more…] about New England Review – Polish Poetry in Translation