Picked up the newest Asheville Poetry Review, vol. 17, no.1, issue #20. A hefty 204 pages of poems, reviews, interviews. A good deal at 13$ ( a sublime deal at free: gift cards, hallelujah ). Were it not for the special features scattered throughout, though, I might be tempted to say it's a loss for readers.
The high points are Fred Chappell's succint, and opinionated (yee-uh), take on a book of new Rimbaud translations, Thomas Rain Crowe's translations of four Hugh-Alain Dal poems, two 'in memorium' pieces by Lucille Clifton, and a hardtalking interview with Ai.
Of the barby satires of sonnets, nature pieces, and narrative tales is a lean towards pop-poetry mediocrity I cannot disassociate with the journal now.
( Also, the author's are presented in homogenizing alphabetical order, something that I have come to regard as a curious shying away from deliberate presentation ( why not order the pieces by word count, smallest to largest, or place writers in an order by their geography? ), something more akin to a simple index of authors that a reader may passively ingest. )
Head over to the free and mighty Horseless Review or check Caketrain for a look at some challenging, delightful work, and, if you've got some bread, spend it ( don't just read the free sample of 20-40 pages like I do ).
