6 Poets in Subtropics
Subtropics is published twice year by Subtropics, Department of English at the University of Florida. It’s the official literary magazine of the University of Florida, and, though only founded in 2006, has published both notable writers and poems selected for Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. All the pieces I’ve selected are straightforward, refreshingly original and reasonably successful. The first is Diane Schenker’s Epithalamium, which can be read here: http://www.english.ufl.edu/subtropics/Schenker_poem.html Epithalmium means ‘at the bridal chamber’, i.e. wedding song, of course, but here the second half the word is taken to be ‘thamalus’, i.e. a part of the brain or the receptacle of a flower. The poem starts: Heap round the inner chamber with sweet- Smelling flowers, lay out wine and delectables, Fresh sets of sheets. Blow horns! Welcome the two ovoid masses That the sensory stimuli...
Read More
storySouth
storySouth is a quarterly online literary magazine that publishes fiction, poetry, criticism and essays. It was founded in 2001, and today enjoys around a thousand page views per day.
Read More
4 Poets from The Stepaway Magazine
The StepAway Magazine is an online literary journal that publishes work reminiscent of Frank O’Hara’s flâneur poems from writers around the world – i.e. immediate, conversational pieces which, as the website puts it: ‘evokes the sensory experience of walking in specific neighborhoods, districts or zones within a city. This is flânerie for the twenty-first century.’ The aim is to ‘become an online repository of walking narratives . . . in one thousand words or less.’ I have chosen four pieces, the best that I can find of the genre, though they’re not wholly successful. The problem, as I see it, is that we look for significance in description: the detached ‘innocent eye’ soon becomes rather boring. The places have to mean something to us, through literary or historical associations, because they are germane to a story involving characters we...
Read More
7 Poets in the River Styx Literary Magazine
River Styx originated in St. Louis poetry readings, but the journal of what is now a not-for-profit organization came later, in 1975, though the journal stayed much associated with readings and music thereafter. The website offers samples of work published in the print journal, and these make a welcome change from the norm: original, unfashionable and often witty pieces. River Styx has also been rather successful, publishing many names who went on to become household names on the poetry scene, with poems that subsequently appeared in The Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, New Stories from the South, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. It sponsors two competitions a year for poetry and microfiction. I feature work here that exhibits a good vein of humour – lacking in many professional journals – but would add that it’s also a rather knock-about...
Read More