Shearsman 61: Magazine Reviews

Shearsman 61

Tony Frazer

Magazine Reviews

Chicago Review Vol 49, Issues 3 & 4 & Vol. 50 Issue 1, Summer 2004. "Edward Dorn, American Heretic". 409pp, paperback, $10, ISSN 0009-3696. Subscriptions $18 per volume (individuals) and $42 (institutions); overseas add $25.

As the byline above indicates, this triple-issue is devoted mainly to the work of the American poet Edward Dorn, a man whose extraordinary output in the 1960s and 1970s had an enormous impact in England, as did his presence here. (He lectured at the then-young Essex University in the late 60s, having been invited aboard by department head Donald Davie.) I got to Essex a year after he left, but his shadow ran long over the campus and it didn't take me long to acquire those wonderful Fulcrum titles, Geography, The North-Atlantic Turbine and Gunslinger (at that point the first 2 books only).

I still read those books more than thirty years later. If his later work offered me less to engage with, that does not impact my view of his output up to about 1975, summed up in a US Collected Poems from the Four Seas Foundation, which acted as a corrective: up until then it was easier to find his work in England than it was in the US. Fulcrum collapsed in 1974 or 1975 and that was the last we saw of Dorn's work here, other than the odd small-press chapbook. Alas, Dorn passed away in 1999, aged 70, but Penguin USA has scheduled a Selected Poems — albeit for US publication only — which will ensure that at least a significant portion of his work remains available. This huge journal devoted (mostly) to his work is a splendid affirmation that Dorn's work remains important.

Apart from the Dorniana, the issue has original work by Peter Riley, William Fuller, Dieter M Gräf, Mark McMorris, Eleni Sikelianos and others, as well as a number of interesting reviews. But Dorn's at the heart of this one, and that's the reason you should have the issue.

Fire 24, October 2004. 192pp, perfect bound, £5. ISSN 1367-031X. Subscriptions £7 (2 issues) / £9 (3 issues). Edited by Jeremy Hilton, Field Cottage, Old White Mill, Tackley, Oxfordshire OX5 3AB.
Another vast cornucopia of material, Fire 24, like its predecessors, is where the well-known mix with the unknown, and where the first-timer always gets a fair hearing. It makes for a bewildering mix, but it's the kind of magazine that needs to exist. It is absurdly cheap and deserves support.

Fulcrum, issue 2, "Philosophies of Poetry". 2003. ISSN 1534-7877. 400pp, paperback, $15. Foreign subscriptions $20 per issue (individuals) and $40 (institutions). Checks payable to Fulcrum Annual. Correspondence address: 334 Harvard Street, Suite D-2, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Edited by Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich.
Fulcrum 1 was a little overwhelming and perhaps tried to do too much. No 2 has a similar problem, and I think it doesn't really know what it is. It's not a magazine in any true sense, more an annual anthology. It scores by being outside most of the traditional warring camps in the poetry world, largely because the editors are Russian and don't see things in quite the same way. What the annual gains in openness from this, it loses in focus. The poetry here is a mixed bag, ranging from Michael Hulse to Michael Farrell, W N Herbert to Charles Bernstein. While it's good to see all of these names thrown together, I suspect the catholicity of the approach here does the annual some disservice. Right now I can't see a reason for Fulcrum's existence, other than to challenge the barriers that do exist. Interesting stuff, in some ways, but not really successful.

Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, No. 7, Spring 2004 issue. Founding editor: Roberto Tejada; Guest editor this issue: Kristin Dykstra. ISSN 1550-7432. 282pp, paperback, $10 / MXP58. c/o Dept of English, Campus Box 4240, Illinois State University, Normal, IL. 61790-4240, USA.

After a hiatus of six or seven years, Mandorla is back and under the wing of a US university, which probably guarantees it a more secure future. The magazine's strength was always as an avenue of communication between the USA and Mexico, printing fine American work in Spanish translation, Mexican and other Latin American work in English translation as well as a good deal of untranslated work in both languages. It obviously helps if you have sufficient Spanish but, even if you don't, there's enough meat in this issue just in English to make it a very diverting experience.

Highlights of this issue are Jay Wright (English), Jose Kozer (E., tr. Mark Weiss), Tamara Kamenszain (Spanish), Rubén Darío (E., tr. Gabriel Gudding), Nathaniel Mackey (E), José Lizama Lima (E., tr. Roberto Tejada), Alfonso d'Aquino (S), Eleni Sikelianos (S., tr. Gabriel Bernal Granados), Antonio José Ponte (E., tr. Mark Schafer). Picking out such highlights is a little hard, though, as the whole issue is full of good surprises and fine creative work. Mandorla should not be seen as part of a Spanish-Studies academic ghetto: it's a magazine at the front-line where two cultures clash and can learn from each other, and it offers an outlet for some terrific poetry from Latin America which would otherwise not get an airing in English. Translation-based magazines are all too thin on the ground and magazines that carry work of this calibre, and translations of this calibre, of (mostly) living writers, are frankly essential. If you want to subscribe to one magazine outside the common run of things, I would suggest that this is the one you should go for. Now.

Modern Poetry in Translation. Third Series, Nos 1 and 2; 102pp & 106pp. Edited by David and Helen Constantine. ISBN 0-9545367-1-1 & 0-9545367-2-X respectively. Subscriptions £22 for 2 issues / £26 overseas, at MPT, School of Humanities, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS.
It will take a little time for the new editorial team to settle down but the the initial signs are good. These two issues are the best for quite some time, though each inevitably has its longueurs. The first issue has good things by Gerhard Falkner (tr. Richard Dove), Philippe Jaccottet (tr. by the editors), Luciano Erba (tr. Peter Robinson). The opening text is by Mahmoud Darwish, tr. Sarah Maguire, and I regret to say that this does nothing for me whatsoever. Its sincerity and its message are apparent but it does not seem to have crossed the line into art, at least not in this version. I should add that Darwish is a celebrated figure amongst Arab literati. With politically-charged work of this nature, it is always tempting to like the work because of one's sympathy with the concerns being expressed; I share those concerns to a large degree, but I won't let this get in the way of my appreciation (or non-appreciation) of a poem. Likewise the late Boris Ryzhy — a Russian poet — may well have defeated successful transition into English. Issue 2, with its 'Diaspora' theme has a number of good things: David Harsent's versions of Yannis Ritsos and David Constantine's versions of Volker Braun chief amongst them. More in tune with the diasporic theme are the poems by Adel Guémar (a francophone Algerian living in Wales) and Sándor Márai (expatriate Hungarian in italy, died 1989), the latter benefiting from the attentions of Szirtes and Gömöri who have an unequalled track-record here in getting Magyar into English.

I subscribe to this magazine, and I'm much happier with its current direction and development than I was with the final issues of the second series, which I thought had lost its way. If its regularity is maintained and the quality of these first two issues likewise, this will once again be an essential part of the literate reader's diet. I should add also that I appreciate the reduced size of the journal: I suspect that the jumbo-sized issues of the last series led to a lack of focus, notwithstanding some outstanding individual issues.

NO, issue 3, 2004. ISBN 0-9727453-2-7. 210pp, paperback, $12. Subscriptions $20 (individuals) and $28 (institutions, libraries and international). Checks payable to Deb Klowden. Correspondence address: 39 West 29th Street, 11A, New York, NY 10001, USA. Edited by Deb Klowden and Ben Lerner. Website here.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first two issues of the magazine, and the third one continues the good work. As with the earlier issues, the design is top-quality and there is again an entire book inserted in the middle, on different-coloured paper — on this occasion Jack Spicer's play Troilus, which I confess did little for me, but which will be of some interest to anyone who admires Spicer's work. There's some splendid poetry by Elizabeth Willis, Chinese poet Xue Di, Lisa Jarnot (her version of the beginning of the Iliad), Jaime Saenz (tr. Forrest Gander & Kent Johnson), Erin Mouré, amongst others and a stimulating essay by Marjorie Perloff on Maggie O'Sullivan. The magazine also has some excellent artwork by Canan Tolon.

Tears in the Fence 39, Autumn 2004. 140pp, paperback, £6 / $7. Subscriptions £15 (3 issues) / $20 USA- 4 issues, $25 - USA 4 issues airmail / elsewhere in the world £20 / €30 for 4 issues, surface mail / £23/€35 airmail, cheques payable to Tears in the Fence, $ payments cash only. 38 Hod View, Stourpaine, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 8TN. Edited by David Caddy.
TiTF has settles into a design groove that is attractive and readable and this is no exception, barring the near-unreadable cover, that is. As ever, the poetry is a mixed bag, but there is good work by Peter Dent, Estill Pollock, Andrea Moorhead and Robert Sheppard in particular. The prose here I find somewhat limp, but the reviews and essays are solid, serious fare and most welcome (and not just because two reviewers say nice things about Shearsman publications).

10th Muse 13, 2004. 64pp, centre-stapled, £3.50. Subscriptions £6 (2 issues) / £9 (3 issues), cheques payable to 10th Muse. Edited by Andrew Jordan, 33 Hartington Road, Southampton SO14 0EW.
Long-delayed and thus doubly welcome, this issue keeps up the good work of the previous ones. I did like the cover, with its invocation of the Prozac Book Society suggesting a certain other organisation with the same initials. Editor Andrew Jordan contributes a splendidly feisty editorial, which ends with an image of the pharmaceuticals referred to on the cover and the legend: "Accessible poetry is not necessarily social or sociable." A truer word was never uttered. As to the contents, there's good work by Estill Pollock (who seems to appear in all the magazines that I like), Carrie Etter (ditto), Thomas Warner and Simon Perchik, amongst others. The reviews section is combative, personal, trenchant and all the better for it. A rather irregular journal, but one I like to read when it does appear.

Tremblestone 4, August 2004 issue, edited by Kenny Knight, 84pp, paperback, ISSN 1463-9181. c/o Stowford House, 43 Seymour Avenue, St Judes, Plymouth PL4 8RB. Single issue £4, subscriptions (3 or 6 issues) £10 / £18. Overseas subscriptions £5 single issue, £15 / £25 (3/6 issues). Cheques payable to Tremblestone.
Kenny Knight's best issue yet, this one shows Tremblestone coming of age, with a good mix of local and national authors. Highlights include poems by Estill Pollock, Martin Anderson, philip kuhn and Richard Burns, but there's hardly a dud page in the issue. Well worth getting hold of. Perhaps the only minor problem with this journal is its infrequent appearance — this issue took the best part of 18 months to appear. If it can hit a regular annual, or even more frequent cycle, this will be a magazine to be reckoned with. It's already well on its way.