The New Quarterly
This issue is proof of the old dictum that the best way to ruin literature is to analyze it to death. There’s some excellent poetry in here; I’m especially fond of Pat Jasper’s Honky Tonk Poem (“This poem has tossed back/ too many tequilas with worms/ at the bottom and thrown up down/ the men’s room wall.”) I wasn’t as enamoured by most of the fiction, but my major complaint is the focus on the process of writing. The work of two fine poets — Charlene Diehl-Jones and Michael Crummey — was almost ruined for me by extensive writing or interviewing on how they came to write these works. It may be a personal prejudice, but it’s enough for me that they have written them. (KR)