Latest Alabama Literary Review
 

is now online: http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/index.htm

Oh, all you modest Sphereans, too shy to toot your own horns. Okay, I'll oblige, through my mask:

Congrats to Catherine Chandler for this absolute stunner:
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Chandler.pdf
(Psst...missing 'to' in iv., L11....)

Terese Coe has two poems in quite different moods--I'm on a bit of an Apollo and Daphne spree on the Translation Board right now, so the stark grace of her take particularly resonates:
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Coe.pdf

I like the "the bow is bent to the Dyer's hand" line in Andrew Frisardi's non-Noah poem:
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Frisardi.pdf

Julie Kane has three poems, all powerful, but I can't decide which of the first two knocked my socks off farther. Wow. Wow.
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Kane.pdf

Richard Meyer has two, and I particularly like the first, a humorous sonnet:
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Meyer.pdf

Susan McLean has five of her Rilke translations, including the so-perfect rendering of "like a catwalk in a mine" in the description of the wooden balcony among the gloomy, mosaicked curves of "San Marco":
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Rilke.pdf
There's something a bit amiss with the TOC's handling of the verse translations and the originals--perhaps this can be tweaked in the online verison, Bill?

J.D. Smith's three affect me in different ways. I particularly like the form of the first, and I'll be back to digest it some more--it reminds me of the Spanish ovellijo [CORRECTED: ovillejo--clearly, I can't spell late at night], but without the recap at the end of each group of lopsided couplets. His long last poem has a particular resonance in view of our current calamity; in me, the poem prompts a certain macabre nostalgia for the sort of "Red-Letter Dates" that could actually be left behind:
http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/v28/v28Smith.pdf

Oh, and the non-Sphereans wrote some good poems, too. They often do.

Agreed, Julie. Some of these make me wonder what the heck I think I’m doing.

Thanks for this post, Julie. The ALR is a very fine journal, and Bill Thompson does a superb job as editor. I'm pleased to be in the company of so many fine poets. Your shout-out is much appreciated.

Richard

Editor Bill Thompson has chosen a wealth of exceptional poems for this issue, and I'm honored to have poems in it! Thanks to him and to you, Julie, for the announcement. Best of luck with your Apollo and Daphne, Julie! It's a rich and provocative myth.

Here's a timely quotation from one of the many appealing poems in this issue of ALR, this one "Red-Letter Dates" by J.D. Smith:

Yet, clear and urgent work was set before us
And, in the clarity of hours between
Dead panic and dead drunk, I gathered how
I stood before a dread significance
That placed the solemn charge of memory
On even its most distant witnesses.

Thanks for the shout-out, Julie.
PS Bill is going to fix the typo you pointed out.