Samar Farah Fitzgerald (32.1), whose story “What You Can Endure” was recently published in NER, has been awarded a fellowship of $5,000 from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Fellowships are awarded annually to artists residing in this state in recognition of creative excellence and to support their pursuit of artistic excellence.
The new issue of New England Review has just shipped from the printer, and a preview is available here on our website. Order a copy or subscribe today to receive the full content of this beautifully printed issue of NER.
In these pages, you’ll find new stories by Peter LaSalle, Zana Previti, Katya Reno, Caedra Scott-Flaherty, Gregory Spatz, Megan Staffel, and David Yost, appearing alongside new poems by Larry Bradley, Adam Giannelli, Janice Greenwood, A. Van Jordan, Laura Kasischke, Matthew Olzmann, Jacques J. Rancourt, and Carrie Shipers.
In nonfiction, Eileen Pollack revisits the ranch house of her childhood, Theodore Leinwand contends with Charles Olson contending with Shakespeare, Robert B. Ray asks if movie stars are ultimately unskilled workers, and Jonathan Levy makes a case for the use of dialogues in learning. Plus a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book 5 by Ian Ganassi, Samuel Butler‘s thoughts on memory, Norman Davies on “How States Die,” and cover art by Tim Fitts.
For NPR, Gregory Orr chooses Jennifer Grotz‘s new collection, The Needle, as one of five best poetry books of 2011 in “Truth and Beauty: 2011′s Best American Poetry.” (Grotz’s poems “The Fog and “The Forest” appear in the current issue of NER.) Orr also recommends NER poetry editor C. Dale Young’s book Torn, because, as Orr writes, “no critic can refrain from recommending more books than he’s supposed to.”
One of the few things almost everyone can agree on about contemporary American poetry is that no one can agree on much. At present, poetry is a jumbled landscape, with no single, dominant style and few living figures whose importance is accepted in more than one or two of the art form’s tiny fiefdoms. Although some might find this state of affairs discouraging, I think there’s good reason to be optimistic — poetry often needs to undergo periods of confusion to achieve the clarity for which we’ll later remember it. Here are five books that suggest that even if American poetry isn’t entirely sure where it’s going, that doesn’t mean it’s gotten lost.
The Burlington Free Press published Sydney Lea’s tribute to the late Ruth Stone:
Editor’s Note: This column was written before former Vermont State Poet Ruth Stone died Nov. 19. Current state poet laureate Sydney Lea writes about how Stone, in a few words, evokes life while writing about loss.
I want to pay a brief and inadequate tribute to Ruth Stone, my predecessor as Vermont Poet Laureate. Ms. Stone is remarkable in every way: 96 years old and all but completely blind, the woman still generates some of America’s most compelling poetry.
Analog & Digital: NER's first issue
Here’s a brief tour of some of the features on this site, which has been made possible by NER’s support from Middlebury College and a grant from The National Endowment for The Arts (NEA). The site is designed to complement the print magazine while developing NER’s relationship with digital culture.
NER on Your Reader, Browser, or Blog
You can add NER to your Google Reader, Safari Reading List, or similar. On the Google Reader, simply click on Subscribe, then type New England Review into the box and press Add. On Safari, visit this site and then click on Add Page.
Read NER Web Features in Issuu View
For work featured in current and future issues, browsers will be able to read NER’s web features as a web page or in the Issuu view. (Click on “view as pdf / Issuu” of a newly published work like Jordan Davis’s poem “From the Twentieth Floor” for an example.) Issuu’s fun-to-navigate document mimics the pages of the print magazine. You can “flip through” the pages, magnify, print, or share the work via social networking sites. (Big thanks to Middlebury intern Patrick D’Arcy for pointing us in this direction.)
NER Mobile
If you like to browse the web on your phone, this site will translate into a functional format you can navigate using Categories, Tags, or a basic Timeline. Touch the links and you can read NER’s stories, poems, and essays. You can also add NER’s icon to your home screen for easy access.
Sharing Writing From NER
The buttons at the bottom of each post or page make NER easy to share via social networking sites or email.
NER on Twitter and Facebook
You can get updates from NER in your Facebook stream by Liking the magazine on our FB page, or in your Twitter feed by Following NERweb. (N.B.: Comments, replies, lists, followers, retweets, mentions, and the like do not imply any endorsement by or association with NER.)
While You’re Here
We hope you enjoy exploring the new site. The most vital way you can support NER in 2012 is by subscribing to the magazine and by making a donation beyond the subscription price, via Middlebury’s convenient and secure online giving page (be sure to select New England Review from the drop-down menu Direct Your Gift). Your gift to NER – described as “among the nation’s best” literary magazines by The Boston Globe – will have an immediate impact, fostering the publication of brilliant new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
NER contributors in translation, Ross Benjamin (Friedrich Holderlin, 28.4) and Geoffrey Brock (Umberto Saba, 25.1 & 2), have won 2012 NEA Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects.
From Brock’s translation of Saba’s “A Winter Noon“:
Who in the moment of my happiness
(God forgive my using a word so grand,
so terrible) reduced my brief delight
nearly to tears? No doubt you’ll say: “A certain
beautiful creature who was walking by
and smiled at you.” But no: a child’s balloon,
a blue, meandering balloon against
the azure of the air, my native sky
never so clear and cold as it was then,
at high noon on a dazzling winter day.
Congratulations to NER contributor Gregory Spatz on his 2012 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
NER will publish Spatz for the sixth time in 18 years in our next issue (32.4). He first appeared in NER in 1992 (14.2).
An excerpt from Spatz’s book Inukshuk, scheduled for publication by Bellevue Literary Press in June 2012:
Opening shot: exterior: the Erebus and the Terror on a sea more or less the same blue-green as that bus ceiling. No icebergs yet, no sign of land. Low-flying mist, and as the ships come closer, you see men on board, wearing black and wrapped in wool. Cue distant dance music—accordions, mandolin, and piano; mournful, ballad-inflected, but melodic and mostly happy. This is a good day, despite the ominous backdrop—a joyous day. Roll-across subtitle: Day 107 of the Franklin Expedition to navigate the Northwest Passage. Stores just replenished in Greenland and closing in on Lancaster Sound. The true start of the adventure . . . or . . . the beginning of the end?
Frequent NER contributor Laura Kasischke’s book Space, In Chains (Copper Canyon Press) has been named a Notable Book of 2011 by The New York Times.
Three poems by Kasischke published in NER are available online:
“Miss Congeniality” (26.4), “Riddle” (29.2), and “They Say” (30.2).
From “They Say”:
one-twelfth of our lives is wasted
standing in a line.The sacred path of that.
Editor Kevin Young selected the following poems from NER for The Best American Poetry 2011:
Jennifer Grotz, “Poppies” (31.1); Eric Pankey, “Cogitatio Mortis” (also 31.1); and Natasha Trethewey, “Elegy” (30.4).
Best American Short Stories 2011 noted fiction from NER among its “distinguished stories” of the year:
Kirstin Allio, “Green” (31.3); Thomas Gough, “The Evening’s Peace” (30.4), Beth Lordan, “A Useful Story” (31.1); Christine Sneed, “Interview with the Second Wife” (31.4).
Best American Travel Writing 2011 cited Eric Calderwood’s “The Road to Damascus” (31.3) in its “Notable Travel Writing of 2010.”
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An excerpt from Trethewey’s poem “Elegy“:
I think by now the river must be thick
with salmon. Late August, I imagine itas it was that morning: drizzle needling
the surface, mist at the banks like a netsettling around us—everything damp
and shining. That morning, awkwardand heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
into the current and found our places—you upstream a few yards, and out
far deeper. You must remember howthe river seeped in over your boots,
and you grew heavy with that defeat.
Vol. 32 / No. 4 Cover art by Tim Fitts
Middlebury College is home to both NER and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. On this site, NER posts an audio highlight from Bread Loaf's many readings and lectures as a regular feature. Here is Lori Ostlund, "Talking Fowl with My Father."
