Assignment 9 - Literary Magazine Review

The Apple Valley Review: A Journal of Contemporary Literature is a semiannual online (http://www.applevalleyreview.com/) literary journal that’s released once in the spring and once in the fall. It was first published in 2005 by its current editor and poet, Leah Browning and each issue features a collection of poetry, short fiction, and essays by a collection of both established and newly emerging writers. I had never heard of Browning’s poetry before reading this journal, but it inspired me to look up some of her work online and I found that I liked a lot of her work and I definitely think she brings her unique style and vision to her this journal. My first impression with this journal was that it was very well organized and had a wide variety of work published in the volume I read. Although it was an online journal it still had a lot of very nice qualities about it. Each volume had a very vibrantly illustrated cover that related to the season and volume it was being published in and the works of writing were all intermingled. Meaning, poetry, fiction, and essays were located throughout the entire magazine, not just located in one place, which I found refreshing because as I read I was constantly getting to read something new instead of reading a section of each kind of literature. The pieces were printed in black against an ivory backdrop and at the end of each piece there was an excerpt that gave a small author biography, which was nice to read. A lot of the author’s The Apple Valley Review include are from many different backgrounds and fields of writing, which I think greatly adds to the appeal of this magazine. I also loved how different the topics were that the magazine encompassed – I enjoyed all of the work I read in this journal. The journal doesn’t specifically say online what its vision is beyond the fact that it wants to create a journal of literary work that’s original, previously unpublished, and not genre fiction, explicit, or particularly violent or depressing. They also note that all work published is also considered for an annual Editor’s Prize competition. My favorite poem in this journal was Recurring Dream, by Avra Wing. It’s a beautifully written poem about a memory/dream (Can’t quite tell which) and the speaker describes a very vivid event where she’s with a man (I think someone’s she’s romantically involved with) in a train station and the man’s mad and the woman has dropped their bags causing them to spill everywhere, making a mess. Something about the speaker’s regret in the inflection of the poem and the sadness conveyed in the image is almost haunting – As if the speaker hate’s what has happened and the man’s anger, but she also doesn’t want this moment to pass, the poem gives the reader a sense that time has stopped. It was very powerful. I would definitely read this magazine again and even consider submitting my own work to this journal because they seem fairly open minded and willing to publish new emerging writers.