​The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 is a collection of lists, poems, stories, essays, and comics edited by Dave Eggers, with an introduction by Guillermo Del Toro. It’s a thick and somewhat intimidating collection, but regardless, I enjoyed many of the stories within its pages. These stories/essays included ‘We Show What We Have Learned’ by Clare Beams (about a teacher whose body falls apart in front of her students), ‘The Deep’ by Anthony Doerr (about a man whose mother kept him from the world because of his heart condition), ‘Weber’s Head’ by J. Robert Lennon (about a roommate feud between a sculptor and a web editor), ‘The Suicide Catcher’ by Michael Paterniti (about the real-life Mr. Chen who catches people from jumping off the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge), and ‘Pleiades’ by Anjali Sachdeva (about in vitro septuplets dying due to health complications). These stories were tender, loving, and ached with life. Specifically, I thought ‘The Deep’ was powerful in how it treated the mother’s overprotection and the son’s desire to live even if it meant he was bound to die.
 
The story by Joyce Carol Oates, ‘A Hole in the Head’, had an interesting premise and was written well enough for me to be held by its narrator. Though the story felt like it fell squarely within the territory of genre fiction and read like another story of hers in Best American Short Stories 2011 about a daughter who can’t identify her mother’s body. Another story in the collection that I didn’t feel too enthused about was ‘Art of the Steal’ by Joshuah Bearman mainly due to the same pitfalls of Oats’ story, in that it didn’t do anything fresh with the genre. Overall, however, I enjoyed the variety, and many of the stories.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​The Kenyon Review Winter 2023 features short stories, essays, poetry, and visual art, with a folio focusing on bridges and how people/connections/moments can be bridges for other things. This issue has a few fascinating stories, one of which is called ‘Block Party’, by Danny Lang-Perez, which features a magical man who can cook/make anything from his mobile kitchen and his son, Charles, who people adore. When Charles doesn’t appear one night because his mother asked him not to help, the neighborhood goes crazy, throwing things at the man and running him out of their cul-de-sac. It’s an interesting way to look at how the entitled treat workers, and what happens when things don’t go their way. I also enjoyed the language in ‘Eight Poems’ by Abbas Kiarostami and ‘The Orphanage’ by Emeline Atwood. Though, everything else felt a little lackluster.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Best American Poetry 2022 is a selection of poetry guest edited by Matthew Zapruder with poems from Ada Límon, Ocean Vuong, Louise Glück, and Diane Seuss, among others. Most, if not all the poems, featured meditations on the affect of the pandemic, the loneliness/isolation it brought, and how daily life was interpreted. There were poems, such as ‘Goblin’ by Matthew Dickman, which showed how thin the line between care and abuse is and what that power meant to the speaker. And in this way, Dickman, upon saying, “There are so many ways/to eat the young.” recognizes and fears how his actions can change his child’s view of him. Or take Robin Myers’s poem, ‘Diego de Montemayor’, which finds Myers at a weird crossroads, knowing their ancestor oversaw a massacre, and still recognizing that ancestor as a part of their family. And, of course, how can I not forget Ocean Vuong’s, ‘Reason for Staying’, with the immaculate line, “Because my uncle never killed himself—but simply died, on purpose.” There were certainly high points, but after reading the bios, the writers did seem homogonous in their backgrounds, from which I would’ve liked to see more diversity.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Kenyon Review July/Aug 2022 is a collection of poetry, non-fiction, and short stories, with a folio focusing on mothers reflecting on the climate crisis. There is anger and grief in the issue, which bleeds through its non-fiction, particularly in ‘To Live Again’ by Aliyeh Ateaei translated by Salar Abdoh. The story is about a mother trying to teach her son about her home in Afghanistan and why they had to flee to Iran. I absolutely loved the way the language held so much weight and how she treats her son with tenderness. And one of its final lines aches with meaning as her son says, ‘”Next time I’ll try to be born as oil”’. I was also a fan of the short story ‘Still Life with Lobster’ by Timothy Reynolds with its sharp use of imagery. Overall, I enjoyed the pressing discussions of climate change, but couldn’t quite connect with the poetry.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Granta: Conflict Issue 160 is a collection of essays, fiction, memoir, photography, and poetry focusing on the themes of war and conflict. It mainly resides and contemplates the war in Ukraine and how that affects the people and places there. The stories and essays are about fasting, divorce, mental illness, assault, and moments of turmoil. The harrowing accounts of Ukrainian citizens in ‘Letters from Ukraine’ by Lindsey Hilsum displays the humanity and terror that is currently occurring. I was also drawn in by the narrative Suzanne Scanlon brings in ‘The Moving Target of Being’ which is urgent and frank. It contemplates the struggles of having a mental illness and checking into a psychiatric hospital. The issue looks at the victims of what war and conflict can create, and how each person deals with it differently.
 
Final Rating: 3/5

​The Kenyon Review Sept/Oct 2022 is a collection of poems, short stories, and essays, some of which by young writers. The poetry in this issue is strong and I enjoyed ‘Diptych on Getting from Point A to Point B’ by Myra Kamal, ‘Blue Peony’ by Peter LaBerge, ‘Pandemic Dog’ by Alison Powell, ‘Splinter’ by Marney Rathbun, and ‘This Is Just To Say’ by Laura Cresté. Though, I was particularly drawn to the short story ‘Porn Star’ by Sena Moon which focuses on a girl who sees her neighbor masturbate and tells the rest of her class. The dynamic between the two characters was interesting to watch unfold. Overall, its poetry stood out as something to return to.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​The Paris Review Issue 240 is a collection of poetry, prose, and interviews with many of the short stories focusing on queer life. I particularly enjoyed the story ‘Descent’ by Harriet Clark which is about a boy whose mother is in a prison on a mountain for being a getaway driver. I liked the way the son’s relationship between his mother and grandmother begins to fray. I also enjoyed the story ‘Ira & The Whale’ by Rachel B. Glaser, which is about a gay man who is slowly dying in the stomach of a whale. It uses the initial premise of the Noah and The Whale narrative but spins it in a modern and enjoyable way. And finally, I found the heartbreaking nonfiction piece ‘About Ed’ by Robert Glück to have immense depth. Though, the rest of the issue didn’t feel as strong as those three narratives.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón is a collection of poems which spans death, womanhood, and relationships, all with the thread of nature. It is a beautiful collection with striking descriptions and images. I particularly liked the poems, ‘How to Triumph Like a Girl’, ‘I Remember the Carrots’, ‘Cower’, and ‘The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road’. Specifically, ‘The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road’ uses conversations between Limón and her stepfather, who had just gotten sober, to display their collective desires. While her stepfather is looking out on a lake, even though he had rarely seen a blue heron, he would always tell her there was one. In the shared acceptance of a white lie, Limón and her stepfather acknowledge the world for what it is but hope for something greater. It’s a lovely poem, and the lines about the blue heron having to exist were powerful.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​The September 2022 issue of Poetry is a collection of poems interested in the idea of monuments, real or imagined, and how that affects our understanding of the world. There are moments in the issue, particularly the poems by A. Van Jordan, which see monuments in people, those who were killed, and the affect they have on the public. The poems observe and exist in a life caused by war, the aftermath of police brutality, and what comes of being. The poems I enjoyed were ‘poem’ by Mansi Dahal, ‘Section 267C [Ars Poetica]’ by Janelle Tan, ‘I do not mention the war in my birthplace to my six-year-old son but somehow his body knows’ by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, ‘Missed Calls’ by Christopher Shipman, and ‘Airsoft’ by A. Van Jordan. I loved and ached from the lines written by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, “He isn’t asking/anymore. He is making me/monument. You would still be/if I cut you in half.” They are angry poems, poems that contain much more than themselves, and it felt like this issue resonated with me much more than other Poetry issues.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​frank: sonnets by Dianne Suess is a collection of poetry which contemplates poverty, relationships, illness, drug abuse, womanhood, and death. The largest focus of the sonnets is Suess’ friend Mikel, who died from HIV/AIDS. It is a heartbreaking and moving collection with poems that aren’t afraid to be themselves. Suess discusses her son’s addiction, Mikel’s pustules, being working class, all in succent and relatable ways. The collection is obsessed with death, seen here, “The problem with sweetness is death. The problem/with everything is death.” To Suess, it is all consuming, through the lens of a friend, a mother, and a daughter. In the final poem of the collection, Suess aches to be loved, and to find meaning in the loss. The poems are lyrical, strong, and deeply personal.
 
Final Rating: 4/5