Friday, April 11, 2008

Phoenix maganie reviewed by Hugh Fox

Phoenix magazine received this lovely review recently:

Phoenix #2.
Edited by Michael Graves
2-4/yr; 28pp; PO Box 84,
Dyker Heights Station,
Brooklyn, NY 11228.
&10/issue.
Reviewer: Hugh Fox

Phoenix is a relatively new magazine, but it has a feeling of great depth and breadth about it. Like a well-done translation of a poem by Polish poet Boleslaw Lesmian (1878-1937), who introduced French Modernism into Polish literature: “ Imperceptibly in the deep it builds...//Looming silent over all its lifeless sisters,/Till it breaks...in ringlets, tresses/Then, smelling the death beneath it, roars,/And strikes the shore in a last throe.” (“The Wave,” p.15, trans.by Michael Kandel. It wouldn’t hurt to number the pages, though, and perhaps give a bit of bio about Lesmian himself.Most of the poetry very accessible, an excellent Haiku by Herbert Miller: “My shield when lifted,/blocking swords that may split me,/slashes my own throat.” (Herbert Miller, “Haiku for Michael,” p.23). Not names you see everywhere, but perhaps they should be: Charles Pierre, Hugh Hennedy,Rose Bernal.And this issue begins with an extremely demanding poem by editor Graves all about Adam and Eve, also masterfully written, and after three or four readings (like reading Wordsworth or Shelley) you begin to fathom what it’s all about: the horrifying world that mankind met after leaving Eden.

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