New Finds, New Connections

I subscribe to Small Press Review, a magazine that is rail-thin but fat with news of the world of the small press. The July-August issue arrived yesterday. Reading it this afternoon, particularly its Small Magazine Review section (formerly a separate magazine), I decide to look up the websites for the magazines mentioned in "Burgeoning Protests," especially Backwards City Review, Nonviolent Activist, and Peace Magazine. Through Yahoo! I find the blog for Backwards City. The August 26 entry excerpts Kunstler's The Long Emergency. For that alone, the blog merits more reading. Then I return to the Yahoo! search results page. The sixth result is a Blogcritics.org review of BCR. The review is a few months old and I'll read it later. What catches my attention is the byline of one Ed Rust, who runs a site called Magsampler.com.

Now my interest is piqued! Not only does Magsampler offer scores, if not hundreds, of titles famous and obscure for only $2.59 apiece, many of the magazines are reviewed. Magazine reviewing is direly underpracticed (I've tried to review some titles for MaggieMedia--now on hiatus--but other things took up my time.) I've never before heard of y'all: The Magazine of Southern People or American Book Review, but thanks to today's perusal of Magsampler, now I have.

But I have to see about Nonviolent Activist. It turns out its sponsoring organization, the War Resisters League, has
just replaced NA with a resurrected WIN. I next check out Peace Magazine and Alternative Press Review.

SPR has reviews of some poetry blogs, especially Michael P. Garofalo's and Dan Weber's, on concrete poetry. As defined in artlex.com, concrete poetry relies mainly on layout and typography, which are two of my favorite things.

Also reviewed is Home Planet News issue 54.

All in all, some great examples of how one thing leads to another.