New England Review Features 12 Poets New to Its Pages
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The current issue of the New England Review (NER) marks the debut of Rick Barot as poetry editor as well as his presentation of 12 poets who have never been published in NER before. No stranger to NER, Barot first came to the literary journal as a poet, appearing as far back as 1998. In 2014, NER published his essay “The Image Factory.” In between he served for several years as a submissions reader, evaluating thousands of poems for possible publication.
In this issue, Barot intentionally offers a selection of poets new to NER. According to NER Editor Carolyn Kuebler, “He contacted some of his poetry ‘heroes,’ some people who, as he said, seem like they should have been in NER but just hadn’t been caught in the net, and others who just had not yet found a place here.” Among them are Joan Larkin, Arthur Sze, and Eleanor Wilner.
“When Rick is discussing poetry for NER, he brings exactitude and joy to the conversation; interrogation and an appreciation for the risk writers take each time they create something new,” added Kuebler.
Along with poetry, the new issue of NER presents a selection of fiction, essays, and translations that explore everything from an environmentalist’s paradise to an inherited pair of patent-leather stiletto boots. Essays examine Neil Young’s guitar playing, 19th-century Native American rights advocate William Apess, the streets of Lisbon, and some compelling ways in which one’s past can never be completely crossed out. A selection of letters by Norman Mailer reveals his reading preoccupations over the decades, and an essay by Elizabeth Kadetsky attempts to trace the broken link to her family’s imagined forebear, Ambroise Paré.
Excerpts from the new issue are available on NER’s website.
The following quotes are from works in the new issue:
“Perhaps because so many things disappeared in our family—records, memories, the rings from my mother’s two marriages, the wedding silver—my mother undertook many quests for the past.”
—from “Ghosts and Chimeras” by Elizabeth Kadetsky
“Our northern spring’s a sudden race of green
and birds arrive, migrating from the south.
What’s constant is the shift. I live between.”
—from “Bird’s Bridge” by Ela Harrison
Published by Middlebury College, New England Review is a nationally recognized literary journal that cultivates artistic excellence and innovation in contemporary writing and engages readers deeply in the literary arts through its quarterly publication, dynamic web presence, and public reading series. The next event in the series will feature a celebration of NER with readings in Boston by contributors Brock Clarke, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Matthew Lippman, Lenore Myka, and Alexandria Peary on February 10.