Alligator Juniper Reviews

Alligator Juniper, No. 13, 2008

It’s a good thing that Alligator Juniper comes out only once a year because if you want to take in all of it – and you should -- it would take nearly that long to get through it.  That is, if you give the journal the time and attention it deserves.  I hardly know where to begin.

The magazine features extraordinary black and white photography by the magazine’s national winner Jim Haberman, as well as Ben Boblett, Larry Jones, BK Skaggs, Catherine Ralls, Austen Lorenz, Jennier Warren, and student winner Michael Richards, reproduced with exceptionally fine and vibrant precision.  While these photographs could not be more distinct (vast, almost surreal landscapes, close-ups of flowers, portraits of unforgettable people in unforgettable poses), they share what photography contest judge Susan Modenhuer describes as “the mystery of a moment in time.”

Also exceptional is this issue’s “Special Feature” titled “Genre Blur,” introduced by editor Rachel Yoder, who asks us to “expand or abandon” our ideas of categorization.  Accomplished pose writer Margot Singer kicks off the brief section with her essay “Genre and Voice in Creative Nonfiction” in which she summarizes the magazine’s aim: “to explore the ways in which different types of literature use the techniques of other forms.” Julie Marie Wade’s “Layover” is a poem-like construction merging visual elements.  The piece begins, aptly, “And what would you call this?” Amanda Nazario’s “The Collected Works of Sara Ruiz” is fiction within a fiction within a fiction.  Blake Butler’s “List of 50 (6 of 50): Memory Incantation” is/does what its title announces.  Rachel Tollver’s “The Theory of Air and Speed” brings prose and poetry together to consider the meaning of bodies in love, in time, in the seasons.

Creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry contributions are equally compelling.  These include a moving personal essay “River Voices,” by the magazine’s national winner for creative nonfiction, Catherine Dryden; Zach Vesper’s poem, “Evening” composed of strikingly original images; and student winner’s short fiction “The Border,” a short, astutely and lovingly absurd portrait.

Contributor’s notes include brief remarks about what inspired or informed the works.  Award-winning photographer Jim Haberman writes of his photos of the Middle East: “After you have lived in that part of the world, you never quite see things the same way again.” The same could be said for Alligator Juniper.
--Sima Rabinowitz

Alligator Juniper, No. 11, 2006

This publication of Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment combines fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and black-and-white photographs from the college's students as well as national prizewinners, all chosen by guest judges.  The fiction runs the gamut from the naturalistic treatment of a poor woman giving birth in a tobacco field (Vickie Weaver's "Distance") to the magical realism of a murderous mountain lion (Andrew Beahrs's "Full").  I couldn't dispel the impression that Weaver anthropomorphic and gratuitous.  Conversely, Deborah Setzer's "We Know What to Listen To," about a female "cowboy," captivated me from the first line.  The poem "Dugan's Shift" by Jendi Reiter stands out (who wouldn't be compelled to verse by the quirky fact that poet Alan Dugan was working in a plastic vagina model factory when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962?), as does Kim Kapin's photo "Achille," which is worth repeat viewings simply for the range of emotions it arouses.  Finally, in his well-considered essay "Centered in Edge Effects" Poetry, Nature, culture, and the Neighborhood," David Williams succinctly encapsulates what seems to shortfall of much contemporary verse: "Each poem requires discovery.  It's pointless to obscure conventional notions with rhetorical flourishes and call it creative work. It seems equally pointless to collect startling images and arrange them for effect..."
--Jeanne M. Lesinski

Alligator Juniper, No. 10, 2005

This issue is dedicated to the themes, "Scars," as evidenced from the dramatic black and white cover photograph of a man whose chest becomes a screen on which is projected several black birds in flight, their wings like the feathery reminders of what the body endures. While a theme dedicated to the visceral remnant of physical and emotional wounds could have solicited writing that was affected, tedious, or even cliché, this issue illustrates anything but.  Instead, we read of the subtleties of pain, the nuances of grief, the faint reminders of loss or dejection, though many of these authors left me feeling hopeful – that glimmer of possibility that encircles our aches like a silvery light.  Of particular note are Ellot Treichel’s poignant story “Procedure Four,” about a man who “thinks about when he first heard his dog calling to hi,” about how that moment provided a vision that “would teach him something about love”; Kathe Lison’s insightful essay “Need is Not Quite Belief,” in which she measures her own desires against the limited scope of society’s sexual taboos; and Will Roby’s poem “Cotton,” which left me longing for my own sense of reconnection to the past.  A bonus of this issue is also the inclusion of all national and student winners of contests in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography; they illustrate a deep commitment to investigating both the local and the exotic – a self-described hallmark of Alligator Juniper.  It’s no surprise to me that this journal has received numerous awards, including the 2001 Content Award from the AWP and eh 2004 AWP National Program Director’s Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines.
--Jen Henderson