NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

There is no conventional cover to THE JOURNAL, and this functional packaging neatly reflects the particular style that Sam Smith has achieved in a well established magazine. Its editorial values comprise pleasing unfussiness and a determination to promote forward-looking poetry from across the world. The A4 format is particularly effective in allowing even the largest poems a proper space to inhabit.

Smith makes equally good use of the smaller pockets of space on each page, filling the magazine with a healthy balance of reviews and editorial matter. Poetry shines through however, and the choice for the opening page is witty and apposite:

	Give me the fist of word,
	the knuckle sandwich ...
	there's more to life than precious
	petals falling from the rose.

Most memorable is POETRY, BLOOD AND CYANIDE by Cyrus Mahan, who provides a panoramic view of repression in Iran, which is a fine combination of the chilling and the deadpan, underpinned by the fugue of three lines:

	I will fight you
	With a book of poetry
	And a necklace of cyanide.

Sam Smith has always looked beyond our borders, and the international contributors bring much of interest to this edition of THE JOURNAL. Emily Wright, for example, recreates the spaces and hints at the myriad of subcultures across the U.S.A. in three connected pieces. NAZCO, particularly, mixes a kaleidoscope of imagery and self-doubt with a sharp and sometimes cynical depiction of popular culture:

				Chains and pills and
	dogs with lazy eyes and Phenobarbital and laughs from
	saints who love to exaggerate and I need glasses.

	Sanctuary, sanitarium?
	Which will cure the silence?
	The lizards lie waiting for the swallows
	Which today fly low.

	On dirty concrete

	and dead leaves we danced
	like widows with his broom.

This Journal is produced in Britain and contains the work of poets from, for instance, the USA, Denmark, and Italy. There are sections containing book and magazine reviews.

A well produced A4 publication with 40 pages of poetry and reviews. The poems are varied and of quite a high standard. One by Idris Caffrey called LIGHT YEARS caught my eye. The language is simplistic yet effective. It is a poem that handles a difficult subject with clarity and precision:

	I asked if I could help
	but he sent me away to my room —
	he spends more time with my sister now
	and I've often heard her crying.

	Spectral trees appear
	clear then gradually fade
	branches ghost away

	Web wheels hang listless
	fine woven strands glistening
	capturing moisture

	As if the moon
	(full and hunting
	her stubborn soul)
	pulls from field, woodlot,
	suburban backyard,
	a wild cry,
	a dog-song, strung
	throat to throat
	(dark, discordant
	with mongrel memory)
	already old
	as death — and the night
	screams aloud,
	alive — and a man-god
	shivers
	at the greed in it.

I like the look of this magazine. Its no-nonsense but attractive format and modest clear fonts, promoting a bevy of varied poems and reviews, promise a good read. Issue 11, in the main, did not disappoint. The lyricism of FLEURS and the dynamic description of a 'mystical parade' in RUTS (prose poems, translated by Louis E. Bourgeois from the French of Arthur Rambaud) are a delight. This from FLEURS:

Yellow gold pieces scattered over white corpse, mahogany pillows supporting emerald domes, bouquets of white satin and tender droplets of rubies surround the water rose.

	First it's a picture postcard; nothing stirs;
	The street is doped with summer; drunken flowers,
	Heavy with sun, lean on the air; the firs
	Across the dappled field are still as towers
	Carved from green rock ...

I would have much preferred it if this particular reviewer had done the job he was asked to do and reviewed with the respect such collections deserve. He admits the poetry in these books is not bad poetry; and even if it were, it would no doubt have been written with sincerity and not merely to make a quick buck. This article ought not have been in the 'review' section.

Again I was struck with the intensely perceptive economy of Jacqueline Karp's poetry (two poems from SUDDEN MARASCHINOS which I reviewed earlier this year). SWEDISH ARCHAEOLOGY:

  
	Then out of the clay 
	the stark dirge shone: 
	En dag ar so lang.
	A day is so long, 
	my own old tongue 
	stripped to the bone.

As in most magazines there are poems that I liked a lot, and others that left me less than fired-up. I was, though, glad of all of them!