2008/04/22:
No.13 is a joy as ever, full of a great richness of reading, an exercise in life enhancement. Also as ever I shall find one reading is never enough.
2008/04/08:
The magazine is filled with a fascinating and very diverse range of poetry and some excellent translations and reviews.
2008/01/04:
I have high regard for the magazine: your effort, the quality of writing, and the quality of the magazine itself.
2007/11/16:
A very eclectic gathering of fine poets, quite a number I hadn't come across before - Emily C. Belli, John Levy, Monica McFawn, Robert James Berry, they stand out, others also. I also really like the three Austrian poets you feature.
2007/11/13:
The review is beautiful, inside and out.
2007/11/01:
I just received my copies of issue #12 of Poetry Salzburg Review and am very happy to find myself in such good company. An excellent issue all the way through, and very nicely done. Thanks much for making me a part of that.
2007/10/07:
I have now got round to reading #11 properly.
What a relief to get away from the English (?British) preoccupation with the local, even the parochial.
You will see that I have just ordered the back numbers ...
2007/05/23:
One of the poems I particularly liked is Gui Mayo's "Morning 1933", with its excellent lines such as "and a faint sound from the canyon below, the sound of space". I enjoyed Anne Babson's two pieces. "Canzonetta for Pastor Annie" is funny, ironic, but perhaps basically an ambiguous celebration of its subject. "Botticelli after Savonarola", an elegant lyrical soliloquy, looks like a comment on an epoch as well (Botticelli's, and/or our own). [...] Glyn Pursglove is an unusually well-read critic who doesn't express his opinions lightly or thoughtlessly. I always admired his calm but, so to speak, modest authority. I found Harriet Tarlo's review of the almost legendary Fred Beake's new book very informative [...]. Julia Novak's interview with John Siddique discusses, among other subjects, directness and "the story" in poetry, as well as humour in poetry - welcome approaches both, as they often get neglected.
2007/05/21:
Thank you for the admirable Poetry Salzburg Review 11, which I have greatly enjoyed reading. It really is a most mature magazine now.
2007/05/12:
Very impressed by Poetry Salzburg Review 11, especially the insightful reviews.
2007/05/08:
Just to say that my Spring issue has arrived and is lovely! I've read the whole thing with much enjoyment. I especially like the poems by Theo Dorgan and Nicholas Messenger.
2007/04/26:
I'm amazed that you find so much good new work. I haven't read Samuel Menashe since the Penguin Modern Poets, which seems a lifetime ago, and was intrigued that Christopher Ricks has edited him. One of the things I like is the ambition of many of these poets. We seem to have become a bit parochial in the UK for reasons I don't quite understand. I particularly liked Keith Holyoak, which is exactly the kind of thing I would like to do myself, and Richard O'Connell, Katy Evans-Bush and Martin Green - I found the Green poem 'Death of an American' very moving. The two I found most startling and envied were David Miller's and Linda Black's. They are doing something I very much want to do myself in my new work. It must take tremendous work to find such original material, and I'm sure you are pleased.
2007/04/18:
Thanks for the copy of PSR 11. It's a very striking issue: the Horst Janssen-style cover art is very impressive, and "Sycorax", which is a very effective poem, might almost have been written with it in mind.
2007/01/22:
As I enter my eighties, naturally, with increasing age my everyday priorities have somewhat changed, and I find certain interests, even major ones, can't be pursued with their old vigor - perhaps because I haven't the full-blooded commitment of someone like yourself. To be quite frank, I must say that the last issues of your magazine I saw included poetry which meant very little to me at all. No doubt sadly a reflection on myself, but true. Nevertheless, I genuinely admire what you do in keeping intelligent life afloat in the increasingly material and philistine world in which we live, and out of gratitude for that, wholeheartedly hope you succeed in keeping going.
2007/01/17:
Many thanks for the new issue. I'm in the middle of it and enjoy very much all this innovative stuff.
I sympathise strongly with your Editorial. I recall very clearly the independent days, in the early 1990s, of the academic journal that I'm involved with - Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. The huge work of doing the publication and the relentless paucity of return in terms of subscriptions. It was heartbreaking. After four years of struggle we signed with Routledge and today Angelaki is the most read of their 200+ arts and humanities journals - but that battering of hope was a very tough experience and one that is still vivid. What self-regarding bloody rudeness from that person you quote!
2007/01/10: The journal deserves the greatest support - it is a literary magazine rather than a magazine (such as PN Review) that merely publishes literary writing. I am particularly grateful to have discovered, via its pages, the poetry of William Bedford: his technical skill is very great.
2006/10/16:
I read with interest and sympathy your editorial bemoaning the unwillingness of poetry submitters to subscribe to magazines in general, and PSR in particular. Clearly, editing a small magazine is a labour of love, and I can see how disheartening low circulation figures must be for editors. [...] I entirely agree that poets must subscribe to some magazines because in the long term, their own publication indirectly depends on it. They may not be published in magazines they subscribe to, but they may be published in those that others subscribe to. What goes around, comes around. And no one should imagine that there is a large passive readership of poetry out there: most people who read it, write it.
2006/10/15:
I do think the magazine develops a very individual character.
2006/10/03:
Many thanks for [...] the splendid new issue of Poetry Salzburg Review! There are a lot of great poems here, from what I've read so far, and interesting criticism - including Jeffrey Side's interview with Marjorie Perloff. Not many magazines offer BOTH fine poetry AND sophisticated literary analyses, as this one does. [...] Also, it's been intriguing to discover (not recently, to be sure) that one of the best English-language literary magazines is edited from outside the anglophone world. [.. ] perhaps, generally speaking, writers, editors, and literature should be defined according to the language used, rather than the country or countries of origin.
2006/10/01:
Thank you for PSR 10 - a varied and fascinating compilation [...]. It's good to encounter such a range of international contributors and to see the healthy presence of a large chunk of translations.
2006/05/07:
Cast away on a desert island with only one poetry magazine it would have to be Poetry Salzburg Review; your latest edition, PSR 9, is my favourite so far.
2006/05/03:
I continue to enjoy reading and rereading [...] PSR No. 9. Many wonderful pieces in this issue. I especially admire the poems by Vassilis Zambaras (though I can't pretend to be impartial, since I have known him for more than 30 years - but even if I didn't know him I think I'd be wowed by these poems), the remarkable poem by Christopher Gutkind, and the very fine poems by Claire Crowther. As I say above, much else I like in this issue, but these three poets are the ones that I want to especially mention. [...] I like the cover very much.
2006/04/14:
I got No.9 and it looks great and I thank you very much. ... It's a good issue, you all do a great job.
2006/04/13:
Thanks for the magazine. I think I must have read most / all of it, found a great deal to like, new people to me to look out for again and especially enjoyed John Levy who you published a large chunk of a few issues ago. The feature on Ulli Freer was interesting enough for me because I was quite friendly with him thirty years ago and lost touch. Review sections useful and interesting too.
2006/04/11:
What a brilliant cover! The colours blend to give a rich vital impact without any harshness. ... I liked very much the greater range of styles and subjects among the poems, making fascinating reading, full of surprises. I'm boggled again by the strange fascination of fragments as in Jeffrey Carson's 'Archilochos'. One can't help lingering on them, speculating on what they're really all about. Would their entirety be so intriguing? There's much to go back to and read again.
2005/10/24:
PSR No. 7 is one of the best mags among the many I have collected. The Hellenic character is most subtle and becoming; I find no other recent European number that holds the same charm.
2005/10/22:
As a new subscriber, I'd like to give you my initial reaction to issues #7 and #8. Yes, I understand the complaint of the long-term subscriber (mentioned in your editorial in #7) regarding incomprehensible poetry; the opening pages of #7 baffled me. But I read on, and now, having reread much of #7 and had a first glance at #8, I concur wholeheartedly in your plea that PSR presents the whole spectrum of contemporary English-language poetry. If some poems elude me, there are plenty of others that don't. In #7 I love the evocation of the seahorse by Melanie Challenger, the concision of Judith Wilkinson's "Bridge" and Robert Leach's "Every Time", and the two very moving poems by R.G. Bishop. In #8 I was struck by the concrete imagery of John Kinsella's poems, and the rich humor of A.C. Bevan's poems on the unicorn and Leda. I could go on, but I won't. Congratulations on offering a rich and diverse sampling of what's being written today.
2005/10/20:
fantastic - a really dynamic read. smart, varied, addictive.
2005/10/12:
I recently received my copy of PSR#8 and was very impressed with the overall quality and depth of the magazine. Its obvious that a lot of thought, time and effort goes into putting it together.
2005/10/04:
I have much enjoyed reading the latest issue of the Review. Your contributors must, like myself, find it stimulating to see their work appearing alongside poems of such a wide variety of styles. I find it both challenging and heartening - one can both learn and feel encouraged. If I understandably was immediately drawn to the work of Patricia Bishop and Catherine Owen, that of Parm Kaur and David Miller appealed no less - and that of Joel Vega and - and -. I wont go on, but you have produced a most stimulating issue. It must have been hard work!
2005/10/03:
PSRIt's a joy to handle such a pleasantly produced book, and to read such inspiring and thought-provoking contents. I like very much the increase (or am I imagining it?) in prose articles, illuminating the work of various poets, their attitudes towards their work, and towards the intriguing mysteries of the world, of man and nature, at various levels. Poetry Salzburg Review must be one of the few, perhaps very few, magazines that embrace broadness of style, and evade the repetitive themes and attitudes of so much today - as if the known was safe and therefore must be kept to. So often in British magazines I find I'm reading only the first few lines and then feeling - the same old stuff, the same attitudes - is that what poetry is reduced to? PSR is marvellously refreshing and stimulating, and many congratulations to you and your team for supporting independent thought.
2005/09/28:
On a preliminary look it strikes me as, in some ways, the most interesting of all your issues so far. A fascinating mixture of styles, poets, generations etc, which is an exemplary lesson in non-partisan attention to QUALITY. Well-done! I am particularly fascinated to see someone writing about Michael Riviere, whose work (slim though it is) I have long admired.
2005/03/24:
I am much enjoying, and am very interested in, the contents of Poetry Salzburg Review: It is quite the most comprehensive magazine of its kind I know. I doubt that a poet of my sort would find himself between the same pages as, say, Maggie O'Sullivan, in this country. But surely it is better to publish all kinds of verse - certainly it prevents the narrowing tendencies of cliques. Though I sympathise to some extent with your de-subscribing reader (certainly when personal taste is concerned). So long as you publish poems of all kinds no reader should feel excluded.
2005/03/13:
Upon our return from Paris a few weeks ago (our first trip there since 1977) we found in our post office box PSR Winter 2005. Sexy cover! And I enjoyed some of the poems. I liked Theo Dorgan's simple masculine redaction of the great Apollonious Rhodios, and some lyrics. I note in the introduction that you seem worried about publishing work you don't actually 'get'. The main problem for me of unintelligible work is that I stop reading it immediately unless it its rhythm and diction seduce. If the writer has a big reputation, I'll read ten lines out of respect, and then stop. But everybody does this, n'est-ce pas? So you are right to go for it.
2005/02/22:
Kudos to Wolfgang Görtschacher for initiative and aplomb - putting my poem "WAR" in your journal sideways to preserve the line structure was more than clever. Thank you!
I have not yet read it all, but I think "Tommy Atkin's Lament," by Raymond Leonard, is truly outstanding- and I appreciate his title's salute to Rudyard Kipling.
2005/02/15:
Many thanks for Number 7 of PSR and for including me in it. Your comments in the editorial have moved me to write a line or two to you. While I can understand the complaint of your correspondent with regard to some poetry, I find that many of the poems in the newest number are eminently understandable and accessible. See for example from the first few pages the work of Pat Earnshaw, Pauline Kirk, Raymond Leonard, Jenny Johnson and Richard George.
I myself sympathize with the complaint that May Sarton made way back in the fifties that too much poetry was written for other poets. But in a reading I gave recently together with an actress from one of the Aachen theatres, where we read my poems in English and in German versions, there were people there who would never normally go to such events (my neighbours for example)and who were very enthusiastic. Poetry does need to be made available, and interesting, and moving, and, and to a wide reading public. But how?
Keep up the good work.
2005/02/09:
The editorial was a big surprise. What will your unsubscriber read now? At a jewellers it pays to remember that the good stuff is often in the back; you can tell him that from me. In number 7 I enjoyed Melanie Challenger's 2023, Sharon Morris's the garden, Richard Martin's After the Fire, Robert Leach's After the Storm, Srinjay Chakravati's vignette, Bruce Lader's The Boy who loved to Fish, Libby Hart's What I know, David Brooks' The Balcony, Alessio Zanelli's Lowland Feel, R.G. Bishop's Lost, Florence Elon's Turning Wheel ... and a lot of other stuff I've still to read.
Great value!