Chosen by the virtue of being first in my mailbox after thrifting a great issue a few months back. I meant to publish this post months ago, but life got in the way. A cross-country move, the horrors of the political newscape/world, and my own bandwidth, but today this is something I could do — so I’m back with the best of intentions.

When links to the work and/or the poet are easy to find, I provide them. I might sometimes miss something/get something wrong (uncompensated labor of love + desire to stir public conversation about poems + above noted reduced bandwidth) — lmk! I’ll do my best to edit.

Favorite poem: This has changed since I first read the issue. Today, it’s “Birdcall” by Kelan Nee. “The sky today is too blue,/cloudless, for this kind/ of stillness…Most times I watch/the feathers fill & deflate”

If I had to pair it with a song: It’s Called: Freefall by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Honorable mentions: “Napkin” by David Thoreen, “Kids Running After a Car” by Hee-June Choi, “My College Boyfriend Is at Bolt Coffee” by Julie Danho, “Instructions” and “Strike a Blow for Liberty” by Rose Lambert-Sluder.

Poems I sent to friends and why: “Nazarene” by Joanne Dominique Dwyer – looking for another poet’s thoughts, “On My Sister’s Buying Twin Plots for Herself and Steve in Greenwood Cemetery Not Far from Elmore Leonard” by Nancy Eimers – sent to my spouse bc mortal coil and all, and “Wolf Moon Blues” by Johnny Cate – sent to a poet who wrote the line or title “not another moon poem”, which I agree with and yet poets keep delivering wonderful moon poems.

Craft and/or letter from the editor: Dance! “We asked 10 writers to comment on the use of dance and dance imagery in poems”. I loved reading “dancing the syllables” by Sarah Nance and her contemplation that Clifton uses dance “figured as poetry itself… a way of enusring…that a different future might be possible”

Current Editor: David Wanczyk

Assistant Editor(s), Poetry: Sarah Haman & Amy Strieter

What the masthead says its looking for: Welcomes cross-genre and unusally formatted. Under 20 pages. 6 poem max.

Keywords I can come up with: chronic illness, caretaking, COUPLETS COUPLETS COUPLETS, family, dogs, identity

Where to buy and/or learn more: https://newohioreview.org/about/

Next reading period:  August 15th to November 15th