The Aurorean, Fall/Winter 2012-2013

 

REVIEW OF THE AUROREAN LITERARY MAGAZINE

By Barbara Bialick

The Aurorean, Fall/Winter 2012-2013, Volume XVII, Issue 2, ISSN 1521-2013, $11, Publisher/Editor: Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, Encircle Publications, LLC, P.O. Box 187,

Farmington, ME 04938, USA.

Statement of Purpose: the Aurorean “seeks to publish inspirational, meditational, and/or poetry reflective of the Northeast. Do not submit by e-mail. Address is above. Website:

http://www.encirclepub.com. Note: The Aurorean is also made available to Bookshare, an on-line library of digital books for people with disabilities.

The new Aurorean is dedicated to snow on a country road, as the cover photo implies. The two feature poets are Shelley Girdner and Steve Ausherman—who won $30 for Best-Poem-of-Last-Issue, called “Breaking Upon the Anvil.”

Shelley Girdner’s poem “A Snowstorm Every Week for a Month”, has original snow imagery such as “It’s sky that’s fallen at my feet…the blankness around me/like all the chalk ever erased from boards…”  In “The Dinner Party”, the poet luxuriates in fine images as “to be at the end/of the night, luxuriating in goodbye./Each detail gathers a little sadness to it:/the lemon rind at the bottom of a glass,/a cherry stem tied and left…”

Featured poet Steve Ausherman also writes beautiful imagery, line upon line in “The Weight of Returning Winter”:

Abiquiu Lake lies low upon the land/

With skin reflecting the dull sheen of an iron skillet./

Sleet mixing with snow/

Breaks the skin of the land like mosquitoes on pink skin./

Surrounding mountains hide from sight/

As storm clouds drape a veil over their granite faces./

The windshield wipers play a washtub bass/

Over the tenor chords of sideways-blowing wind/…

Robert K. Johnson, a local Boston-area poet is also included in this issue with the poem “Man’s Best Friend.”

Widely published poet Lyn Lifshin has a poem called “Before the First Red Comes Into the Maples”:

“the young girl’s dreams/are of him. On the line,/wet bathing suits hang/like wild birds, their/cotton wings camoaflage/her leap from sheets/she hasn’t touched…”

If you love finely crafted nature poetry, you might enjoy reading and submitting to the Aurorean. It has “published over a thousand poets world-wide since 1995. Several times it has been named a “Pick” by Small Press Review.