Lilliput

New From Lilliput Review:

Here are some of my favorite picks from a recent selection of one of the smallest–and most jam packed with brilliance–little magazines I read.

#173 has a wild coffee pot on its yellow cover. A very evocative tanka by Peggy Heinrich:

Digging up iris
to divide them…
was it better
to discover his lie
after he died?

And as a reader I’m interested, provoked, and ultimately can’t answer that question.

#175 features this senryu by John Martone

watching a wasp
working harder
than me

#176 has this one by the master Issa, translated by Dennis Maloney:

Where I’m from
Even the
flies bite.

(I have to say this stimulates my thinking, making me remember I’m from the often harsh state of N.J. where the flies can bite, and then how in Iceland there were no–or very few–biting insects.)

Subscribe for 15 issues at a mere $10.00. Lilliput Review, Don Wentworth, 282 Main St. Pittsburgh, PA 15201 and check out the blog at http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/

Lilliput Review

The mail has been boring for about fifteen years. Love notes, gigs, invitations–all these now come by e-mail. But on a snowy day this week my blue mailbox did hold an envelope full of expectation. Out fluttered bright bits of paper like oversized confetti–the newest publications from Lilliput.
Lilliput Review #171 (!) is bright blue with a Picasso-esque political sketch on the cover. Palm sized, it is full of tiny poems, and some wild fun illustrations by Wayne Hogan. I liked this couplet from Charlie Mehroff:

Going nowhere.
Always packed and ready.

There is a lot of variety here, with work traditional and experimental, but hard to beat Dennis Maloney’s translation of Yosano Akikio’s tanka:

A branch
Of wild plum
Is sufficient
For this brief
Brief parting

Lilliput Review #172 is pinkish, sports a secret garden image, and is entirely devoted to 15 poems by Ed Markowski. These have the feel of senryu:

zen garden
the old scarecrow imitates
a young monk

and seem to meditation on the divine–both preset and absent:

midnight mass
i add a few casino chips
to the collection plate

Enjoyable all around. Lilliput Review/Don Wentworth. Editor/282 Main Street/Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Subscriptions & Sample Copy Price Schedule
 
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   15 issues  = $10.00
 
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                 ”Don Wentworth”

And check out the blog–http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/ for Issa’s Untidy Hut