Reviews

The Salt River Review (reviewed 10-10-1998)
The Salt River Review has four issues online, and all of them are a vast improvement over the majority of electronic literature publications. The works are all very detail-oriented, something I appreciate. I heartily recommend The Vanity of Random Taxis in Salt River Review's fourth issue. Halvard Johnson explores an afternoon in one woman's life when she has the inexplicable feeling that, where ever she goes, a taxi will be waiting for her. She enjoys her afternoon walk all the more, imagining herself politely declining the inviation of cab after cab. Venezia Che Muore stuggles against its form, and amused me by calling the birds that clutter St. Mark's Square in Venice "doves", but contains some interesting turns of phrase ("bruised stars"). The Hills Just West of Yuma is a nice poem about a couple who start driving west and decide not to go back. It is not really an impulse, though, it's as though they simply follow the flow, they can't make the decision to turn back. I feel it could have either benefitted from going into more depth about this fatalistic or even nihilistic feeling they have, or extending the poem further in time, and explain either what came before that prepared them for this, or what came after that convinced them they were right.

Tower of Babel (reviewed January, 2000)
One of the most poorly designed websites I have seen from an editor who claims he is "professional." Everything loads slowly, and the navigation forces you to go through page after page before you get to see any of the real content. Too many "mission statement"-type statements.

Suggest a Site

In general, I am of the opinion that online literature sites are usually of a particularly low quality because people have no qualms about posting hundreds and hundreds of worthless crap poems. After all, it doesn't cost them anything...server space is cheap when you're talking about tiny little ASCII files. If you know of a good literature site, let me know. I'm always willing to be wrong.

Crowright 2001 Osric Publishing. Last updated 06-17-2005