3 literary journals: Ginosko, Animal, and The Courtship of Winds

An illuminating experience of being published in a literary journal is how I become more familiar with that journal and its contributors. A plethora of lit mags, now on the internet, present quite a dilemma if a person chooses to read new writers. With more publication, I've enjoyed a wider range of journals. These are my recent publications and reads.

Ginosko is a semi-annual litzine based in California since 2002. I have six poems in their Summer 2018 issue, #21. This is a big issue, about 250 pages that can be viewed online . A definition for this Greek word ginosko, "The recognition of truth from experience", tells my absorption in reading.

A short story about a lawyer and his wife, “Two Secrets” by Norbert Kovacs, really hit the spot this last month. I also savored "On a Sweet River" by Elizabeth Buechner Morris, about a young Guatemalan, and "Assembly Heart” by Laura Valeri where an inner reality is told to the paranormal. Doug Mathewson's short shorts expressed the vitality of today's West.

James Grabill's poetry uses scientific imagery in a flowing style that gives sense to his themes. The strong thoughts in Jonathan Jones' poetry are rendered with interesting sound patterns.

There is so much more in this issue to peruse for readers of varied tastes.

Animal:A Beast of a Literary Magazine has, since 2012, been publishing monthly creative work about human encounters with animals, “on the divide between wild and domestic.” My short story “The Recluse and the Raccon” was published last May.

The reading, I found, was at that edge, providing unusual insights into our interface with the natural world, and unique from the personal perspective. I was drawn to a short story about octopuses by Brigitte McCray and how they affected a musician's decisions while she lived in Greece. There are stunning and disturbing images of box turtles in traffic - non-fiction by Allan Stein - and cougars - fiction by Heather Durham. Judith Roney maintains surreality in her poem, “Bird in a Brick House.”

Upcoming for me is The Courtship of Winds publishing two poems. William V. Ray, the editor, has re-launched this bi-annual literary journal to digital. His contributors come from fascinating backgrounds which are reflected in the poetry there. I also savored the fiction in the last issue, especially Denise Kline's moving and ominous story about Ali, a young herder who crosses the Mediterranean as a refugee.

At The Courtship of Winds, Ray provides statistics about digital literary journals and readers. I keep lists and then want to branch out again, discovering reading and opportunity that was once confined to small press print and fully stocked bookstores.

One of my ideas about literary work is that it handles the news that couldn't be published as news. While I like highly imagined work, I still appreciate a work of literature for giving the sense that it really happened. In a time when people can press a few buttons and see hard facts or false accounts about the globe they live on, reading convincing details from inner or personal angles often provides another tether.