Assignment 8: Review of a Literary Journal

The magazine that I chose for this assignment was, Potpourri Magazine Poems & Short Stories, 1995-2003, edited by Polly Swafford. It was published in 2004 by Griffon House Publications which is based out of Wilmington, Delaware. In this book there are poems and short stories of various authors. The book itself once past the cover is in just plain black and white. The cover of this is not very interesting either, it is just a plain siler color with an orange backround with the title and authors on the cover. It appears to be a very cheap book and is fairly small, with a purpose of "promoting the arts". The books intention is to promote greater awareness of the diversity of cultures and peoples in the world. The writings, in order to get into this book had to promote, in a positive way, some aspect of our multicultural heritage. I feel that this magazine did a good job at accomplishing its mission. I feel that this magazine really does show the cultural differences that we do have in our world. Such as one poem talks about a native american going off and riding his harley, and deing like a brave, and another poem titled "Los Meninos", which means men of honor, talks about people in a soup kitchen pretending the food is something else and in the winter time they "dance and prance around the fire just to keep warm". For an even further example for how well this book was able to show this cultural differences was shown in a poem titled, "The Ancestors" which is about the culture and people living in the western hemishpere at a time before colombus even came over the seas. The poems and short stories in this magazine are all about different things relating to certain cultures from all around the world. So all in all, what these poems have in common is a theme. What I found particularly interesting was the way the authors were able to describe a piece of culture in many different styles and ways. Aside from the poems another fun and interesting thing I found in this book was in the very back in a section called Authors' Bios. What was interesting about this was to see where these authors came from and what particular backround they cam from and how this influenced the poem that they decided to write. Personally I find it interesting in itself to see where these authors have come from. One of them is from India, Angelee Deodhar, and then the majority of the authors published in this magazine are from the states, with a few of them who have traveled and/or studied abroad. This I found was pretty cool because it allowed me , the reader, coming from the united states, to see how other people from our country view and interpret other cultures. My favorite poem in this book is actually the first on. This is the one that I described earlier about the harley. I just absolutley love the last stanza in this poem which ended up making it my favorite poem in this book. I would have to say that I probably would pick up another issue of this journal, however I was reading about this book on wikipedia and found out that they discontinued this series in 2003 so therefore i would not be able to pick up any new material. I would like to put my poetry in this journal. I really think that one of the messages that this journal is actually saying is that we are all different but we can still understand one another and eventually this understanding will lead to peace. I have already writen a few poems about peace or touching apon it, along with writing a poem that would actually fit into this book. The poem that I wrote was called The Difference. So therefore since I have an interest in these issues it would be pretty cool to be publsihed in a magazine similar to this one.