Singular Subjects

Today I am sharing three journals with you—After the Art, Poetry Is Currency, and Liar’s League—one for each genre, and each with a distinct subject, stance, or theme. I like how each set of guidelines could engender new work or provide acceptance for the current. For me, if reading journals does not do that, instead I wish I was a different kind of writer.

The inspiration for After the Art came when the editor, Randon Billings Noble, had read William Maxwell’s So Long, See You, Tomorrow right after viewing at a gallery the crime dioramas constructed by Frances Glessner Lee, from the 1940’s, under the title “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” and found a sparse parallel to the book’s first chapter. She found that “reading after art” could expand both experiences.

Noble wants personal review essays that explore the ways reading can enrich the experience of looking at art. The writer must be actively present. Each essay must be about a piece of art — a painting, a photograph, a …