Dear saltfront,
I was thrilled to make your acquaintance! Until reading your Winter 2015 issue, I had no idea such a publication existed in the mind-boggling vastness of the literary magazine world. For being just three issues in, you impressed me with your array of contributors. True, there’s a Utah majority, but that’s your home state after all. Among the degrees and publishing credits that dominate, I noticed several international contributors, and I want to applaud you for expanding to allow for cultural views in saltfront’s “alternate mode of ecological storytelling.” (Yes, I’m quoting the Editor’s Note: it’s a nice preface to this issue, which focuses on “nagivat[ing] upheavals.”)
saltfront, first let me say that I so enjoyed reading a publication with frequent artwork. The black and white images were evocative and well placed, and I thoroughly enjoyed the addition of Resford Rouzer’s collection of photographs. You really outdid yourself with the full-color postcard held in place by old-fashioned photo corners on the inside front cover. (I hate to seem too hasty, but it was so amazing that I’ve already mailed it off to a friend.)
A nifty postcard wasn’t the only pleasant surprise I had while reading though: the Table of Contents doesn’t identify genres. That encouraged me–usually the first to skip to the Fiction selections–to read the journal in a sequential, and thus varied, order. Most of the literary magazines I’ve read open with fiction, so I consider it a bold move to start the journal off with a set of four poems: “The world shrinks to the size of my vocabulary,” Charlie Malone writes in “Great Little Fears,” a powerful sentence that left me feeling I too, have experienced the diminishing frustration of condensing experiences into words.
It’s even more unusual to follow that kind of opening with non-fiction. But that’s exactly what you seem to have set out to do, saltfront, switch up paradigms and shake up common patterns. (That’s what your byline is, right? “Studies in human habit[at]?” Maybe this plays off that just a little. )
So much of the work your editors selected was unusual in topic and form. This is clearly a place that welcomes submissions that aren’t afraid to literally flow over the page, like Andrew Gottlieb’s poem “Considering a River: Lookout Creek, Writing, and a Brief Meditation on Movement,” or “Tide Charts listed in The Book of Sharks,” by Rob Carney, which uses tide charts and times to separate his poem into seven sections. I thought Mathew Cooperman’s poem “Jungle Book 4” was clever, using varying font sizes within his text to mimic the melodic rise and fall of birdsong.
Then there are these lovely smatterings of description that made me halt, saltfront, and think about the subjects differently: in her prose poem, Natalie Young writes about “plants in the back yard that nest,” giving them a nurturing, maternal quality I’d never considered. In his poem “Pomegranates,” English Brooks describes, “scattering the seeds like embers.” Anyone who’s seen the semi-transparent glow of a pomegranate seed can appreciate this image. “The bleached bones of a deer” are “scattered like runic spells” in “Eighty Acres,” Lindsey Appell’s emotional essay about young love and a lifelong loss. Jen Lambert recalls an injured bird in her prose poem “Mother Explains What it is to be Hunted,” its “bent wing, / folded like a paper fan.” In “Apology to a Grackle,” poet Jeremy Windham pens an apology for misidentifying a humble backyard bird, citing a “sundried memory.”
saltfront, I myself am an avid outdoors person who’s read a lot of nature-based fiction and non-fiction. I like to think I have a pretty good idea of whether a topic is really new or not when it comes to such things, and the depth of ideas put forth here impressed me. In his non-fiction essay, “Doing Time In The Ape Theater,” Ruedigar Matthes asks, “what is the currency of nature?” In “Firefighting Georgia,” Hilary Vidalakis muses, “I’m not of these woods, yet my task is to save them,” acknowledging the strangeness of her relationship with that wild space. In a neighboring essay on fire, Carissa Beckworth states, “small things, at first, change this world to another realm that we neither know or understand.” The very title, “From One to Fire,” is almost a confession–or an acknowledgement: I know that I do not know what you, fire, are.
Clearly, your editors have an eye for poetry and nonfiction. But saltfront, I’d love to see the fiction section beefed up: there was just one short story in the 124 page journal.
For such a young publication, there were very few typos, and overall, saltfront, I got the sense you take yourself seriously. I see from your website that you accept electronic fee-free submissions in multiple genres. Although I couldn’t find payment information, it does seem should anyone chose to submit, their writing will be in careful hands. (A big plus to future contributors is the sample section on your website, where you’ve posted examples of work that caught your eye.)
I hope you continue to thrive and challenge the way we humans see and interact with and within nature. It seems you’ve filled a niche by combining experimental work with experimental thought about this habitat we call home.
-A Satisfied Reader