Sweet on Poetry

Published out of Salt Lake City, Utah, the Sugar House Review is perhaps one of the deepest and most extensive looks at poetry that I have read during my time as a review reviewer. The journal features an infinitely various examination of the kinds of poetry being written currently, with thirty-seven different poets, along with a handful of critical essays, all jam-packed into a slim volume of ninety pages. In my opinion, the Sugar House Review ranks among the few poetry journals with the potential for mass appeal. To this, happily, their fall/winter 2012 volume is no exception.

Sugar House Review stands out because it allows for several poems to be published by a single poet as opposed to other poetry reviews where readers are given a small taste of a poet and then must look elsewhere to read more. Instead, the Sugar House Review provides us with good, sizable samples of their featured poets. While there are several reviews of poetry volumes included, the journal seems primarily devoted to publishing poems. This, along with the fact that the journal does not include artwork, gives Sugar House the space needed for such a dense volume in so few pages. The poets who have published only one poem are in the minority compared to those who have two, three, four, or even five in this season's edition. Nick Demske's series of five poems is the journal's biggest feature, made up of more prose-like pieces that rely upon black slang and at times the rhythmic sensibilities of slam poetry.

But quantity is not the only thing the Sugar House Review has going for it this season. More importantly, it is the kinds of poems they have chosen to publish which is most astonishing. Though I mention Nick Demske's more slangy poems where phrases like "watch your shit fall like Rome" appear in abundance, Demske's poems are only one variety of poem that you'll find published by Sugar House. There is also a robust contribution from poets working in a more lyrical style, and even some who verge on language poetry and whimsicality. The second poem in the volume, Jeff Hardin's "A Rationale Indefensable but Offered Nonetheless" has chillier, more cerebral aspects: "Especially in a storm, the barn is theoretical./ So is automy, certainty, whatever the lute can add". In most journals, you might not ever see poems like Demske's and Hardin's printed almost side by side. However the Sugar House Review is unafraid of these combinations, and it makes for a stimulating and engaging read.

It would be too much to try and examine every kind of poem that appears in this season's Sugar House with the same level of depth. And so I will just briefly mention some of the other notable areas that are included. Among them are: poems that deal with fables (ie Liz Kay's series about Hansel and Gretl), political poetry, feminist poetry, poetry about race, anecdotal poetry, poems about books, poems about movies, and poems about pop culture. The submissions range from the serious to the playful with every page. One area that is underrepresented this season are poems about other cultures and countries. Although no journal can do everything with every publication, it seems that if you're looking to submit or read a more multi-cultural set of poems, the Sugar House Review may not be the first place you should look to.

Regarding structure, of course the range is as wide as the jorunal's stylistic range. One thing I noticed was that a disproportionate amount of poems were written in triplets. Whatever the motivation for this is, it means that the Sugar House Review does pay close attention to structural aspects of poetry. And while there are many prose poems and others that read as free-verse, this season's selections are careful with their prosody, whether they rhyme, have slant rhyming schemes, or are simply one paragraph on a page.

To use a cliché, the Sugar House Review is a publication where there truly is something for everybody. For readers, there is enough poetry published in a single season to keep you engaged and interested for an entire year. For poets, the incredibly wide scope of the journal makes it an ideal publication for submissions. From only a brief glance, it looks as though the poets who are published in Sugar House are not universally MFAs or PhDs, though many have published volumes or appeared in other poetry journals. What shines through most when reading the Sugar House Review is the excitement about and passion for poetry today, both from reading the works of the individual poets themselves and from thinking about the journal as a whole. I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to partake in such excitement and passion, and hope that I have done it proper justice with this review.