English : College of Arts and Sciences: Valparaiso University

Valparaiso Poetry Review

Valparaiso Poetry Review is an online journal that presents poems, interviews, and essays by new, emerging, or well-known poets. VPR also offers book reviews and suggests an extensive reading list with recent and recommended books of contemporary poetry and poetics.

Valparaiso Poetry Review has been listed by Google as the number four electronic poetry magazine in the nation of those ranked among the top 100 "most relevant and highly regarded sites" in its field, just behind such powerful sites as Poetry Daily and Poetry Magazine, and number two in the nation among university online poetry magazines.

The spring/ summer edition is now available, and features poet Lynnell Edwards (pictured above), along with the work of Julia Kasdorf, Brent Goodman, Mary Biddinger, Vincent Wixon, Patricia Fargnoli, Martin Walls, Frannie Lindsay, Lex Runciman, Chris Ellis, Joey Nicoletti, Jennifer MacPherson, Sean David Ross, April Lindner, Greg McBride, Joanne Lowery, Don Schofield, Ronda Broatch, Doug Ramspeck, Carol V. Davis, Peter Cooley, Lightsey Darst, and Peggy Miller.

All past issues of VPR and a complete archive of poems, essays, interviews, reviews, and commentary on art remain available for reading. Submission guidelines are also available.

Featured Poetry

From Lynnell Edwards' "Suite for Red River Gorge":

I. Whistling Arch
(Arch in Formation)

In high winds air rushing through the low opening whines, giving the arch its name. This whine is something that happens very rarely.
—Kentucky’s Land of the Arches: The Red River Gorge

Here geologic time tumbles
from the sandstone face in great slabs
of rock, progress marked
on some same clock keeping pace
with glaciers, the passing of comets,
volcano formation.

Featured Artwork

Frederic Edwin Church's Mountain Landscape:

Greg Hertzlieb writes,"Frederic Edwin Church, one of the most important artists of the Hudson River School, is represented in the Brauer Museum of Art’s collection by a small, beautiful oil on canvas painting that Percy Sloan donated to Valparaiso University in 1953. Sloan purchased the painting for his own collection from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950 and shortly after donated it to VU, along with approximately four hundred other works of art, many by his father Junius R. Sloan (1827-1900) who himself was a Hudson River School painter and who was influenced and inspired by Church’s skilled example. Today, the Brauer’s Church is one of the museum’s most beloved pieces, impressing viewers with its luminous treatment of its landscape subject."