Hubbub, Volume 17, 2000-2001
Editors, Lisa Steinman, Jim Shugrue
I had never heard of Hubbub before seeing it on the shelf at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. But after picking up this slim annual, I was extremely impressed with the diversity of poetic styles it contained.
Volume Seventeen contains prose poems, a cinquain, a ghazal, experimental free verse, narrative and lyrical poetry. Roughly one third of the poets featured in this issue hail from Oregon or Washington State, and the others from elsewhere in the U.S., and even Ecuador, Ireland and Japan.
I was most taken with the innovation and creativity of the poets in this issue. For example, these lines from "Poem Without Flowers, Cranes, or Clouds" by Mary Ann Samyn:
--- Then I began to want the bad side,
to turn the poem over.
But she had a funny little way is a line
and not a rock,
nothing white and wormy
in the moist spot.
The issue also contains a review of Carlos Reyes translation of "Poemas de la Isla" by Josefina de la Torre, as well as Reyes translations of two poems by Aleyda Quevedo Rojas. These lines from "Kitchen" are so beautiful, so evocative:
Cell of the finest aromas
space which guards
favorite teardrops
those caused by the spices
and the real ones
At $5.00, there is a lot of poetry for the buck. You shouldn't pass up the opportunity to own your own copy of Hubbub.
You can reach Hubbub at 5344 S.E. 38th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97202. The magazine does not have a web site.
