The name of this journal is slightly misleading while Poetry Northwest does have a great selection of poets from that section of the United States, it also includes poets from around the world.
Published quarterly for over forty (uninterrupted) years, Poetry Northwest packs a lot of literature into its 48 pages. The poems in this journal tend to be longer - two to three pages - and are primarily narrative and lyrical.
There is a fantastic amount of imagery to be found in the poems in this issue. For example, these lines from "Love Poem Relying on an Ethnographer's Myth" by Lynn Domina:
Here is the word for snow
rising with a gust, one flake settling
onto a lower lip;
and here are the words for snow falling upon a
hedge, distinguishing
each twig, snow coating a ledge . . .
A report in the Sept./Oct. 2000 issue of Poets & Writers' Magazine, notes that this issue would have been the last for Poetry Northwest if it hadn't been for an email drive mounted by the journal's supporters, which "persuaded University of Washington president Robert McCormick to fund the magazine for the next two years."
According to P&W, "University funding of the magazine formally ended three years ago when the school's graduate program disbanded its publications department and the journal became the financial responsibility of the department of English." Without any additional monetary support from the University, the department racked up debt, and in 2002, decided to fold the publication.
But Poetry Northwest returned in March 2006 with additional funding, though it still struggles. You can subscribe to the magazine at http://www.poetrynw.org/.
It would be a shame to lost such a long-lived and important journal.
