Warren

2008-2009 Issue

Blooomsburg University

Review by Lauren Bailey, London Campbell and Autumn Walck

Bloomsburg University’s 2008-2009 Literary-Art Journal, Warren, begins with a Virginia Woolf quote: “The words seemed to be dropped in a well, where if the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily distorting that, even as they descended, one saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows what pattern on the floor of the child’s mind.” This is the swirl of emotion that began our experience reading Warren. Woolf’s quote feels appropriate, as the majority of the stories and poems in this journal have a dark, dramatic feel to them, lending a sense of cohesion to the magazine as a whole.

Jess Weber’s story, “To Let the Light In,” is a disjointed, melancholy piece about a married couple grappling with the news that they cannot conceive children. “The Abandoned Ship,” a poem by Steven Koch, is similarly haunting, describing a ship that nobody knows what happened to. Though this volume of Warren does not have a theme, we found definite connections between these pieces. We also greatly enjoyed the refreshing humor in “An Unlikely Conversation,” especially these lines:

“‘My time is what you are actually paying for. Call it therapy.’

‘I already pay somebody else for that.’

‘Then I must not be needed.’”

There were several very artistic photos that, although printed in black in white, resonated with us as readers and seemed to speak to both the pieces and the dark undertone we detected throughout the journal. It did seem odd that the photographs were printed on the same page as a story or a poem – we wanted to pay everything in the magazine the same amount of attention, but when reading a story or poem, we would sometimes become distracted by a photograph, and vice versa. We also thought the column-formatting in this journal made the prose feel cluttered – it would have been easier to focus on the stories themselves if they had simply been printed across the page. We really liked the layout, however – the glossy white paper feels inviting, and the collection of words on the front and back covers speaks, once again, to the Virginia Woolf quote included on the title page.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed Warren, and hope to have the opportunity to see future editions!