The Best Literary Journal Cover of the Past Few Years (According to Dave)

Hello again.

I've always loved Leonetto Cappiello's work. I love the work from that whole period from the late eighteen-hundreds to the nineteen twenties. When I saw the Absinthe cover, I knew this was going on my list.

When I was thirteen, my family moved from Idaho to Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, my friends and I used to leave school (on Fort Buchanan), and go to the beach. Sometimes we’d go to Old San Juan and look at the ancient Spanish fortresses that keep watch over the Atlantic Ocean. Inside one of those fortresses, El Morro, inside the prison, is a crude, four-hundred-year-old drawing of a ship etched into the wall surrounded by Spanish curses and tally marks.  All of Old San Juan is like a painting, and it is littered with artists, paintings, sculptures, and life.

It was in Puerto Rico that I first started to paint. I still have old charcoal-pencil drawings from the roof of our house in Bayamon, where I could see all the way to the Catholic Church outside our neighborhood, and past it to the government housing. I used to wind around around the maze of shops and bars in Old San Juan all day, and wander into the galleries, African art stores, or browse through paintings in books in used bookstores. It was old, musky magic.

 When I was sixteen and my family moved to Florida, things became difficult. I had a hard time being back in the States. I don’t know for sure what happened. Maybe it was my short, angry band teacher who was a little too close (criminally close) to one of the most beautiful sophomore girls in my band class, while I had trouble getting a girlfriend at all. Maybe it was the English class where I worked so hard all week to write a poem and got a C, while the the kid in front of me got an A for a comparing his bass guitar to his girlfriend. Whatever it was, I hated school. I began skipping all my classes and going to the one place I knew no one would pay any attention to me: the library. I rotated tables every hour so that no one would would notice the kid with the stack of books who was becoming a constant fixture. I devoured all the art books. I learned about Degas, Dali, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, and of course, Leonetto Cappiello. I was looking for that feel I used to have trudging through the history, and art, through the Spanish-built Old San Juan.

 I couldn’t find it.

What I did find had a similar spirit though. It was in the furthest reaches of the high school library (when I was supposed to be in English, or Math, or Science, or Band class) that I discovered the beauty and life of well-placed lines.

This cover is full of well placed lines. The swishing movement in the dress, that red on red, and that smile remind me of what I loved in those lonely, library hours. When I asked Dwayne D. Hayes from Absinthe about why this cover was chosen, he said, "The cover art for Absinthe #8 was selected because it clearly captured the spirit of the magazine with its joyful celebration of life (and, yes, a good drink with friends) and, of course, it evokes the writers and artists in Europe who enjoyed absinthe in the late 19th and early 20th century."

I've never been to Europe, but it did remind me of my own joyful celebration of life, and the friends—all that art, and history!—I left behind in Puerto Rico.

The Best Literary Journal Covers of the Past Few Years (According to Dave)

It's Dave again.  Welcome back to my literary journal art exploration. 
See other posts in this series here.

Black Warrior Review always has some of the best cover art.  I knew that something of theirs would make my list and I thought it would be difficult to choose, until I saw issue 38.1.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with music videos.  At that time, I lived in Idaho.  My room was in the basement, next to our one and only television and VCR. I would sneak out of my room at night, or sit in front of the TV durring the day (until my mother kicked me out of the basement), watching as many music videos as I could.  Somewhere, there are stacks of VHS tapes floating around with scores of videos I recorded from the time I was eleven to the time I was about sixteen.  On one of those, sandwiched between the B-52’s and Sonic Youth, is REM’s video for their song "Night Swimming."  It’s dreamlike and dark and peppered with teenage lust. This Black Warrior Review cover calls to mind that video and my basement, and mixes it with something new and heartbreakingly real. The dress alone, drifting in that dark, blue-green water, is beautiful and alluring.  It flows through space, and becomes a body in and of itself.  It's alive. 

The stomach next to it (I think it’s a stomach) turns the image around.  It becomes something else.  Something unsettling.  The stomach is not violent.  It’s not grotesque.  It’s human, and it’s organic, but it’s not supposed to be on the outside.  It's not supposed to be seen, and it makes me stare. 

Farren Stanley from Black Warrior Review told me that the theme for this issue is "interruption."  She said, “In this flash of arrested moment, a reader or writer or viewer of art is challenged--forced, even--out of the standard feedback loops of thought and utterance and into a completely new response. On the cover, what is beautiful is also repulsive; what should soothe can also create unease.  The in-between space into which the viewer, reader, and writer is forced is an unpredictable and exciting space where anything can happen.”

The Best Literary Journal Covers of the Past Few Years (According to Dave)

My first major was fine art. Then I was a graphic design major until I found out I had no skill for drawing on my computer and discovered I liked writing more. Now, as a creative writing major, I've found a way to bring my interest in various artistic media together!  In this recurring post, I’m selecting some of the best literary journal covers over the past few years and posting them here with some of the editors’ comments, and my reasons for choosing them.

Welcome to the first!

I started interning here at HFR a couple weeks ago, almost immediately after the spring semester ended. I'm no stranger to the Piper Center (HFR's headquarters), but that interval between the end of the spring semester and the beginning of summer was different.  It was empty.  It was quiet, and I had the entire back room (where all the literary journals are) to myself. I don’t remember what I was supposed to be doing, but whatever it was led me to the shelf marked “New Literary Journals.”

I perused.

I know a person isn’t supposed to pick a book by it’s cover. It’s one of those morals that’s embedded into a person’s head since childhood, and is applied to everything from food to girls to…books. But a nice cover goes a long way. There was one particular cover that caught my eye as I looked over the journals on my first day. It’s from Ninth Letter Vol.8 Num. 2, and it’s awesome.

It’s hard to say what caught my attention first, the Dwight hair, the crooked smile, or the glitter. Okay, it was the glitter.

Last semester (like every semester) was a tough one.  By the time it was over I felt overstretched, cracked, and thin, that I thought I might break.  Couple that with my zero dollar income, and the rising stack of bills, and my twitches and nervous ticks begin to make sense. I was beat when I came across this journal.  As I pulled it out of the bookshelf I did a double take, then laughed and laughed and laughed.  It wasn't what I expected.  So, I am giving this the "Made My Day" award.

Jodee Stanley of Ninth Letter told me that this cover was chosen to contrast some of the dark and tense themes inside (there are some amazing stories and poems in here, and yes, they are dark). It works.

It is also interesting to note that this photo is not Photoshopped. It was the product of a photography class. All that glitter is real, and apparently it was everywhere. I bet that guy is still finding glitter on himself, but he should know it was worth it.