Day #7: The Los Angeles Review

Celebrating National Poetry Month by highlighting 30 days of literary journals that publish poetry you can read in 5 minutes or less.

Can you love a city like a friend? I do. Born, raised, educated, loved, ignored, entertained, and always welcomed home by my city. This recommendation is for Los Angeles, and all the friends I first found within its borders of beauty, glory, pain and wildness.

The Los Angeles Review, according to its website, is: 

“an annual print and online literary journal established in 2003, is the voice of Los Angeles, and the voice of the nation. With its multitude of cultures, Los Angeles roils at the center of the cauldron of divergent literature emerging from the West Coast. Perhaps from this place something can emerge that speaks to the writer or singer or dancer or wild person in all of us, something disturbing, something alive, something of the possibility of what it could be to be human in the 21st century.”

There are so many poetry offerings on its pages, each paired with an evocative photo. Sometimes I like to scroll deeply through the archives, especially if I’m new to a journal or haven’t read it in a while. One of my all time favorites from The Los Angeles Review is “A Happy Ending” by Leah Umansky.

“A Happy Ending” begins like this:

A ship isn’t built to stay safely tied to harbor. All the ways we wander and wave: the sails in the wind, the convex of their girth, the flummox of their flail.

The last decade, its nearing of time, and the ways I cling to what I cling to: of what belongs, of what is far-reaching, of what is bound for refuge or for naught.

“All the ways we wander and wave…” Aren’t we all just trying to find our happy endings?

Thank you all so much for your favorite poetry-publishing journal recommendations. Keep them coming. So many journals to discover!

There’s truly no end to the number of ways to bring poetry into your life.