The second instalment for our Journal of the week is Bard College’s literary journal Conjunctions. Conjunctions is a biannual anthology consisting of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.  The magazine is published every May and November and the book-length print issue is available in bookstores and by subscription. For this week’s blog, I am reviewing selected pieces from Conjunctions 6:1, A Menagerie which was released in November 2013, co edited by Benjamin Hale & Bradford Morrow.

The theme for this issue in particular was the domain of beasts and consisted of various writings on nonhuman creatures. The issue has a large number of contributors including Russell Banks, Sallie Tisdale, Susan Daitch, Rick Moody and  Joyce Carol Oates. Some of the work is of significant length and even audio tracks are available on the website.

One of the pieces that stuck with me was Rick Moody’s Conversion Testimony, in which he explores a protagonist’s journey to vegetarianism. Moody’s evocative descriptions of meat as food and the reactions to its consumption are fascinating. The language Moody uses in his descriptions is almost enough to make any meat-lover consider cutting back. The protagonist’s voice resonates throughout the text and I mentally took the journey with him. Moody writes with surety; so much so that I felt as if I was listening to a lecture delivered by the character– an interesting one at that!

Conjunctions balances new writers with those well-known and yet the fiction and non-fiction I read was equally satisfying, no matter who the writer.

Conjunctions also has a free weekly online journal on Web Conjunctions which showcases the work of one writer each week who didn’t quite make the cut for the theme of the magazine issue. They also make a for an interesting read.

Visit the Conjunctions website for further information.  

-        Hannah Jackson, Online Editor.