Scan barcode
jeffhall's review
3.0
Another good issue of the best speculative poetry journal currently being published. Editor S.T. Joshi continues to present an impressive mix of versifying talents, and names like Wade German, Darrell Schweitzer, and Christina Sng guarantee that the contents are worth the reader's time.
If there's one negative criticism that I can offer now that Spectral Realms has reached a certain level of maturity, it's the regular inclusion of work from a handful of contributors that tend to deliver rather unpolished poems in the formal metrical style. I have no problem with traditional poetic forms, but when the author gets lost in bloated vocabulary, awkward end rhymes, and clichéd horror subject matter, the end result can be very unsatisfying. It would be good to see a lower volume of verse from these regular contributors in favor of higher quality, since there's no doubt that delivering polished formal poetry is the work of much painstaking editing and pruning.
If there's one negative criticism that I can offer now that Spectral Realms has reached a certain level of maturity, it's the regular inclusion of work from a handful of contributors that tend to deliver rather unpolished poems in the formal metrical style. I have no problem with traditional poetic forms, but when the author gets lost in bloated vocabulary, awkward end rhymes, and clichéd horror subject matter, the end result can be very unsatisfying. It would be good to see a lower volume of verse from these regular contributors in favor of higher quality, since there's no doubt that delivering polished formal poetry is the work of much painstaking editing and pruning.
More...