By Alissa Appel

Verse Libre Quarterly (VLQ) is an anti-form, anti-structure publication with rhyme only by accident. VLQ focuses on free verse, whimsical and liberating style, thus the sonnet aficionado and writer would not fit in here. VLQ is aesthetically presented in page with tasteful artwork, easy to navigate, and all the archives available. Though the presentation is mostly minimalist, this mirrors the understatement of many of the poems. Nearly all the poems attempt profundity, however most are guilty of colloquial themes and the inclusion of nature seems inevitable.

The poems often speak of still moments, such as Michael Meyerhofer's three pieces in their Winter issue. Consistent with VLQ standards, his rhyme breaks are random and his poems range from Salvador Dali's inspiration to Genesis. Some writers here tend to make comparisons between a tangible image and an intangible cliché. Janet S. Buck writes, "photos of your China trip/ monuments you honor more than/ shattered dreams in front of you" in her poem "Lamenting the Hole." Buck's poems are persistent with Memento More, "...watching cotton negligees/ grow thinner in the breeze of death." Buck does not fear to interject the ambiguous and indefinable, "pick up the phone-- ... shake the silence and the void." However, Dorothy Doyle Mienko takes something far off and seemingly indefinable and puts in a place, in "I'm tired of stars." Mienko personifies stars throughout the poem, "five drunk stars dying in accidents,/ one drinks break fluid,/ one jumps from a five story building,/ one drowns skinny dipping". Nick Bruno lies somewhere in the middle, with images of painful frustration, "derailed by the exhaustive effort, she runs/ her fingers raw across the screen's/ ragged edge..." In this issue, Mienko presents some of the strongest pieces, the others the reader may judge for his or herself.

A forte of VLQ is their selection of multiple works from six writers. They feature between two and four poems of their selected writers. VLQ also has what they call their "Smorgasbord of Poems", where they feature one poem by several different authors. This gives the zine a good balance in its literary body -- a juicy bite of a few poets and a nibble from some others.

While they will accept previously published work, they prefer not to do so. VLQ has one-time rights to the works published.

VLQ is currently accepting submissions for their April 2003 issue.