PANK 5

by Deb Olin Unferth

PANK 5 features poetry, prose and ecstatic otherness from Deb Olin Unferth, Lucas Southworth, Emily Kiernan, xTx, Sheldon Lee Compton, Kaitlin Dyer, S.J. Fowler, Marcus Wicker, Christopher Phelps, J.A. Tyler, Michelle Dove, Lindsey Drager, Jamie Iredell, Rob Roensch, Eugenia Tsutsumi, Tim Tomlinson, Brian Oliu, M.E. Griffith, Clark Knowles, Phil Estes, Laura McCullough, Lauren Foss Goodman, Neal Peters, Colleen O’Connor, Nickolas Butler, Luca Dipierro, Matthew McBrearty, Chelsea Laine Wells, Donna Vitucci, Jim Daniels, Troy Urquhart, Jessica Berger, Ori Fienberg, Toshiya Kamei, Rion Scott, Mark Baumer, Jonathan Callahan, Josh Kleinberg, Melissa Broder, Traci O’Connor, Nick Ripatrazone, Arlene Ang, Tasha Matsumoto, Gabriel Welsch, Mindy Hung, Mabel Yu, Kathleen Heil, Nancy Carol Moody, Eileen D. Escabar, Janey Smith, Andrea Kneeland, Emilie Lindemann, Kuzhali Manickavel, Teresa Milbrodt, Valerie Suffron, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Amber Sparks, Lydia Ship, Rachel Yoder, Christina Frigo, Megan Falley, Alexis Orgera, Elizabeth Hildreth, P.F. Potvin, Elizabeth Hildreth, Brian Russell, A. Papatya Bucak, Todd McKie, Christina Murphy, Elizabeth Wade, Kyle Minor, Mark Neely, Ben Jahn, Andrew Farkas, Liana Jahan Imam, Lauren Becker and Lauren Wheeler.

Genres: Poetry

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novel Barn 8 and the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, NOON, the New York Times, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, three Pushcart Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she also runs the Pen City Writers, a creative writing program at a penitentiary in southern Texas.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This issue blew the top of my head off as we were putting it together.

[biohazard]

i read this while going through the worst case of writer’s block (though i don’t know that i can call it that, because there wasn’t a will to write in the first place, because nothing i put down felt right) and a teacher-friend-adopted older sibling-dad let me flip through their copy. they gave it to me today, and i’m flipping through it again.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had a hard time with some of the poetry and short-shorts, but Jonathan Callahan's "A Gift" alone was worth the ticket-price. Needed to shelve the journal and sort of pace around the old one-bedroom and breathe a bit after finishing it. Can't say I'd actually want to sit down and have a beer or whatever with Callahan, who comes off as kind of a pill even in these fifteen pages, but he sure did make me feel ... well he made me feel something. Pretty clear that the guy's going to off himself somehow pretty soon, if he hasn't already; I wonder if it's too late to tell him that ... eh, whatever.

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, I enjoyed most everything offered in PANK 5 with only a few exceptions, and it certainly made me want to buy other print issues of the magazine when I'm able to do so. In the meantime, I will continue to catch up on some of their online archives. I hope you will too.

(My full review can be found on Glorified Love Letters.)

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very sorry to see that PANK is closing its doors. Although I don't always like every piece, the ones I do like inspire me to write. There is a definite style to PANK. Sometimes raw and visceral, often times frenetic--a writer can learn a lot from reading so much packed into just 1-4 pages.