Guidelines

Review-Essays 

We welcome review-essays centering close readings of one or more collections of poetry, lyric and experimental essays, and hybrid works. 

As we prefer more in-depth reviews that demonstrate their points through closely-read examples from the text, the length of your review should fall approximately between 800 and 2,500 words (that’s really very “ish”). The fundamental point for us is to give readers as clear a picture of what it’s like to read this book without actually reprinting the whole book. Don’t just make disconnected interpretive claims that sound great; show us how that “tick” tocks!

 We value a variety of approaches to the review, including some that might take a more circuitous route of engagement (as befits the work or the reviewer’s instinct) or one that is directed in a clearly linear manner by an overarching idea or “thesis” (or whatever else you might dream up—try us and see). We do not dismiss mixed reviews but believe them a necessary part of an honest and healthy critical discourse, and while we truly love to celebrate books that you wholly love and find flawlesslessly stunning, we disdain language that is both vague and inflated, amounting to little more than a lengthy blurb. We want critical discourse that “thinks feelingly” to produce attentive explorations of rich and engaging texts. 

Just what constitutes “rich and engaging” texts? You convince us! But at best, a work constructs an experience of language using a great deal of its “biodiversity” (if we think of language as a living landscape), which, of course, includes its many realms of socio-cultural and historical diversity. 

For the best guidance, see prior reviews (and the books they review), such as Lisa Pasold on Carolyn Hembree’s For Today (in our Fall 2023 issue) and Jane Yager on Donna Stonecipher’s The Ruins of Nostalgia.

Rediscoveries

 We are not only interested in publishing review-essays on recent books but are eager to highlight books that passed largely under the radar and to rediscover others from decades past. With that in mind, please feel free to submit engagements with any non-canonical book (whether the author is or not) from either the 20th or 21st centuries. 

Flashes

After all that about lengthy, attentive reviews—we really do want substantive discourse!—we also think an impression-offering flash of light over the pages of a carefully-read book can inspire interest in deserving work, and we’re open to considering short “flashes” embodying the overall impression or zoomed-in “detail of” perspective—as long as it comes from an equally attentive eye on the book. We’re thinking 200 to 600 words of original text (that is, not including quoted material). One of the most recent reviews that comes closest to exemplifying this approach (prior to our actual call for it) is rob mclennan’s review of Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise. But really, we're thinking of reviews that are even more compressed—one to three well-conceived (lyrical?) sentences....

For Writers and Publishers 

If you would like to have your book considered for review, please either 1) email a PDF copy to Reviews Editor Tod Edgerton at TodEdgerton [at] gmail or 2) mail two hard copies to:

Geoffrey Babbitt

Editor-in-Chief, Seneca Review

209 Smith Hall

300 Pulteney Street

Geneva, NY 14456

We can't wait to read your reviews! Thank you.

Michael Tod Edgerton

Seneca Review

Assistant Editor of Reviews and Poetry

Our Received Review Copies and Our Wishlist

We have received these titles, which are available for review:

Lily Brown, Blade Work (Parlor Press 2025)

Paula Cisewski, The Becoming Game (Hang Loose Press 2025)

Matthew Cooperman, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless (Parlor Press 2025)

Chengru He, Mo月n (Parlor Press 2025) 

Barbara Henning, Girlfriend (Hang Loose Press 2025)

L. S. Klatt, Saint with a Peacock Voice (Parlor press 2025)

Karen Kovacik, Portable City (Hang Loose Press 2025)

Todd Melicker, rendezvous (Rescue Press 2013)

Suzanne Roberts, Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (U Nebraska Press 2022)

Sasha Steensen, Well (Parlor Press 2024)

Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America (New Directions 2024)

Our Wishlist:

Tisa Bryant, Residual (Nightboat Books 2026)

Norma Cole, Alibi Lullaby (Omnidawn 2025)

Merrill Gilfillan, Three Roans in the Shallows, One of Them Blue: Selected Poems (Flood 

Editions/Wesleyan UP 2025)

Douglas Kearney, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always (Wave Books 2025)

Paul Killebrew, Impersonal Rainbow and The Bisexual Purge (Canarium Books 2023)

J. Michael Martinez, Tarta Americana (Penguin Random House 2023)

Alexandra Mattraw, Raw Anyone (Culture Society 2022)

Farid Matuk, Moon Mirrored Indivisible (Chicago UP 2025)

Kristi Maxwell, Wide Ass of Night (Saturnalia 2025) 

Harryette Mullen, Regaining Unconsciousness (Graywolf 2025)

Linda Norton, Cloud of Witnesses (BlazeVOX 2024)

Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry (Graywolf 2024)

Mark Statman, Volverse / Volver (Lavender Ink 2025)

Mónica de la Torre, Pause the Document (Nightboat Books 2025)

Rodrigo Toscano, The Charm and the Dread (Fence 2022) 

Maw Shein Win, Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn 2024)

Lynn Xu, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave Books 2022)

Andy Young, Museum of the Soon to Depart (Carnegie Mellon UP 2024)