Review of 2River View

The 2River View is an online literary journal published quarterly by 2River since 1996. The content of this journal is poetry and visual art, with a heavy emphasis on the poetry. The fact that it is an online journal has many benefit for those who wish to submit poetry. The first is that it is easily accessible to the public. The website is easy to find (2river.org), and is well organized, with all of the archived issues easily accessible. In an online publication, easy navigation is one of the most important attributes, and 2River definitely has an accessible site layout. Another benefit to the online system is that poem submissions become relatively easy. 2River requests that poems be submitted online, and that the author submit at least three works as well as a short biography. It is also a requirement that the submitted poems must not currently be published in any other journal. The 2River View itself, which is in the form of a pdf file easily opened by a link found on the "archived issues" page is well organized and aesthetically pleasing. There is not much color to the journal--the poems are left to stand as poems without being decorated by background imagery--but there are pieces of artwork placed throughout the journal which add a small amount of color as well as serve to break up what would otherwise be a continuous stream of poetry. Another opportunity for authors who choose to publish in the 2River View is the online chapbooks. For certain authors whose work is well liked by the 2River community, an online chapbook is made with a collection of their works, not necessarily works from archived 2River View issues, but from other journals as well. This chapbook can then be downloaded as a pdf file and printed by the reader.
The type of poetry found in the 2River View has a specific feel to it as well; one of direct realism. Authors whose work involves eloquent word use and flowing sentence structure would probably not have a place in this journal. The poetry published here tends to be colloquial and brief, in either a prose format or one of highly enjambed verse. There is almost a kind of stream-of-consciousness involved in the poems with little transition between thoughts, but with a distinct air of impressionism. The themes of the poems vary widely, but the style tends to be similar for all of the poems published in this journal.