CAHSS Faculty Articles

Mikrokosmos A Pleasant Surprise

Department

Department of Literature and Modern Languages

Publication Date

9-28-1977

Publication Title

The Sunflower

Volume

82

Issue/No.

20

Abstract

Excerpt

The inveterate reader of little magazines is not likely to agree that "the best surprise is no surprise," and not only because he requires his beliefs to be stated self-consistently. Too often his low expectations are realized by the magazine which he has occasion to peruse. But the latest issue of Mikrokosmos is a pleasant surprise, in editorial matters especially, because of its superiority to the usual standards. Layout, for example, is unpretentiously simple and for that reason unusually effective. Mikrokosmos' cover identifies it—clearly, with readable type. There is no resort to the high-schoolish graphics, which, in so many little magazines, interfere with the readers access to the literature and make him wonder whether the contents conform to the ornamentation: cartoon and doodle fantasia. Mikrokosmos, on the contrary, has inserted worthy art reproductions, stylistically similar and noncompetitive with the poetry and short fiction in the magazine. And the editors have, by and large, lived up to their titles by displaying good judgment in selecting poems and short stories. There are a few typographical errors in evidence: “Albert Johnson” rather than “Albert Goldbarth” and “Dohn” rather than “John” Morgan in the table of contents. But these are few. For a university publication with the dignity which this Mikrokosmos has, each of the functionaries—Editor Theodora Todd, Associate Editor Marsh Galloway, Art Editor Terry Sellers, and Advisor Glenn Broadhead—is to be highly commended.

Peer Reviewed

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