BEST OF PRAIRIE SCHOONER
Fiction and Poetry
edited by Hilda Raz
Editor Raz’s anthology is typical of a now-common practice among literary magazines: collections that unabashedly celebrate themselves. Only in this case, there’s something a bit off, beginning with the misleading “best of.” Though Prairie Schooner has been publishing for 75 years at the University of Nebraska, the selections here are drawn from the past 20 (because of copyright restrictions). Hence, we get all the usual suspects of the small-mag scene, and none of the greats who once adorned PS’s pages, from Willa Cather and Truman Capote to Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. In her introduction, Raz does ransack the archives for interesting correspondence from the days of its founders, who include Nebraska students Weldon Kees and Loren Eiseley. The selections, meantime, read like what you’d expect from an anthology selected by a committee: diverse, safe, predictable.