Two typos on the cover of the new Gettysburg Review, and plenty of poems inside that won't give contrib ed Garrison Keillor the feeling that someone alive might be smarter than he is; waiting for Keillor to morph into Bukowski is my favorite NPR bingo moment, number two being an Ira Glass scratch needle sound followed by "we are dangling over a pit of flame here, folks." I feel nothing but love for all manifestations of hide-your-head coziness.

I enjoyed the creepy memorable Robert Wrigley poems, Natasha Sajé put another one of her alliteration/etymology pieces well into the Nicholas Cage over-the-top, and I am coming to count on Jim Daniels to inoculate me against the NPR violent nerdism masquerading as acceptable cultch. Also, I would love to own any of the Linden Frederick paintings that grace the cover and the handsome plates inside -- heimlich early winter chiaroscuro, gas stations, shopping plazas, all in all lovely grim examples of the American Spooky. Maybe more on the Hopper end of the love scale running from zero to Porter, but I'm up early.

Poetry is the Gettysburg Review minus the affability, and no, that doesn't make it edgy. A lot of weak Hopkins imitations (wasn't Poetry dumping on my favorite addled Jesuit a few months back?) and ripe-for-parody blather on the order of "The dark is not a mirror." I had thought Dan Chiasson would somehow nuance the takedown mode their reviewers' guidelines apparently require, but no -- after skimming one heartless putdown it was time to try again with the poems in the front. Not a shutout: C. Dale's straightforward conflation of the mysteries of the Catholic Church and of medical school is a keeper; V. Penelope Pelizzon goes straight into the goth sensibility the magazine usually strains for, and thank goodness her phrases "damaged man licking sauce from his spoon" and "glacier-sharp noon" aren't in immediate sequence.

What happened to Field editor Stuart Friebert? current masthead lists Pamela Alexander, Martha Collins, David Walker, and David Young. The festschrift for Jean Valentine looks worthy: I usually enjoy a bit more of a party, but I can get into subtlety with a payload as much as the next quiet smiler. Noted the poems by Jonathan's aunt Lenore; rather liked the John Cage homage's "immense chordal hum" of highway traffic.