Posted on: July 26, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Nerve #1 / Free / 28L / :45 / Nerve House, P.O. Box 12255, Milwaukee, WI 53212 /

I was really looking forward to Nerve when I looked at the first page of the zine. In it, it says “There’s no poetry in it”.  I assumed that there was no poetry in the entire issue, but I guess the author just meant that there is no poetry in the word “no”. Oh well. This issue has a lot of poetry in it. Nerve is a magazine that looks to make a world fair to all individuals, and tries to break down sexist, homophobic, ageist, and other walls while doing that. The most interesting thing that I found in the zine has to be their little tidbits concerning individuals that struggled against the system. Oftentimes only a sentence or two in length, these tidbits make individuals want to know more  about specifically happened in these events. This is the first issue of the zine, so it feels as if Nerve has not found their place in the zine scene as of this moment. The text is clear, the contrast between the text and pictures nice, but there just needs to be more in the way of substantive discussion and less in the intangibles (poetry, mainly). This seems to be a content-driven magazine, so I am sure the large context of the zine will change given different material. Write them and see if they are still doing the magazine, and if they are, send along some pieces in a subsequent letter. If they are not sexist, homophobic, or the like, chances are good that you will get into print.

Rating: 5.8/10

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