For 25 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been publishing stories, essays, and poems that take readers into the shared space where art and medicine meet. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re marking this incredible milestone by inviting you on a journey through the BLR archive, from the beginning through the present.
Join us each week as we curate special highlights — stories, poems, photos, and more — from each of our issues.
About the Issue
For a new literary journal still finding its footing, BLR‘s second issue — published in Spring 2002 — was home to an eclectic mix of writing, including two unpublished poems by the iconic Charles Bukowski, two short stories by Ray Gonzalez (who went on to judge BLR‘s first fiction prize a few years later), and a poem by Philip Levine, who would later be named a U.S. poet laureate.
From the Foreword
“One of the most elegant aspects of hematology is the intricate balance maintained between bleeding and clotting. When there is a rent in a vessel, the blood cells must coagulate strongly enough to prevent bleeding, but not so zealously as to yield clots that impede normal blood flow. A parallel balance of creating wounds and healing wounds exists in the human spirit. There is a constant flow of emotion as wounds are alternately gouged deeper, then soothed. The interface of these processes is where the most incisive literature can often be found.”
– Danielle Ofri, Editor-in-Chief
This cover photograph from Issue 2 highlights a horse-drawn ambulance, a pioneering innovation of the time. Bellevue Hospital is credited with organizing the first systematic ambulance service in the United States; this system, based on a Civil War model, debuted in June of 1869. The ambulance shown above remains on display in the lobby of Bellevue Hospital. The inaugural BLR team in 2001 | Front Row: Roxanna Font (Poetry Editor), Ronna Wineberg (Fiction Editor) Danielle Ofri (Chief Editor) + new baby, Doris Milman (Copy Editor) Back Row: Jerome Lowenstein (Nonfiction Editor), Martin Blaser (Publisher), Donna Baier Stein (Poetry Editor), Nat Kreeger (Doris Milman’s spouse), Troi Santos (graphic designer)
Read Highlights from Issue 2
Each week, we’ll be highlighting one outstanding story, poem, and essay from the featured issue. We encourage you to explore more from the issue on our website or, better yet, to pick up a copy!
The Wedding Photographer’s Assistant
by Ilana Stanger
“I can’t stand a bride who won’t wear white,” Lydia told Dina, flipping through show albums with well-manicured hands. “Watch how these brides cast space – how that dress makes them stand apart, almost above the crowd. When a bride’s not in white it’s impossible to follow her; she becomes just another woman, she disappears on the dance floor.”
Dina wanted to respond that it was exactly the role of a white wedding dress, to make women disappear, but bit her lip against the inclination. She wanted the job, after all, even if she didn’t believe in weddings.
Remembering Appleman
by Scott Temple
When, years later, I found a copy of a memoir he published after leaving practice, it was not his face that I remembered as I gazed at the dust jacket photo, it was the sapphire stickpin that always speared the same blue and black striped tie, week after week. Our meetings, when I was fourteen, were a brief ritual that we shared, in his effort to mend my family. I always imagined that we drove him from practice, and that, however much he believed himself to be a failure, he never knew how much he contributed to my own entry into the field.
Writing Poems on Antidepressants
by Nikki Moustaki
Writing poems on antidepressants
is hard. You can appreciate the difficulty
by reading the previous two lines.
Metaphors are easy
to come by when you’re aching
or pining or wounded in love,
which scientists have proven is a type of madness
and madness can be cured with a pill.
Not everyday
is Paris. Not everyday
does a bird come winging
out of a carpet to give you a free metaphor,
especially if there are oranges on the table
and you’re on your meds.