June 5, 2019
“Song of Myself,” the Beer
“Sobriety,” Walt Whitman wrote in 1842, is “that virtue which every mother and father prays nightly” will reside “in the character of their sons.” Tell that to Bell’s Brewery, which […]
June 3, 2019
Kenyon Review’s Summer Reading Recommendations
Forget January. Avid readers know that the time for personal resolutions is the cusp of summer, when warm breezes, lingering light, and the prospect of vacation invite the mind to […]
June 3, 2019
The Doodles of Famous Authors
I’m not shy about my love of words, letters, and even whole sentences. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon a truly impressive feat of cultural curation over at […]
June 2, 2019
VERVE {IN} VERSE: IN CONVERSATION WITH MARCUS JACKSON
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and off the page. […]
May 31, 2019
Why American Poets Ought to Translate More Poems
As literary translators go, I am mostly a fraud, and thus beset by a fear that all frauds—from TV psychics to reality TV presidents—share: to be exposed by those who […]
May 30, 2019
The Wow Moment: On the Joys of Teaching
June 2009. My classmates and I are gathered in a dimly lit room in Rome, where our instructors, Stephanie Vaughn and Michael Koch, lead Cornell’s annual summer creative writing program […]
May 29, 2019
Meditations in an Emergency: Ilya Kaminsky, Mad Men, and the Backdrop of War
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war. So ends […]
May 28, 2019
Mitch Levenberg’s Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants
As I was hovering at the border between writing poetry and writing fiction, I discovered a collection of short stories, Mitch Levenberg’s Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants, which made […]
May 24, 2019
An Artist’s Life: An Interview with Marcia Butler, author of Pickle’s Progress
Marcia Butler’s debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, has been hailed by Michael Schaub of NPR as “Surprising and audacious…. Pickle’s Progress is a deeply weird novel that succeeds because of Butler’s willingness […]
May 21, 2019
“BEFORE THE THOUGHT HAS TIME TO CRYSTALLIZE”: HISTORY, TRANSLATION, AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN H.D.’S HELEN IN EGYPT
Introduction In recent literary scholarship, one sees a renewed interest in H.D.’s Helen in Egypt, particularly its daring feminist reading of history. This book-length poem is undoubtedly revolutionary in its […]
May 17, 2019
“Some Assembly Required”: Les Figues Press, Artistic Community, and the Printed Book as an Occasion for Dialogue
Introduction For the past few decades, readers have witnessed a proliferation of small feminist presses run by women. These publishing projects, which include Leslie Scalapino’s O Books, Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba […]
May 14, 2019
On Richard Powers’s The Overstory
It’s an almost universally accepted notion now that good literature comes down to character. Scholars have long argued that the rise of the novel in Europe coincides with the rise […]