In 1945, John Berryman won an early KR contest for short fiction, cosponsored by Doubleday, Doran & Co. Berryman achieved his greatest renown as a poet with the publication of 77 Dream Songs in 1964, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Book Review
Autumn 1940
The Loud Hill of Wales: a review of The World I Breathe by Dylan Thomas
The World I Breathe by Dylan Thomas. New Directions. $2.50 The unmistakable signature of Dylan Thomas’s poetry, so far as we have it in his three English volumes or in […]
Poetry
Spring 1941
At Chinese Checkers
I Again—but other faces bend with mineUpon the board—I settle to this gameAnd drive my marbles leaping or in lineToward the goal, the triangular blue aimOf all my red ones, […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Spring 1999
Letter to His Brother
From the Summer 1939 issue. The night is on these hills, and some can sleep.Some stare into the dark, some walk.Only the sound of glasses and of talk,Of cracking […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Spring 1999
Nineteen Thirty-Eight
From the Summer 1939 issue. Across the frontiers of the helpless worldThe great planes swarm, the carriers of death,Germs in the healthy body of the air,And blast our cities where […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Spring 1999
Rock-Study with Wanderer
From the Spring 1948 issue. “Cold cold cold of a special night” Summer and winter sings under the beast The ravished doll Hear in the middle wasteThe blue doll of the […]
Poetry
Winter 1964
Three Dream Songs
Ⅰ In a state of chortal sin—once he reflected, swilling tomato juice—live I, and did more than my thirsty years. To Hell then will it haul me? for good talk […]
Poetry
Spring 1948
Rock-Study with Wanderer
"Cold cold cold of a special night" Summer and winter sings under the beast The ravished doll Hear in the middle waste The blue doll of the west […]
Poetry
Spring 1948
A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away
Your letter came.—Glutted the earth & cold With rains long heavy, follows intense frost; Snow howls and hides the world We worked awhile to build; all the roads are lost; […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1946
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“In the Twenties, his heyday, he was a kind of king of our American youth”—so a writer of Fitzgerald’s generation remembered him when he died five years ago. It would […]
Fiction
Autumn 1945
The Imaginary Jew
First Prize, 1945 Prize Contest The second summer of the European War I spent in New York. I lived in a room just below street-level on Lexington above 34th, […]
Fiction
Winter 1945
The Lovers
He used to come to see us one summer when we lived on the Island. As I reached the corner of the house wheeling my bicycle, which I was not […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1941
More Directions
New Directions 1940 edited by James Laughlin. New Directions. $3.50. Mr. Laughlin’s new collection is larger and handsomer than its predecessors, and he says in the preface that he has […]
Poetry
Summer 1939
Letter to His Brother
The night is on these hills, and some can sleep.Some stare into the dark, some walk.Only the sound of glasses and of talk,Of cracking logs, and of a few who […]
Poetry
Summer 1939
Nineteen Thirty-Eight
Across the frontiers of the helpless worldThe great planes swarm, the carriers of death,Germs in the healthy body of the air,And blast our cities where we stand in talk By doomed […]
Letter to His Brother
From the Kenyon Review, Summer 1939, Vol. I, No. 3 The night is on these hills, and some can sleep. Some stare into the dark, some walk. Only the sound […]
A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away
From The Kenyon Review, Spring 1948, Vol. X, No. 2. Your letter came. — Glutted the earth & cold With rains long heavy, follows intense frost; Snow howls and hides […]
Summer 2013
F. Scott Fitzgerald
From The Kenyon Review, Winter 1946, Vol. VIII, No. 1 “In the Twenties, his heyday, he was a kind of king of our American youth”—so a writer of Fitzgerald’s generation […]
Spring 2011
The Imaginary Jew
From The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1945, Vol. VII, No. 4 The second summer of the European War I spent in New York. I lived in a room just below street-level […]