April 2014

Why We Chose It

By Caitlin Horrocks, Fiction Editor

I think some writers suspect editors of taking a ghoulish pleasure in saying “no” to a submission, the way that, as a student, I imagined teachers rubbing their palms together and cackling while assigning Ds and Fs. Now that I’m both an editor and a teacher, I can say that I take no pleasure in either. I do not enjoy rejecting things. But saying “no” is easy, seductively easy.

Is that a Poem in Your Pocket?

And are those poems suspended from trees like fruit, ripe for the picking and pocketing? You bet they are! On April 22, Poem in Your Pocket Day comes to Gambier, with the KR student associates helping to transform Kenyon’s Middle Path into a gallery and marketplace for poetry. A highlight of the festivities this year: a reading by celebrated poet and translator Martha Collins, at 5:00 p.m. in the Cheever Room of Finn House. Please join us if you can. Fill your imagination . . . and your pocket!

The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1950, Vol. XII, No. 4

The Verbal Analysis

When I was asked by letter to contribute to the symposium from Peking, my first impulse was to say that I didn’t believe in having any Credo; a critic ought to trust his own nose, like the hunting dog, and if he lets any kind of theory or principle distract him from that, he is not doing his work. This does seem to me the deepest truth about the matter; but the bottom, as Mr. T. S. Eliot remarked, is a great way down.

Plath and Sexton

there should have been a third
my friends and I

to not feel so incomprehensible
we were carrying your dead books

we were washed in the blood of them
but we were wanting one more

Click here to finish reading this poem.
KROnline is the online complement of The Kenyon Review. New fiction, essays, poetry, and reviews are published on a biweekly basis. Check back often to read some of the most cutting-edge material you’ll find anywhere on the web. Click here to see our latest offering.

Where the Money Is

March 15, 2014 — Pablo Tanguay

I hide money in books. Always have. Certain correspondence, too, though the need for that has lessened in the past decade or so, what with the digital and the family-man lifestyle. When I did them, I hid drugs in books, in foil and wax paper and glossy magazine pages, creased and folded, stuck deep between a book’s leaves, edged up against its inside spine. Nowadays, I hide money out of habit, mostly.

A Micro-Interview with Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser’s poem “Sundial” appears in the Spring 2014 issue of The Kenyon Review.

What was the hardest part about writing your poem “Sundial”?

They’re all hard to write, from the top right down to the bottom. I am an extensive reviser, and a short poem like this one probably went through several dozen versions. I try to revise toward clarity and a kind of ease, for lack of a better word. Though I spend many hours on a poem I like to have them look as if I’d just dashed them off, the way a good watercolor painting looks. That can be a lot of work.

Contents Apr. 2014
Why We Chose It
Poem in your Pocket
From the Archives
From KROnline
From the Blog
KR Conversations

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