March 2020

Why We Chose It

BY JAQUIRA DÍAZ, GUEST EDITOR

“With the Moths’ Eyes” by Lars Horn, appears in the Mar/Apr 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Lars Horn’s lyric essay, “With the Moths’ Eyes,” made up of prose poems, images, and ideas, combines the cross-media translation of art and film, bestiary, narrative, the history of medicine, mythology, and the natural world. The essay opens with a foreword: Horn is bed-bound for several months as their body is slowly wasting. As they watch films on a small television in their bedroom, watch the art surrounding their bed, each image is stunning but also unsettling. “With the Moths’ Eyes” asks us to consider illness and the body, movement and stillness, from the inside looking out. Read the rest of Why We Chose It.

Summer Workshops: Transcend, Translate

Yes, all of our summer writing workshops can be transcendent experiences, in which you’ll translate your passions into poetry and prose. But if you’re interested in transcendence per se—questions of being, faith, and spirituality—consider our Spiritual Writing Workshop. As for translation, aspiring as well as mid-career literary translators have thrived in The Translator’s Voice: A Polyglot Workshop. A number of places remain in both of these workshops, as well as in our Writers Workshop for Teachers. The 2020 dates:

Spiritual Writing Workshop: June 21-27
Writers Workshop for Teachers: July 12-16
The Translator’s Voice: July 12-18

Click here to learn more about these workshops, as well as about our summer workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

There’s Still Time to Apply for Young Science Writer: Application Deadline Extended to March 10!

Science, environmental studies, and creative writing come together in our summer workshop for young science writers—and the results are powerful. We still have spaces in the 2020 workshop, and we’ve extended the application deadline to March 10. High school students who are fascinated by science and who love to write find challenge, fun, and kindred spirits in this two-week workshop, to be held June 28–July 11. Financial aid is available. Click here for more information.

Meet the Unexpected in Mar/Apr

The Mar/Apr Kenyon Review features a special prose section, “The Unexpected,” guest-edited by Jaquira Díaz, author of the widely praised memoir Ordinary Girls and a recent KR Fellow in Prose. The pieces in the section all hold “something strange and moving and unexpected, either language or imagery or premise,” Díaz writes in her introduction. “Each of them makes me consider being in the world when the world is a little off—unhinged.” The new issue also publishes the winning essay and two runners-up from our 2019 Short Nonfiction Contest. Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

For Your Ears: KR Out Loud

Faithful reader, listen up. Just about every poem, story, and essay that you can find in the pages of the Kenyon Review is also available in audible form—in most cases read by the author. Same creative work, different kind of intimate connection. The pieces from the Mar/Apr issue are ready for your ears. Check them out here.

New in KR Podcasts

Associate Poetry Editor Andrew Grace talks with long-time Poetry Editor David Baker about the ethics of writing nature poems in the era of climate change and how to memorialize vanishing species before they are lost. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Poetry Today: Visibility and Poiesis”

BY RUBEN QUESADA

February 4, 2020

Quesada’s fifth blog post on contemporary poetry features reflections by Carlos Andrés Gómez, the author of Hijito, and Jan-Henry Gray, author of Documents. They discuss poetry’s potential, reading and readers, poetry in the digital age, and advice they’d give to their younger selves. “I would implore my younger self to read poetry that he finds challenging and might not immediately resonate,” says Gómez. Gray describes himself as “fascinated by how people think about poetry, especially those who don’t write or read much of it. I’ve always had an affinity for the outsider, the unsure, the kind of person who takes on a new project with the passion of an amateur.” Read the entire blog post.

MARCH 2020
CONTENTS
Why We Chose It
Writers Workshops
Young Science Writers
Mar/Apr Issue
KR Out Loud
KR Podcasts
From the Blog

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