September 2012

Why We Chose It

By David Lynn, Editor

“You sail at dusk, not knowing one from the other.” Thus begins “Ezekiel,” a story appearing in the Fall 2012 issue of The Kenyon Review. First, a confession: I generally don’t much like the second-person mode. Too often it strikes my ear as the aftereffect of a workshop exercise or as an effort do something new that isn’t after all very new. So Segun Afolabi, the author of “Ezekiel,” had one strike against him, in my editorial judgment, from the start.

KR Hosts Art and Identity Symposium

The Kenyon Review, in partnership with Kenyon College and the Graham Gund Gallery, will host “Art and Identity: The Holocaust and Cultural Ownership in the 21st Century,” a yearlong symposium on the restitution of cultural treasures after moments of historical trauma.

The “Art and Identity” Symposium will feature an interdisciplinary series of readings, exhibitions, lectures, films, and discussions. The project will bring together writers, scholars, legal experts, students, and community members to discuss the meaning of ownership and cultural identity throughout the world and in our backyards.

KR Reading Period Begins September 15th

The Kenyon Review will begin accepting submissions through its online submissions site on September 15, 2012 and the submissions period will continue through January 15, 2013. Short fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and translations will be accepted for both the magazine and KROnline from a single pool of submissions.

Check out KR’s Fall Issue!

KR’s Fall 2012 issue hits the newsstands Sept. 10th and features new fiction from Segun Afolabi, Michele Christle, Pam Durban, Ruth Joffre, Kirk Nesset, Christian Michener, and Matthew Eck; new nonfiction and reviews from James Longenbach, Kimberly Meyer, Bruce Bond, Amit Majmudar, and Jeffrey Meyer, and new poetry from Irene McKinney, Stephen Dunn, Meena Alexander, Katie Peterson, Sherod Santos, Arthur Sze, Edward Mayes, Cecily Parks, Mary Ann Samyn, Christopher Phelps, Victoria Chang, and the winners of the ninth annual Patricia Grodd Poetry contest. Grab a copy today!

The ninth annual Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers will begin accepting entries in November. The prize, which is open to high school sophomores and juniors throughout the world, is juried by David Baker, KR’s poetry editor.

In the Summer of 1947, James Merrill had just graduated from Amherst College, but he had already published his first book of poems, The Black Swan, which won the prestigious Glascock Prize for Poetry awarded by Mount Holyoke College. In April, he published four poems in Poetry Magazine, followed quickly by this first appearance in KR.

The Kenyon Review, Summer 1947, Vol. IX, No. 3

Cloud Country

How like a marriage is the season of clouds.
The winds at night are festive and constellations
Like stars in a kaleidoscope dissolve
And meet in astounding images of order.
How like a wedding and how like travelers
Through alchemies of a healing atmosphere
We whirl with hounds on leashes and lean birds.

The Blues: A Craft Manifesto

The first slave ship landed on the shore and an African disembarked, meeting her fate. A couple of centuries and some change later, that slave’s great-great-great- and too-many-greats-to-mention descendants toted sacks down cotton rows, looked up at that fiendish sun. Bore the sacks up again.

Then happened a Saturday night: a backwoods joint and the sweetness of a lowdown lover, the pint jar full of bug juice.

Click here to finish reading this essay.

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.

A selected history of selective history

August 22, 2012 — Andrew David King

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading John McPhee’s 1994 book The Ransom of Russian Art, a slim work of immersion journalism that recounts the adventures of Norton Dodge, an economics professor who salvaged massive amounts of dissident artwork from the Soviet Union in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Contents Sept. 2012
Why We Chose It
Art and Identity
Submissions
KR Fall 2012
Grodd Prize
From the Archives
From KROnline
From the Blog

The Fall Issue,
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Featuring work by
James Longenbach,
Meena Alexander,
Bruce Bond,
Victoria Chang,
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