Summer/Fall 1997
New Series · Volume XIX Number 3/4

about the cover

Our cover design by Nanette Black is from Columbus, Ohio, artist Ann Hamilton's Tropos, an installation at the DIA Center for the Arts. A theme of the installation, Hamilton says, is "efforts to come to speech." Photo of the installation in progress is by Thibault Jeanson of New York and is provided courtesy of the gallery Sean Kelly, New York.

editor's notes

I hope you'll take note of the advertisement in this issue about an exciting project created by The Kenyon Review Board of Trustees. It has secured
250 tickets to a premier of the musical of Among the E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime on Broadway, work of wel February 12, 1998. In addition to the musical itself, supporters will be treated to dinner and other activities befitting such a cultural event. It will, I have no doubt, be great fun as well as an appropriate vehicle for launching the Trustees' long-term national support of the magazine.

One of the questions most often asked of an editor--entirely reasonable, all but unanswerable--is to name what, precisely, one looks for in reading through submissions to a magazine. , precisely, one looks for in reading through submissions to a magazine. (In KR's case we receive something on the order of five thousand unsolicited manuscripts in a seven-month period.) How do we choose one poem or story among countless other worthy hopefuls?

Answer Number One: I know it when I see it. What works for identifying pornography according to the famous judicial aphorism serves just as handily for tapping successful art. Great writing surprises the reader, takes unexpected twists, defies generic constraints even while working within and against them. Think of the great sonnets. No simple-or even complex-definition or anticipation suffices.

Answer Number Two (and this rationalization is intended to preserve the sanity and balance of those who must choose): Gems will be missed. Full stop. I have no doubt that day in and day out my judgment fails. In every batch of poems and stories I surely miss strong, even brilliant pieces that on another occasion I might snatch out with some approximation of "Eureka!" To suggest otherwise would be disingenuous. An editor's primary responsibility, it seems to me, however, is to produce the strongest magazine possible. Responsibility to prospective authors consists of a timely reading and response. (In equal measure I think authors owe editors the courtesy of single submission). I do not lie awake at night worrying about what I have missed; I might lie awake should I fear that what we do publish weren't worthy of The Kenyon Review.

Answer Number Three: Authority of Voice. This isn't a tiff from some Foucaultian discourse-of-power. It's just that great writing (and not all writing by good writers is great) speaks with authority. Such work wields language with a devil-may-care assurance, a take-it-by-the-throat authority that is ruthless and playful and daring. Perhaps a subset of Answer One.

Among the oldest traditions at KR is the attempt to balance publishing the work of well-known authors with that of newcomers to the craft. Hence our long labors in reading unsolicited manuscripts. Holding all to the same standard (see above) makes actual selection less onerous.

An editor knows that famous writers will attract attention, their work measured against earlier achievement. But what about the poems and stories by the lesser-known? Will readers experience some of that same thrill of discovery, that sense of unexpected joy that accompanies the glimpse of a gem among the envelopes? Often these questions are never satisfied.

All the more pleasure then that Thomas Glave has received an O. Henry Award for "The Final Inning," a story published in our Summer/Fall 1996 issue. In truth, I've received a number of personal comments from readers about that story as well as about "Their Story," also by Glave, which appeared in Spring 1996. Gems, two of them, snuggling deep within the drifts of manuscripts, published in back-to-back issues of the magazine.

-DHL