Spring 1999
New Series · Volume XXI Number 2

about the cover

Our cover design by Nanette Black features an image from a series of photographs by Gregory Spaid on rural America. This photograph was made in 1990 in the small town of Dixon in northern New Mexico. Spaid's work is in the permanent collections of such public and private institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Spaid, a professor of art at Kenyon College, received a Fulbright research fellowship to Italy and numerous fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council.

editor's notes

As I write these notes, mid-November has descended on Gambier, the leaves are down, hills and cornfields stunningly stark, the sky high, clear. And I'm drawing a deep breath of pleasure (of relief, in truth, too) now that The Kenyon Review Celebration of Robert Lowell, two exhilarating days last weekend, lies behind us. What a marvelous group of poets and critics gathered here. Among them were Helen Vendler and Frank Bidart; Richard Tillinghast and Robert Giroux; Saskia Hamilton, Wyatt Prunty, and Jorie Graham; Charles McKinley and Robert Dana. Very quickly they, along with students and faculty and other guests in the audience, formed a special small community, with sparks and inspiration flying with the conversation. Such community of purpose is all too rare and precious, by its very nature short-lived, as sometimes happens in the theater. Rarely does its half-life last so long as a weekend. It was a heady experience. I'm grateful to the president of the Shiffman Foundation, Richard Levey, for the vision as well as the wherewithal to make the event possible, and I'm pleased to announce that we will publish the proceedings—the formal talks, readings, panel discussions—in the Winter 2000 issue (December '99) of The Kenyon Review as well as on our Web site, kenyonreview.org.

First, however, comes the stunning Spring issue you now hold in your hands, an issue that not only continues our year-long celebration of The Kenyon Review's sixtieth anniversary, but one worthy of your undivided attention for other notable reasons. If you're the first reader of this particular copy of KR, you'll notice a survey tucked neatly inside. (If you're not the first and the readers' survey remains glaringly intact, my plea concerns you as well.) Let me urge you, then, to spend a very few minutes answering our questions. As we move forward to ensure the future of this magazine, it's tremendously important that we know as much as possible about the people who read the Review. Five years have passed since we last sent out such a questionnaire. The information will not be sold, nor your trust and privacy abused in any way; it is entirely for our internal purposes. Please, right now while you're considering it, fill out the survey and return it to us. Thank you.

Spring of our anniversary year—a propitious moment, I think, to also introduce a dramatic new design to these pages. It marks the occasion by looking toward the future, toward new writing, new voices, ever new aspirations for the magazine. Large blocks of tight black prose have given way to a more open typeface and more leading (open space) between the lines. A trendier look, new for the sake of newness, wasn't the goal. Rather, we've aimed to make the Review easier to read, more inviting. After two years of developing the design, I'm very excited now that it is, literally, at hand. I'm also eager to hear your response through the survey.

Finally, I'm delighted to welcome a new fiction editor, Nancy Zafris. A distinguished author and teacher, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction, Nancy will help us continue to strengthen KR, identifying new voices along with the most distinguished authors of this generation.

-DHL