March 2011 | Kenyon Review Newsletter Archive

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Natalie Landers Wins The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize

Natalie Landers, a junior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts from Tarrant, Alabama, took first place in this year’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers presented by The Kenyon Review. Her poem “Ode to Words” was selected by KR Poetry Editor David Baker from over 500 submissions. In winning the prize, Landers receives a full scholarship to attend KR’s 2011 Young Writers summer program. Her poem will also appear in the Fall 2011 issue of The Kenyon Review.

Click here to learn more about the contest and to read Landers’ winning poem.

In Profile: KR Poetry Editor David Baker

During a reading and interview celebrating his twenty-five years as an English professor at Denison University, David Baker stated “I try to know the opening lines of a new poem by heart—and I mean six, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen lines by heart—and how it’s going to look, before I ever write it down.” That methodical, unrushed approach is a hallmark of Baker’s teaching, editing, and practicing as a writer.

Click here to read the first in our series of profiles.

Sima Rabinowitz Reviews KR’s Winter 2011 Issue

In a review of KR’s Winter issue on NewPages.com, Sima Rabinowitz writes:

Winter 2011 Issue “It may or may not be intentional (though given this journal’s outstanding editorial management, it is likely to be deliberate), but the relationship between this issue’s cover and the poem ‘Desert’ by Adonis, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, is nothing short of exquisite. The cover photo is a 1938 ‘Night View’ of New York City by the always-amazing Berenice Abbott. The Adonis poem begins: ‘The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust / Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space.’”

Read the rest of Rabinowitz’s review.

Are MFA programs an unconscious protest against a money-driven world?

Join us for a KR Conversation with Roger Rosenblatt, author of Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, on writing, teaching, writing programs, precision, and restraint.

Rosenblatt’s “The Lightning Bug and the Lightning” appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of KR.

“Writing is an act of permanence”: a micro-interview with Robert Yune

KR is starting a new project—we’ll release a series of micro-interviews around the publication date of each upcoming issue of KR. The Spring 11 issue of KR will ship on March 10th; Robert Yune’s story “Solitude City” will be featured there. Subscriptions, ebook editions and individual copies of the issue are available here.

Emma Novins: What’s one book, contemporary or otherwise, that you wish you had written?

Robert Yune: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, but it feels strange to say I wish I’d written it. I love its scope, its sense of wonder . . .

Click here to read the whole interview.

KR and Kindles and iPads, Oh My!

Micro-Survey Help shape The Kenyon Review! We are pleased to introduce a new and recurring feature to the KR Newsletter—the One Minute Survey—an opportunity for readers to provide important feedback about different topics germane to KR’s efforts as a publisher and non-profit. We value your feedback!!

Our first survey—KR and Kindles and iPads, Oh My!—focuses on the reading habits of our newsletter recipients in an increasingly digital age. Thank you for your input!

Click here to take the survey.

From Diary of Age (Imerologio tis ilikias)

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Stillness

Is the surrounding by silence
Of a low land
Whose still—insatiable age
Lies deeply in wait
—Against the attraction of another planet—
There where the older works sank
Into its body
. . .

Click here to read the rest of 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.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg From the KR Archive

One of Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s most famous poems, “Darwin in 1881” first appeared in KR’s Autumn 1979 issue. You can find a recording of Schnackenberg reading the poem here.

The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1979, Vol. I, No. 4.

Darwin in 1881

Sleepless as Prospero back in his bedroom
In Milan, with all his miracles
Reduced to sailors’ tales,
He sits up in the dark. The islands loom.
His seasickness upwells,
Silence creeps by in memory as it crept
By him on water, while the sailors slept,
From broken eggs and vacant tortoise shells.
His voyage around the cape of middle age
Comes, with a feat of sight, to a close,
The same way Prospero’s
Ended before he left the stage
To be led home across the blue-white sea,
When he had spoken of the clouds and globe,
Breaking his wand, and taking off his robe:
Knowledge increases unreality.

Continue reading this poem here.

Contents Mar. 2011
Grodd Contest Winner
In Profile: David Baker
Review of Winter ’11
Roger Rosenblatt
Micro-Interview
Micro-Survey
From KROnline
From the Archive