Summer 1964

Meet the Beatles. The Ford Mustang. The debut of Jeopardy. The Second Vatican Council. A hung jury in Mississippi ended the trial of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medger Evers, and plans were announced for the construction of New York’s World Trade Center. The House of Representatives passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by unanimous vote, and several hundred students marched through Times Square in the first demonstration against the war in Vietnam.

In the Summer 1964 issue of The Kenyon Review, Editor Robie Macauley published “five stories from hot countries,” including V.S. Naipaul’s “The Baker’s Story,” Khushwant Singh’s “The Wog,” and three very short stories by the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop. Lispector, born in the Ukraine while her family was in transit to Brazil in 1920, spoke six languages and at times supported herself as a translator, but Portuguese was the language of her heart. The brief fables published in The Kenyon Review reflect her delight in the play of language and the abrupt movements of consciousness, as well as her refusal to privilege any single point of view.

A HEN
Clarice Lispector
Translated by Elizabeth Bishop

She was a Sunday hen.  She was still alive only because it was not yet 9:00 o’clock.

She seemed calm.  Since Saturday she had cowered in a corner of the kitchen.  She didn’t look at anyone, no one looked at her.  Even when they had selected her, fingering her intimately and indifferently, they couldn’t have said whether she was fat or thin.   No one would ever have guessed that she had a desire.

So it was a surprise when she opened her little wings, puffed out her breast, and, after two or three tries, reached the wall of the terrace.  For an instant she vacillated – long enough for the cook to scream – and then she was on the neighbor’s terrace, and from there, by means of another awkward flight, she reached a tile roof.  There she remained like a misplaced weather vane, hesitating, first on one foot, then on the other.  The family was urgently called and, in consternation, saw their lunch standing beside a chimney.  The father of the family, reminding himself of the double obligation of eating and of occasionally taking exercise, happily got into his bathing trunks and resolved to follow the itinerary of the hen.  By cautious jumps he reached the roof, and the hen, trembling and hesitating, quickly picked another direction.  The pursuit became more intense.  From roof to roof, more than a block of the street was traversed.  Unprepared for a more savage struggle for life, the hen had to decide for herself which routes to take, without any help from her race.  In the young man, however, the sleeping hunter woke up.  Lowly as was the prey, he gave a hunting cry.

Alone in the world, without father or mother, she ran, out of breath, concentrated, mute.  Sometimes in her flight she would stand at bay on the edge of a roof, gasping; while the young man leaped over others with difficulty, she had a moment in which to collect herself.  The she looked so free. 

Stupid, timid, and free.  Not victorious, the way a rooster in flight would have looked.  What was there in her entrails that made a being of her?  The hen is a being.  It’s true, she couldn’t be counted on for anything.  She herself couldn’t count on herself – the way a rooster believes in his comb.  Her only advantage was tat there are so many hens that if one died another would appear at the same moment, exactly like her, as if it were the same hen.

Finally, at one of the moments when she stopped to enjoy her escape, the young man caught her.  Amid feathers and cries, she was taken prisoner.  Then she was carried in triumph, by one wing, across the roofs and deposited on the kitchen floor with a certain violence.  Still dazed, she shook herself a little, cackling hoarsely and uncertainly.

It was then that it happened.  Completely overwhelmed, the hen laid an egg.  Surprised, exhausted.  Perhaps it was premature.  But immediately afterward, as if she had been born for maternity, she looked like an old, habitual mother.  She sat down on the egg and remained that way, breathing, buttoning and unbuttoning her eyes.  Her heart, so small on a plate, made the feathers rise and fall, and filled that which would never be more than an egg with warmth.  Only the little girl was near-by and witnessed everything, terrified.  As soon as she could tear herself away, she got up off the floor and shrieked: “Mama!  Mama!  Don’t kill the hen any more!  She laid an egg!  She likes us!”

Everyone ran to the kitchen again and, silent, stood in a circle around the new mother.  Warming her child, she was neither gentle nor harsh, neither happy nor sad; she was nothing; she was a hen.  Which suggests no special sentiment.  The father, the mother, and the daughter looked at her for some time, without any thought whatever to speak of.  No one had ever patted the head of a hen.  Finally, with a certain brusqueness, the father decided: “If you have this hen killed, I’ll never eat chicken again in my life!”

“Me too!” the little girl vowed ardently.

The mother shrugged, tired.

Unconscious of the life that had been granted her, the hen began to live with the family.  The little girl, coming home from school, threw down her school-bag and ran to the kitchen without stopping.  Once in a while the father would still remember: “And to think I made her run in that state!”  The hen became the queen of the house.  Everyone knew it except the hen.  She lived between the kitchen and the kitchen terrace, making use of her two capacities: apathy and fear.

But when everyone in the house was quiet and seemed to have forgotten her, she plucked up a little of the courage left over from her great escape and perambulated the tile floor, her body moving behind her head, deliberate as in a field, while the little head betrayed her: moving, rapid and vibrant, with the ancient and by now mechanical terror of her species.

Occasionally, and always more rarely, the hen resembled the one that had once stood plain against the air on the edge of the roof, ready to make an announcement.  At such moments she filled her lungs with the impure air of the kitchen and, if females had been able to sing, she would not have sung, but she would have been much more contented.  Though not even at these moments did the expression of her empty head change.  In flight, at rest, giving birth, or pecking corn – it was the head of a hen, the same that was designed at the beginning of the centuries.

Until one day they killed her and ate her and the years went by.

Sarah Arvio’s second book, Sono: cantos (Knopf 2006) was reissued in paperback in October 2007.  Two poems from that book first appeared in The Kenyon Review; one of those, “Starlings,” has recently been anthologized in Women¹s Work (Seren Press, Wales, 2007).  “Amour” another poem from Sono, was set by the composer Steven Burke for his monodrama for mezzosoprano and cello, entitled “Skin,” premiering at Symphony Space in New York in March 2008.  A set of nine poems from Sono and Visits from the Seventh, translated into Italian by Antonella Anedda, appeared in Poeti & Poesie, Rome, April  2007.  “Mirrors,” a poem from Visits from the Seventh, is just now coming out in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to the present (Scribner, January 2008).  Arvio taught poetry at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts during fall 2007.

Mary Jo Bang’s book, Elegy (Graywolf), was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.  

Nicky Beer’s poem "Still Life with Half-Turned Woman and Questions" appeared in Best American Poetry 2007, and she has work forthcoming in AGNI, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, and The Journal.  Her work in 2007 was supported by a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  This semester, she will serve as the guest editor for New Madrid, the literary journal published by Murray State University’s MFA program.  The issue will a special feature on emerging poets, which will include work by Elizabeth Bradfield, Jericho Brown, Sean Hill, and Catherine Pierce, all of whom have first books coming out in 2008.Her reading recommendations include Carsten Rene Nielsen’s The World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors, translated by David Keplinger (poetry), Mark Doty’s Dog Years (memoir), Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography (graphic novel), and Naeem Murr’s The Perfect Man (novel).

Margo Berdeshevsky's debut book of poems, But a Passage in Wilderness (Sheep Meadow Press, 2007) had its launch reading on January 10th, at the Village Voice Bookstore in Paris, where she was introduced by Marilyn Hacker. Her short story, "Pas de Deux à Trois" was featured in the latest issue of Agni, #66. (It is also the first chapter of her unpublished novel, "Vagrant.") Her essay, "Century Walker," recipient of the New Letters Readers' Award,(New Letters, # 73, 3&4 ) has received a "Special Citation" for the Pushcart Prize 2008. And, her poem, "Not A Land Where Oranges" appears in this winter's Poetry Review (UK), volume 97:4. On Wednesday, January 23rd, Poetry Daily will feature her poem "Amber is a Tree's Blood'", from  "But a Passage in Wilderness."

M. Allen Cunningham's newest novel LOST SON, based on the life of Rilke, was named one of the top ten books of 2007 by The Oregonian. 

Clare Dunsford’s book Spelling Love with an "X": A Mother, A Son, and the Gene That Binds Them was published by Beacon Press last fall and was also featured as the cover story of Boston College Magazine's Fall 2007 issue.  A chapter from that book appeared in the KR’s Human Genome issue, Winter 2006.  Another chapter from the book will appear in an anthology to be published by Beacon Press in spring 2008: Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, edited by Suzanne Kamata. The essay is titled "Speaking of Love/ Reading My Son." 

Daniel Mark Epstein has two new books coming out: The Lincolns: Portrait Of A Marriage in May, 2008; and The Glass House: New Poems, in early 2009.

Beth Ann Fennelly's third book of poems, Unmentionables, will be published by W. W. Norton in April.  To see a 2 minute film made of one of her poems and read about the United States Artists grants, check out her profile on http://www.unitedstatesartists.org.

Gary Fincke’s chapbook, The Lengthening Radius for Hate, a sequence of poems about the 1970 Kent State shooting, is scheduled for publication in March from Cervena Barva Press.  In the fall, the University of Arkansas Press will publish his full-length poetry collection, The Fire Landscape. 

Linda Gregerson’s fourth book, Magnetic North (2007), was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Susan Hahn's eighth book of poetry, The Note She Left, will be published this spring.  Her seventh book, The Scarlet Ibis, was produced as a verse play in 2007 in Chicago and is being reprised this coming summer.

Tara Ison has received a 2007-8 City of Los Angeles Individual Artists' Grant, and also a 2008 NEA Fellowship in Literature.

Adrie Kusserow’s poem “Skull Trees, South Sudan” (Fall 07) has been selected to appear in Best of Poetry.

Melissa Kwasny recently won The Joy Harjo Prize from Cutthroat Magazine for her series of prose poems “The Under World.”

Kate Maloy’s forthcoming novel, Every Last Cuckoo (January 2008), is number five among the Book Sense picks for January. 

Derek Mong is currently conducting a poetry workshop at Steepletop, Edna St. Vincent Millay's estate in Austerlitz, NY.  You can view the ongoing restoration project here: http://www.millaysociety.org/

Michelle Richmond’s The Year of Fog was named by Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2007. It also appeared on The Washington Post's "A-List" and was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. Her story "The Great Amphibian," published in the Mississippi Review, received special mention in the 2007 Pushcart Prize anthology.

Deema Shehabi's Deema K. Shehabi's poem "The Narrative" which appears in the 2008 issue of the Kenyon Review was the featured poem on Poetry Daily, www.poems.com on Wednesday, January 16, 2008. Also, her review of "The Butterfly's Burden" by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, appears in the current issue of Studio.

Maurya Simon’s eighth volume of poems, Cartographies, is due out in spring/summer from Red Hen Press in Los Angeles.  In November, she enjoyed a two-week long artist's residency at the American Academy in Rome.  She has a new web site: www.mauryasimon.com which she hopes readers will visit.

Lisa Russ Spaar has two new books coming out this spring: Satin Cash:  Poems (Persea Books, June 2008) and All That Mighty Heart:  London Poems (University of Virginia Press, March 2008).

Daniel Tobin has edited two books, Poet's Work, Poet's Play: Essays On The Practice And The Art (University of Michigan Press), which he edited with Pimone Triplett, and Light In Hand: Selected Early Poems Of Lola Ridge (Quale Press).

Nance Van Winckel’s fifth book of poems, No Starling, is just out from U. of Washington Press.  She is teaching this spring as poet in residence at Westminster College in Salt Lake.  She recommends Medbh McGuckian's Selected Poems (Wake Forest University Press), describing the collection as “poems of sensuous language and a subtly achieved, almost Plath-like intensity.”

A new collection by Miller Williams, entitled Time and the Tilting Earth, will be published by LSU Press in September

Lara JK Wilson’s story, “After Pho,” was selected as a finalist in the Nelson Algren Awards competition.  It was published in the Chicago Tribune Book Section on Dec. 29, 2007, and can be viewed online at www.chicagotribune.com/features/booksmags. 

Finally, we’re saddened to note the death of KR contributor Jay Meek, 70.  Meek, a poet and professor, received the Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Grants. Recently, he read his poetry by invitation at the National Library of Congress. He was the winner of the Pushcart Prize as well as numerous other awards.  He is the author of eight books of poetry, an epistolary novel, and is editor of numerous anthologies. His work has appeared in over 100 journals. He was the poetry editor of North Dakota Quarterly for many years. For nearly 20 years, he was the director of the Creative Writing program at the University of North Dakota. He also taught at MIT, Sarah Lawrence College, Wake Forest University, Memphis State University, St. John's University in Newfoundland, Colby College (Maine) and Syracuse University.

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