FROM
THE KR WEB SITE
AN INTERVIEW WITH LINDA GREGERSON
KR
Poetry Editor David Baker talks with Linda Gregerson, whose poetry appears
in the Spring
2007 issue. The full interview is available online.
David Baker:
Linda, thanks so much for the chance to talk about your two poems in the
new Kenyon Review. They are splendid poems, both of them, and
we are very glad for the opportunity to print them. I'd also like to use
this occasion to talk about your forthcoming book of poems, Magnetic
North, and to range further into other interests of yours, like teaching,
Renaissance poetry and scholarship, the theater, more.
But let's start with "Over
Easy." This is one of my favorite new poems of yours. I have
a few specific questions about this poem, but I wonder if there's anything
you wish to say about it first—about its origin or impetus or whatever
you might wish to say to begin.
Linda Gregerson: Well, in
the first place, you are very kind to overlook the speaker's comments
on the Ohio landscape, not to hold them against me, I mean. And I should
also say I regard that landscape—northern Ohio, northern Illinois,
southern Wisconsin, southern Michigan, not the lushness and lovely elevations
of points further south and north, but the sectioned-off flatness of farmlands
and shopping malls—as my unerasable imaginative home. But yes, the
origins: a car trip, and perhaps the purest sensuous incitement I've ever
tried to get down on paper. At which I flatly failed, by the way. It was
that radiant sliver of limpid tangerine: I could taste it in the back
of my throat, and it brought such pure enchantment. Midwestern Proust.
I spent ages trying to identify the sense-memory, which was multiple and
mildly mortifying: a dress I had in high school, a pair of fishnet stockings,
a lipstick (it was the sixties, remember; we all looked ghastly!),
and a sort of sherbet-on-a-stick we used to call a "Push-Up."
Quite a farrago, and of course I had to ditch it all. But I tried to keep
the impetus, that primitive thing that comes before speech and way before
aesthetic judgment.
NEWS
Record-Breaking Year for Young Writers
Applications
High
school students from thirty-two states—as well as from Korea, Vietnam,
the Philippines, Israel, China and Russia—were accepted into this
summer's KR Young Writers program. More than 360 students applied,
setting a new record for the popular program. Two sessions will be offered
in 2007 with 60 students in each session.
Students were asked to submit an essay, a teacher's letter of recommendation,
and a high school transcript with their application. The selection committee
at The Kenyon Review included student associates who helped read
the essays. In fact, some of these readers once attended the Young Writers
program before enrolling at Kenyon College and coming to work at KR.
A generous grant from the Surdna Foundation has made it possible for more
underserved students from Ohio to attend this year. Abby Serfass, KR's
associate program director, traveled to Cleveland and Columbus city high
schools with instructor W. David Hall to give students in public schools
an idea of what a workshop is like. Ten students were awarded Surdna scholarships
to attend the 2007 program.
A typical day at Young Writers includes breakfast, a morning workshop
session, lunch, an afternoon workshop session, then a break before dinner
and readings. Workshop groups are limited to twelve students, ensuring
individual attention. Each student is asked to prepare a formal reading
of his/her work during the session. There is also homework, but these
writers don't complain that is is "work" at all. Many choose
to compose in the Adirondack chairs scattered around campus, or under
a shady tree, or in the computer lab tucked inside the old stone classroom
buildings.
KR
also offers workshops for adults. These workshops are designed for both
beginning and seasoned writers in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
For more information about KR's workshops, visit our web
page.
Think
of this section as a bulletin from KR in which we brag about
the accomplishments of the extended KR family and leave out the
gall-bladder surgeries.
- Carol Muske-Dukes' novel Channeling Mark Twain is due out in June from Random House. Toni Morrison blurbed the novel: "Effortlessly, the narrator's story here becomes one with the stories of the women in prison. Rarely do we encounter a perspective clear as glass through which the characters look back at the narrator without mirror or microscope, false hierarchy or romanticizing. Brava!" Brava, indeed.
- Roy Kesey's darkly weird "Wait" has been selected by the equally darkly weird Stephen King for the 2007 Best American Short Stories anthology. "Wait" originally appeared in KR's Fall 2006 issue. Add it to your reading list.
- Also recommend reading is Bridget Bentz Sizer's "Snow Blind," which made Best American Fantasy's recommended reading list for 2007. "Snow Blind" appeared in KR's Summer 2006 issue.
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Info
The Kenyon Review
104 College Drive · Walton House
Gambier, Ohio 43022
740.427.5208
kenyonreview@kenyon.edu
ANNOUNCEMENT
REBEKAH LATOUR WINS PATRICIA GRODD POETRY PRIZE FOR YOUNG WRITERS
Rebekah Latour, a junior
at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, took
first place in this year's Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers
sponsored by The Kenyon Review. Her poem "Twisted Like Dogwood"
was selected by KR Poetry Editor David Baker from more than 1,200
submissions. In winning the prize, Latour receives a full scholarship
to attend KR's 2007 Young Writers summer program. Her poem will
also appear in the Fall 2007 issue of The Kenyon Review.
Frankie Romano, a
resident of Bellmore, NY, and a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School,
received second place for her poem “The Night You Questioned the
Purpose of Flowers." Taking third place was Hannah Irvin, a sophomore
at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, for her poem “For My Father."
Both Romano and Irvin will see their poems published in the Fall 2007
issue of KR.
Celeste Brewer, also a junior at South Carolina Governor's School for
the Arts and Humanities, took honorable mention for "Gemini."
The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize recognizes outstanding young poets and
is open to high school sophomores and juniors. This year's contest was
the fourth annual and attracted submissions from students across the country
and abroad. The selection process involved a panel of students from Kenyon
College as well as KR editors.
The contest is named in honor of Patricia Grodd in recognition of her
generous support of The Kenyon Review and its programs, as well
as her passionate commitment to education and deep love for poetry. Ms.
Grodd is a member of the Kenyon Review Board of Trustees.
The poems can be viewed on our web site. Here is Latour's winning entry:
REBEKAH LATOUR
TWISTED LIKE DOGWOOD
Mornings he lies under the bridge
pretending the sky is black—
and when boys stand atop the bridge, making wishes,
eyes pinched closed,
flicking pennies into ripples of the river,
he dips his hand into the water to catch them—
and when a penny slides
through his fingers, slinking into sand,
there is no going after it.
Sometimes he sits on the bench
and begs under the dogwood twisting
through the concrete. And a boy sits next to him.
He asks, got what you wanted, didn’t you?
(even when there is nothing worth looking for)
and the boy says mister?
and he says well, as long as you got what you wanted.
And, together, the two of them watch
a woman, tall and beautiful, walk into
the liquor store on the corner, and walk out
with a bottle of red wine:
and her hair—black as sky, twisted like dogwood,
her eyes glistening like pennies.
And he says, you know that lady in there,
what’s her name, that little lady from the liquor store?
and the boy says it’s all on the other side
but the wind carries her off.
And he rolls back his head, the sun shining in his eyes,
as if it were the only answer
the world could give.
More >>
FROM
THE ARCHIVES
Winter 1979
Ever wonder why KR
divides its volumes into the "Old Series" and the "New
Series"? Like many literary magazines, KR took a breather,
and a decade later, was resurrected with new blood. The Old Series defines
KR's first literary epoch: 1939 to 1970. The New Series began
in 1979 and continues today. In that Winter 1979 issue, the intrepid
editors, Ronald Sharp and Frederick Turner, spoke of KR's rebirth
as analogous to the reopening of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (begging
the question: did they have ESP?—the foundation for the Globe
was not rediscovered until 1989).
In
the Winter 1979 issue, Kenneth Burke contributed a poem, "Invocation
for a Convocation," that the editors found particularly apt for
KR's brave new world: "Kenneth Burke, who frequently used
the old Review as his arena for bridging disciplines and translating
amidst the Babel of modern discourse, continues his dazzling work in
this issue, and thus makes a beautiful bridge from the old magazine
to the new. The convocation for which he provides the invocation is
the whole life of culture, conceived as a
miraculous gathering of diverse voices, a sort of Olympic Games. That,
in miniature, is what we conceive The Kenyon Review to be.
When we say we are reopening the Globe, we mean that we are going to
the world itself for our sources and resources."
Following
is an excerpt of Burke's poem. Read
the entire poem on the KR site.
invocation for a convocation
Of
all SYMBOLICITY
You the GROUND
and over-arching PRINCIPLE,
we here assembled
and as it were addressing you
(though your presence all about us
be not given to answering)
we beg to dare petition that,
proper to the aptitude
whereby Nature has chosen us
as spokesmen of and for all natural marvels,
do help us persevere
in pious competition.
loyal to the sources
of our being....
May we think of ourselves
as having come together
to help us all help one another
by reminding ourselves to be grateful
for that ancestral evolutionary twist
whereby we can now name ourselves
even while not yet knowing
how wholly to define us,
as somehow amidst all bickering
we keep on thinking somewhat
of finenesses within our toughnesses, a grandeur
despite our ways of being raw....
NEW
PODCAST AVAILABLE
On February 8th, 2007, Kenyon College and The Kenyon Review held an event at the City University of New York. Featured that evening were readings by three noted authors from the KR family: Rebecca McClanahan, Brad Kessler and David Goodwillie. Click here to listen.
The Kenyon Review is supported in part by generous grants from the Ohio Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Smart Family Foundation, and the New York Times Company Foundation.
