The Kenyon Review articles from January 2007

The Kenyon Review archives from January 2007

It's the internet, stupid!(KenyonReview.org)(Editorial)(Website overview)
January 1, 2007... I confess I don't recall when it first came to me that we'd be wise to develop a Web site for The Kenyon Review. Certainly not a dozen years ago, when we were publishing a journal three times a year and operating the Young Writers program,...

The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival among America's Great White Sharks.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival among America's Great White Sharks. By Susan Casey. New York: Owl Books, 2006. 304 pp. $25.00. The killing took place at dawn and as usual it was a decapitation, accomplished by a...

Smonk.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Smonk. By Tom Franklin. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. 272 pp. $23.95. At least two exceptional young writers have come out of the state of Alabama in recent years: Inman Majors, whose first (and so far only) novel, Wonderdog, is a...

A Coffin for Dimitrios.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... A Coffin for Dimitrios. By Erie Ambler. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2001. 304 pp. $12.95. Judgment on Deltchev. By Eric Ambler. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2002. 288 pp. $12.00. A reader of the summer 2006 issue wrote...

The Countervoice.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... The Countervoice Yourself, the role. Yourself the maker of its exception. Snow fills the nest's ladle. Whiteness. Talons clasped, the cardinal sits on the ice- clipped bough, motionless. Everything ...

A New Literacy.(Viewpoint essay)(Reprint)
January 1, 2007... This essay was originally presented by George Steiner as the Eighth Athenaeum Lecture on 15 September 2005. "A New Literacy" was first published in Great Britain by the Athenaeum, Pall Mall, London, and is reprinted here with the author's...

Beauty In Its Various Forms Appeals To You.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... BEAUTY IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS APPEALS TO YOU The conventional school-taught evolution tale is one of steadily increasing complexity and diversity: all herald the breakthrough of opposable thumbs! But facts are quite...

Life Is Flying By.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... LIFE IS FLYING BY If a robber drops a wristwatch on a speeding locomotive and it shatters on the floor by his bags of stolen maps, and ten years later an impatient woman wedges her luggage beneath that robber's very...

Fracture and Regelation Theory.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... FRACTURE AND REGELATION THEORY Where species overlap (sympatric, simpatico), songs evolve and diverge, no I without you distant, or strange--so this fallen male I hear (a female would be nearly silent, a mere wing...

Cake.(Short story)
January 1, 2007... Annette the facilitator pretended to be Kate, a woman in our chronic pain support group who killed herself. We went around the circle, Annette in the middle, each of us given the opportunity to tell "Kate" what we were feeling. Gail with...

I Leaned Over the Railing.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... I LEANED OVER THE RAILING and was quite awake. A fierce-minded down-below. Even the tilted jonquils--some you'd plucked for me in a by-gone OK year-- were set in this same light dimmed by fledgling...

One Hundred Poems from the Japanese.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... ONE HUNDRED POEMS FROM THE JAPANESE The man who flew the weather plane during the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima, in which a single bomb, an orphaned greyhound, whistled for a moment and lunged to earth, was born...

Naval Weapons Station.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... NAVAL WEAPONS STATION Today the labyrinth's bullhorn sounds like a foghorn. Seagulls sail over forests of ropeless masts. The river laps fallen NO SWIMMING signs shot full of rust by duck hunters or vagrant kids. ...

When I Was Beautiful.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... WHEN I WAS BEAUTIFUL I was forgiven my raucous laughter. Wedding guests feasting like wasps on soft-skinned fruits and sweetened wines, even as a noise more appallingly intimate than thunder shocks some...

Sniper Avenue: from the play returning.(Play)
January 1, 2007... Characters: CAROLINE,, female, early thirties, relief worker TECHNICIAN, female, early twenties, medical technician Setting: Women's Health and Radiology Center: New York Time: August 2001 [CAROLINE,, wearing a bathrobe, is...

Rubato.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... Rubato 1. For the action: hammers of walnut--nussbaum, "nut tree"; the pinblock, hard-grained beech; the keyframe, oak; the keybed, pine; the knuckles, rosewood. In the belly, to ripen the tone, maple,...

Untitled.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... Untitled A white Viennese chair sets against the sea and you--time fades in the landscape's evening waves. Sculpted cheekbones in profile and a child's sand-plastered shovel. When you're here red wine flows...

Ladies and Gentlemen.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ... the easiest pain is someone else's, And even the Hittites Kept their nuclear weapon a sole possession For as long as they could. But it's been a bit much to take since then, One...

The Tea and Sage Poem.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... THE TEA AND SAGE POEM At a desk made of glass, In a glass-walled room With red airport carpet, An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused, So another offered him tea And...

Yazdgerd's Stone.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... YAZDGERD'S STONE Among the ghosts who speak to each other about the world of the living, Yazdgerd's ghost in the mill says to the millstone: Don't speak to me of death, Stone, I would much prefer being a servant to your flours, a...

Fardid's Stone.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... FARDID'S STONE The stone illuminated with a sickle and letters of the Persian alphabet (Nast'aliq script, honey tree, pistachio tree), a bee's hive, and the grape's fear of hands and feet, and the hour in Fardid's voice who said: A...

Talayeh's Stone.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... TALAYEH'S STONE Shoulders that they placed back to the wall and the wall that became sky. Chiseled in relief on the stone. In a corner of the tomb, they throw several cat, ouches and a skull with a smile. For Talayeh saw nonexistence...

Tahereh's Stone.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... TAHEREH'S STONE The tomb's design engraved, a few letters of the alphabet with pebbles strewn over the stone and feet. The railing around the stone is white and around it they've planted four-o'clocks. Objects and ornaments: eyes and...

Cyrus's Stone.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... CYRUS'S STONE The stone will be cut in the shape of an open book, a hand of a clock broken upon it. From Cyrus who read on a grave in Athens: How quickly I fell from all that nothing to all this nothing. On one side they've planted a...

Mansour's Tomb.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... MANSOUR'S TOMB Old Iblis Rose somberly And the children of the trenches Slept In the corners of never That day In the corners of never The finger Was ashamed of counting, And in the fit of...

The bends.(Short story)
January 1, 2007... Ringing the doorbell at my own house is taking me a while to get used to. That Larson, my former bartender, comes to the door doesn't help. His looking more disoriented than me is small consolation. Still, I make the best. "Eugene," I...

Independence Day, 2005.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... INDEPENDENCE DAY, 2005 It's not the bombs Of light that thrill, big thumps Drummed at us, time-delayed, From our white-out war against the sky, But it's the shapes We marvel at, Pink and gold...

Evensong: All Eyes Sharper.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... EVENSONG: ALL EYES SHARPER Not easily: the field or the forcep. The saint in his pine box says nothing. Not the light tracing the curve of a doe's neck at evening. Not the evening. O eros....

Bergson's Arrow.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... BERGSON'S ARROW Rain in the holly, rain on the shelf of self. Many things may be blamed on the fall line: the mechanization of flour and weapons production, the rise & ultimate wreckage of Richmond's...

Many of Us Identify with Animals.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... MANY OF US IDENTIFY WITH ANIMALS Half a toy being better than none. A forest being better than none. An argot, a pidgin. And the miraculous brevity of small objects. A broken comb. Detach'd leg of a beetle. One...

Every Apple, Every Dreamer, Every Prime.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... EVERY APPLE, EVERY DREAMER, EVERY PRIME At the top of the stairs: a horse. No, the shadow of a horse. No: a shadow as if east by stair: if cast: (that is, thrown): as if recollection. Mete answer, virginal...

Vague.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... VAGUE When I say oolong, you hear how long. Oh the vagaries of biology: histaminic tongue, water in the ear. Or am I drowned out, this ear-splitting, shuffle tape flinging us like vagabonds from seventeenth-century...

His Garden Mechanical.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... HIS GARDEN MECHANICAL The machine shines in the grass, the grass Shines in the windows, everything reflects. The pulleys and cogwheels grind like There's something more to say. I myself Have nothing more to say...

Canary Bird Flower in Your Chaste Tree.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... CANARY BIRD FLOWER IN YOUR CHASTE TREE We were writing, my Erica, in darkness, a darkening room, the last light, overdressed for late spring. I fell asleep gazing at forget- me-nots and dreamt of fight-me-nots,...

Audubon Diptych.(Poem)
January 1, 2007... Audubon Diptych I. Wherein the Swallows Instruct Us on Pleasure Because they daubed with poppy sap the stricken eyes of their young & because each thin body, it was believed, contained a bright red stone that could...

Life expectancy.(Short story)
January 1, 2007... Coach Theo Burke was standing outside his classroom during break when he noticed Josie across the hall, pinned up against a locker. One of the varsity basketball players, Jatarius, was doing the pinning--his near-seven feet making Josie seem...

In the forest.(Short story)
January 1, 2007... In the forest, Orlando and Adam are starving, particularly Adam. "I don't care," says Adam, Orlando s aged servant. "I'll just die." Orlando doesn't agree with this. Adam has taken care of him for years, and it's time for Orlando to...