Taking Care: A Conversation with Alix Ohlin
Alix Ohlin discusses her new story collection, WE WANT WHAT WE WANT.
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Posts Tagged: Kenyon Review
Any Moment Is a Door: Nadia Colburn’s The High Shelf
Again, the red door stands open, allowing the world to enter.
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This Huge, Colossal Joy: A Conversation with Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison discuss their work.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers discusses her new collection, THE TILT TORN AWAY FROM THE SEASONS.
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The Poem Remembers: A Conversation with David Baker
David Baker discusses SWIFT: NEW & SELECTED POEMS.
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Melodic, Honorable Engagement: Ryan Vine, T. R. Hummer, and Norman Finkelstein
Reading Vine, Hummer, and Finkelstein, in an era in which people often feel almost flattened, we rise.
...moreThis Week in Books: I Brake for Moose and Other Stories
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice. If we’re going to move our national narrative away from […]
...moreThe Daily Struggle
Lord knows the world has changed since I wrote this talk, but when the world falls to pieces around us, especially when the world falls to pieces, writers will still sit down to write. As Beckett tells us, even when we have “no power to express” and “no desire to express,” we still have “the obligation […]
...moreWriters: To Your Treadmills!
It’s actually a good thing for writers to step away from the keyboard every once in awhile. On the Kenyon Review blog, Aaron Gilbreath reminds us of the importance of tending to and strengthening the mortal vessels that our brilliant minds travel inside: Build a literary life if you want it, but don’t forget that […]
...moreSticking Like Burrs
Our personal pasts aren’t factual records. They’re made up on the spot, synthesized from disjointed details to answer questions we have in the present. For KROnline, Natalie Mesnard and Patrick D. Watson work towards an excavation of memory from the points of view of poetry and neuroscience.
...moreWrite Every Day
It’s poet John James’s turn for a conversation with the Kenyon Review. Author of the chapbook Chthonic, James dissects the process of writing a single poem, “History (n.),” the prescient unconscious, history as diagnosis, writing while parenting, and his connection to the earth. A piece of writing advice: “If you write every day, you get […]
...moreViolent Code
Poet Safiya Sinclair, author of Cannibal, takes part in the Kenyon Review Conversation series with insight into race in America from a Jamaican’s point of view. Living in a white academic bubble in Charlottesville, VA, immersing herself in slavery-era texts and James Baldwin, she describes how she discovered the ways racism is reduced to the […]
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models.
...moreCosmically Illegal
At the Kenyon Review blog, Brian Michael Murphy celebrates the sheer density of reference and intricate structuring of rap lyrics revealed by a computer program, The Raplyzer, and its Rhyme Factor Scale. Murphy dissects the lyric genius of Wu-Tang’s Inspectah Deck and others: I remember the feeling from when I was 16, the sense that […]
...moreArtists as Activists
I was recently asked by a young interviewer if writing, with all the time it takes and its use of paper (though I compose on a computer) is not antithetical to what is needed now, the speed that is, to push a speedy change of consciousness and behavior. I answered: “But it’s the writers who […]
...moreGeorge Saunders and Donald Trump
George Saunders! America’s greatest satirist! The heir to Mark Twain’s estate! And I thought, Oh, what I wouldn’t give to hear Saunders weigh in on Trump. And then I remembered that, in a way, he already had. At the Kenyon Review blog, Cody Walker talks about how George Saunders‘s story “The Red Bow” can be […]
...moreThe Importance of Moby-Dick
The affronted world’s Ahabs, crippled by attack, vow vengeance and a show of might. At The Kenyon Review blog, Karen Malpede talks about her experience of reading Moby-Dick out loud every night and explains why the book is still relevant to our lives today.
...moreMeans to an End
It’s a process that catalyzes us into seeing in a new way, to grasping what may intuitively lie beyond language itself. The Kenyon Review editor David H. Lynn asks: what makes an essay literary?
...moreWriting from the Basement
I never bring my computer with me to the basement, and the discipline of the method is to force myself to work out the ideas, the arrangement of the argument or story before I start building paragraphs and sentences. For the Kenyon Review, Brian Michael Murphy talks about how locking himself up in a basement […]
...moreWhy They Chose the Cricket Risotto
Halfway through her essay “Mēl,” Amy Wright sits down to a freshly prepared bowl of cricket risotto. The Kenyon Review discusses what led them to publish Amy Wright’s latest essay.
...moreIt’s Not Just Gourd Season
Yes, it’s gourd season—but for those of us who teach, it’s also syllabus season and course-packet season. At the Kenyon Review, Cody Walker talks about going back to school and all that comes with it.
...moreThe Causes of Extinction
What fuels such savagery against human and animal kind? What, but the promise of great profits, the lure of luxury items, fine ivory jewelry and statues, or healing potions, gloves and seal skin coats, and free slave labor leading to the amassing of great wealth; all of which seem available merely for the taking. So […]
...moreThe Daniel Swiftboating of Poetry
I want to get to why this grumbly, axe-grinding, British review of Vendler relates to two trends I see now in American poetry—the confusion over the critic’s role and the rise of literary teams—but first, the question that’s probably foremost on your mind: does Daniel Swift have a case? For the Kenyon Review, Derek Mong takes […]
...moreHonesty is Ugly
I used to work more deliberately at resolving contradictions in my work. Now I tend to see contradictions as evidence that I’ve gotten close to saying something true. When we’re honest, we’re conflicted. The Kenyon Review interviews Garret Keizer about how his writing has evolved over the years.
...moreWhat You Can Read at the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library
Prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay have access to 18,000 books in 18 different languages, including Arabic translations of King Lear, Anna Karenina, and Stephen King thrillers. But books deemed critical of the US government, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Noam Chomsky’s Interventions, and various John Grisham novels, are banned. Over at The Kenyon […]
...moreTeaching Through Discomfort
Elicit feedback. Let them know it is OK to not like certain poems, and explore moments of disappointment and discomfort. Have them address the authors directly. Encourage them to see the authors as peers. For the Kenyon Review blog, Dora Malech interviews Adam Kaplan about his experiences teaching poetry to incarcerated youth.
...moreThe Kings, Queens, and Pawns of Poetry
For the Kenyon Review blog, Amit Majmudar compares creating poetic style to playing a game of chess and looks at how poets reach that elusive checkmate.
...moreEdward Lear’s Ludicrously Whirligig Life
In honor of Edward Lear’s birthday, the Kenyon Review blog takes a look at his early, nonsensical life.
...moreBad Stories Told Well
At the Kenyon Review blog, Amit Majmudar explores how a bad story in the hands of someone like Shakespeare can turn into literary genius.
...moreA New Favorite Heroine
To do things and not die: is this not all our quest, distilled? At the Kenyon Review, Meg Shevenock breaks down just what makes Bianca from Roberto Bolaño’s A Little Lumpen Novelita so heroic.
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