A Friendly Bunch

When reflecting upon The Kenyon Review's spring issue, I think of a group of people at a party. They are people I don't know, but who know each other. Tentatively I approach. I hover near them. Upon seeing me, they turn and smile and invite me with open arms to join their circle. There, the conversation is lively indeed. It is one of intellectual rigor, delightful wordplay and occasional stories that make everyone pause in reverent silence, before starting up a debate again. While some strains of thought are harder to follow than others, I never feel left out of the conversation. And that sense of being welcomed makes me thrilled to read on.

Editor David H. Lynn opens the issue with a note about The KR's online presence. This is good news for writers, as there is now extra opportunity to be published. The website also creates a forum for different kinds of work. Pieces that are timely because they reference certain fads or styles of humor, or are "shorter, edgier, perhaps more experimental" will now have a better shot at being published. The website, kenyonreview.org, will of course maintain the editorial integrity of the magazine.

There is an abundance of nonfiction in this issue, ranging from personal narrative to literary analysis. The first, "No" by Brian Doyle, should be read by anyone aspiring to get published in a literary magazine. As a writer who has had his work rejected many times, and an editor who has sent many rejection letters, Doyle does a thorough accounting of the word "no" and takes us on a funny tour of the various rejection styles of well-known magazines.

In "A Life in Pods," Michelle Richmond explores a unique aspect of modern society: the pod. We are obsessed with i-pods, cocoa pods, coffee pods, Richmond claims.The Matrix's characters are podded people and believe it or not, "sleep pods" now exist in The Empire State Building for mid-afternoon naps. In America, Richmond writes, a "dazed-looking populace shuttles frantically from pod to pod, activity to activity, along a discombobulated network of freeways and frontage roads, side streets, and subdivision." Ironically, one could also make that claim about literary magazines, delicious snippets of writing all lined up like peas in a you-know-what.

Though I'd never heard of James Salter, I found myself enthralled by Jeffrey Meyers's analysis of Salter's life and work. Let's face it, the stuff is sexy. Salter grappled with themes of erotic indulgence, the fleeting nature of sexual pleasure, the challenges of marriage, fidelity and work. The quotes lifted from Salter's novels are tantalizing--"Salter wants to break down all physical barriers and reach the final transcendent moment..."-- and Meyer's in-depth analysis is illuminating. 

The final essay of the issue is the headiest: "The Craft of Thought: The Sentence in Contemporary Poetry." Here, William Wenthe offers a comprehensive exploration of the sentence, as used, abused and recreated in contemporary poetry. Wenthe looks at what the sentence has meant to different schools of thought, from the Language Poets to Marxist historians to Postmodernism. Wenthe provides fascinating insights into the biological roots of sentence-making and various poets' definitions of what a sentence actually is. This is a good piece not only for students of writing, but of philosophy and linguistics as well.

Diverse in style and subject matter, consistently high-quality, The KR does just what a lit mag ought to: showcase new and established talent through well-edited and compelling stories. M.M.M. Hayes tells the first fictional story in this issue in "Meantime, Quentin Ghlee." This is a story about a simple man longing for simpler times. At least, that's what the story seems at first to be about. As the story progresses, Quentin Ghlee transforms from sympathetic to deranged and the story goes from mellow to violent. But, did we need the very last line? To me, it was too obvious, too cliché for a story that thrived off subtlety and charm. I couldn't make up my mind about this, so please, read the story and let me know what you think!

Deborah Schwartz delights with her quickly paced and haunting tale, "The City and the Moon." The tone of the story is light, but the narrative takes a strange turn that includes multiple deaths, estrangement between a young married couple, an important cat and a ghost. Schwartz is especially gifted at marking the passage of time by the varying states of the weather.