Most Read...
The Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239) Letters And So It Goes
Letters from Young Mr Grace
(aka John Ashbery)
(PN Review 239) on Toby Martinez de las Rivas
(PN Review 244) A Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121) On Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237) In conversation with Sasha Dugdale
(PN Review 240)
(PN Review 239) Letters And So It Goes
Letters from Young Mr Grace
(aka John Ashbery)
(PN Review 239) on Toby Martinez de las Rivas
(PN Review 244) A Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121) On Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237) In conversation with Sasha Dugdale
(PN Review 240)
Next Issue
Kei Miller Sometimes I Consider the Names of Places
Kyoo Lee's A Close Up and Marjorie Perloff's response
John McAuliffe City of Trees
Don Share on Whitman's Bicentenary
Jeffrey Wainwright and Jon Glover on Geoffrey Hill's Gnostic
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Welcome to PN Review, one of the outstanding literary magazines of our time. '...probably the most informative and entertaining poetry journal in the English-speaking world.' John Ashbery Keep up with the many worlds of poetry in this independent and always stimulating journal. For four decades PN Review has been a place to discover new poems in English and in translation as well as interviews, news, essays, reviews and reports from around the world. Subscribers can explore the complete, uniquely rich digital archive. A PN Review subscription makes an excellent gift, with a new magazine every two months and full access to the archive. Reduced rates are available for students; gift subscriptions to students are available at student rate. ‘The most engaged, challenging and serious-minded of all the UK’s poetry magazines.’ Simon Armitage Submissions to PN Review: Current subscribers may submit work by e-mail (word attachment). All other submissions should be made by post to: The Editors, PN Review, 4th Floor, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ, UK. Submissions should be accompanied by a self-addressed return envelope and should generally not exceed four poems/five pages. |
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Featured Article
We Defy Augury translated by Beverley Bie Brahic Chapter 7
Translated from the French by Beverley Bie Brahic (Paris: Editions Galilée, 2018) You never know who to expect My books are nautical self-constructions, I tell my daughter; free in their movements and in their choice of routes, they can take to the air or water, founder, fly, be composed of several stories, of jokes, of eye-witness accounts, true or false. They are enriched with alluvial deposits from all the worlds, deposited in this or that chapter. A gracious contribution from the gods. They are the product of many makers, dreamed, dictated, cobbled together, augmented with fantasies, whence the plurality of their birthplaces. If, to take notes on the voyage, I am at anchor in my Aquitaine study, my spirits come and go among the Cities and times that inhabit the different floors of my mental library. The readiness is all. Whatever the hour, the page, the rule of hospitality is what directs the Book. You never know who to expect, I tell my daughter. What the weather is like. How old you are. For which country you have a ticket. With whom you are about to quarrel. Today I encountered an ancient tortoise I hadn’t seen since Algiers. She went away. Her going left me with a small ache of fatality. That she should depart was written. In spite of myself I was forced to love her. Because she loves music. Because the tortoise folk were in the garden a long time before the human colonisation. Because you’ll never hear her sob and wail. Must the Book adopt her? – Did she leave a long time ago? my daughter asks. – Sixty years. Nothing could ... read more |
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Ashberyana A Musical Tribute to the Poet John Ashbery
 John Ashbery and Sarah Rothenberg © Charles Harbutt The following essay was written as an introduction to a concert presented at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas on 30 April 2019 by Da Camera chamber music and jazz, where I am artistic director. The 2018–19 season theme for Da Camera, ‘Time future/time past’ was reflected in a range of classical, contemporary, jazz and interdisciplinary programs performed by an international roster of musicians, and also refers to this season marking my twenty-fifth anniversary as artistic director. |
on Lola Ridge The Many-Faced Ridge
To the Many: Collected Early Poems, Lola Ridge, ed. Daniel Tobin (Little Island Press, 2018)
ON 21 MAY 1941, the same year James Joyce died, Lola Ridge’s obituary appeared on page twenty-three of the New York Times: LOLA RIDGE, POET, DIES IN BROOKLYN –––––––––– ‘Firehead’ Was Called One of Most Extraordinary Poems Written by an American –––––––––– DEALT WITH CRUCIFIXION –––––––––– Champion of Poor Received Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 After Last Book It appeared on the same page as ‘Columbia Fellowships: 20 Women and 85 Men Receive Study Grants’, and alongside the deaths of ‘E.W. Kneeland, Canadian Leader, Winnipeg Grain Merchant and Industrialist’, ‘Police Lieutenant William J. McMahon: Cleared Bomb Mystery’, ‘William S. Rowe: Director of Federal ... read more |
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Selected from the Archive...
Adrian Stokes Revisited
FIFTY years ago, when Pound in The Criterion applauded Adrian Stokes's The Quattro Cento, he exclaimed: 'It is almost incomprehensible that any man can have as great a concern for the shapes and meanings of stone beauty as Stokes has, without its forcing him to take the tools in his hands. In fact one can only suppose that he in some way regards himself as the forerunner of some sort of sculptural amelioration, or at any rate is trying to clear up incomprehensions and to distinguish between pure and mixed sculptural values.' The comment is endearingly characteristic of Pound, who could never make a distinction, nor endorse one made by someone else, without at once doing something about it, taking the tools in his hands. But the reflection is a natural one, all the same: if Stokes wasn't himself ... read more |
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