The Blog

Arthur Krystal's EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE

Brian Libgober

Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic is a collection of literary essays by New York-based writer Arthur Krystal, a well-regarded book reviewer, who, over the course of his long freelance career, placed reviews with Harper’s, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. However, fifteen years ago, while still at the height of his powers, Krystal suddenly decided to quit writing literary criticism; in an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he explains the reason for his decision:

Given a book to review, I'd snap on my pince-nez, straighten my waistcoat, and get down to business. I was worse than officious: I was clever.

TIR Argentina!

Alyssa Perry

Today and always, for you: Spanish translation!

“La pistolita” (Benjamin Percy’s “The Rubber-band Gun”), “Toc toc” (Brock Clarke’s “Knock knock”), “Avisos fúnebres” (Susan McCarty’s “Services Pending”), and “El pibe al que no invitamos a la orgía” (David Harris Ebenbach’s “The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy”)—come to us by way of two translation workshops in Buenos Aires, Argentina, headed by Argentine poet Santiago Llach and American translator Jennifer Croft. We published the English originals in TIR 40/2.

Anne Marie Rooney's SPITSHINE

Rebecca van Laer

If you’ve read the back of a poetry book recently, you’ve probably learned that many contemporary poets are “reimagining the possibilities of lyric poetry,” “challenging the conventional boundaries of poetic form,” or otherwise transgressing and subverting the supposedly rigid limits of the lyric poem. This sort of rhetoric has been applied to prose poetry, to narrative poetry, and to professedly political poetry. The language of subversion has also become increasingly common in discussions of poetry that does not defy our expectations in any obvious way. Now, it is readily applied to first books of poetry as a form of high praise.

2012 Contest Winner Announcement

TIR staff

The winner of The Iowa Review's 2012 Jeff Sharlet Memorial Prize for Veterans is Iraq War veteran Hugh Martin. An Ohio-born poet, Martin is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Martin’s work was selected from 265 contest entries in all genres.

Judge Robert Olen Butler noted that he was “keenly moved by the depth of feeling and high quality of writing by these veterans. Hugh Martin's poetry represents this body of work at its finest, evoking wartime's moment-to-moment experience with brilliantly observed clarity while illuminating its manifestation of our shared human condition with wisdom and compassion. The best of what I read was not, in its essence, the work of veterans; it was the work of artists."

(Sort of) a Lonely Jew in Iowa: An Interview with Daniel Khalastchi

Sevy Perez

Daniel Khalastchi is an American poet. He is a professor and assistant director of the new Undergraduate Certificate in Writing program at the University of Iowa, where he obtained his MFA in poetry from the Writers' Workshop. His first collection of poems, Manoleria, debuted last year and was awarded the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize. He is also the managing editor at Rescue Press. His latest poem, "Notes from an Adjunct Professor at a Major American University," is featured in the Fall 2012 issue of The Iowa Review.

I sat down with Daniel to discuss his new poem, rap music, and why the chicken man blew up in Philly last night.

SP: I see you a lot with your iPod, walking around Iowa City. What kind of music are you listening to?

Arthur Krystal's EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE

TIR Argentina!

Anne Marie Rooney's SPITSHINE

2012 Contest Winner Announcement

(Sort of) a Lonely Jew in Iowa: An Interview with Daniel Khalastchi

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