The Iowa Review – Fall 2008
The best way to describe this issue is rich – there is a simply a lot here to take in: a short play, a graphic short story/essay, a portfolio of poems by international poets (Writers in Residence in the writing program at Iowa), short fiction, poems, reviews, and several short prose pieces that might straddle the literary space between fiction and nonfiction (they are not labeled and might easily be construed as one or the other). Lyn Lifshin’s “April, Paris,” is representative, at least in terms of tone, of much of the work in this issue: “Nothing would be less shall we call it what it is, a cliché / than April in Paris. But this poem got started with some / thing I don’t think I could do but it reminded me of / Aprils and then three magazines came with Paris / on the cover.” The “message,” here too, is not a bad summary of the issue’s overall impact: things probably look more like April in Paris than they actually are, just keep reading and you’ll see what I mean. Continue reading “The Iowa Review – Fall 2008”