Current Issue

Essays in Reminiscence spring 2008

The Sewanee Review looks forward to looking back in the spring of 2008, in an issue dedicated to the exploration of the real and imagined past. Sanford Pinsker returns to the living room of jazz-great Albert Murray; James S. Brown revisits Sewanee in the 1960s. In their essays of reminiscence Leonard Kriegel and Maurice L. Goldsmith recall their boyhoods, Gladys Swan traces her evolution as a writer, Earl Rovit reflects on age and its symptoms, and Richard O’Mara travels across England and back in time. Our regular departments are packed with reviews: Nancy Revelle Johnson on Katherine Fischer; Cushing Strout on Doug Marlette; Ann E. Berthoff on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas; Ed Minus on André Aciman; and Merritt Moseley on Roy Blount, Jr. And poems by James Ragan, John Rees Moore, Sarah Rossiter, and Floyd Skloot will transport the reader, as will the fiction of Susan Engberg.

If she were here—and was she not, in some new way, here?—she might just laugh at the troglodyte turning the crank; she might say, Oh, sweetie, you’re only angry at him because I happen to be dead.
—Susan Engberg, “Time’s Body”—

In this number we also turn our eye to another era in the form of Wendell Berry—a farmer, conservationist, and consummate man of letters whose accolades include the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. In light of the recent publication of Wendell Berry: Life and Work by the University of Kentucky Press, Robert Benson considers the significance of Mr. Berry and his agrarian principles to our contemporary culture. Mr. Benson is not the only contributor to this issue inspired by the life and work of the incomparable Mr. Berry—Allen Wier reviews his latest collection of essays, while David Heddendorf examines the relationship between the natural and the domestic in his fiction. And finally Wendell Berry speaks for himself in a delightful short story, "Burley Coulter's Fortunate Fall."

I speculate Berry could sit down and negotiate with Satan, hold his own, and earn the Devil's respect. I want him on my side. I would feel fortunate to have him testify on my behalf, and in these essays he does.

—Allen Wier, "Reason and Revelation"—

Current Issue

Essays in Reminiscence spring 2008

If she were here—and was she not, in some new way, here?—she might just laugh at the troglodyte turning the crank; she might say, Oh, sweetie, you’re only angry at him because I happen to be dead. —Susan Engberg, “Time’s Body”—

I speculate Berry could sit down and negotiate with Satan, hold his own, and earn the Devil's respect. I want him on my side. I would feel fortunate to have him testify on my behalf, and in these essays he does. —Allen Wier, "Reason and Revelation"—

If she were here—and was she not, in some new way, here?—she might just laugh at the troglodyte turning the crank; she might say, Oh, sweetie, you’re only angry at him because I happen to be dead.
—Susan Engberg, “Time’s Body”—

I speculate Berry could sit down and negotiate with Satan, hold his own, and earn the Devil's respect. I want him on my side. I would feel fortunate to have him testify on my behalf, and in these essays he does.

—Allen Wier, "Reason and Revelation"—