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Shira Dentz's HOW DO I NET THEE

Ralph Pennel

The essential idea behind string theory is this: all fundamental particles of the Standard Model (which describes both the building blocks out of which the world is made and the forces through which these blocks interact) are really just different vibrating, oscillating strings. And, in many ways, this is also the shape that any work of art’s meaning takes inside us. This meaning vibrates within us at such a frequency that we are provided with ways to see how consciousness is also a consistent and fundamental component of the structure of the universe. how do i net thee, the latest collection of poetry by Shira Dentz, works to attempt just that.

Winners of the fourth Veterans’ Writing Contest

TIR Staff

The Iowa Review is excited to announce the winners and runners-up of our fourth Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans writing contest, judged by Brian Turner. The work of all winners and runners-up will be published in the Spring 2019 edition of the magazine. Thank you to all those who entered the contest, and thank you all for your service. Included below are the winners, Turner’s comments on the winning work, and a brief bio about each writer.

First Place:

Sarah Viren's MINE

Jess Smith

A futon, a house, a lover, a dog, a child, a country. These are all things Sarah Viren has, or has had, and lost. It is the exploration of that possession and subsequent absence that she explores in her essay collection Mine, winner of the 2016 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. Each essay is titled with the possessive my—”My Catch,” “My Choice,” “My Ballad for You”—but ultimately, Viren is exploring and working to accept the inevitability of loss. “Everything I owned,” she writes on the final page, “has since been lost. Even my memories are not the same.”

Porochista Khakpour’s SICK

Brittany Borghi

Recently, I fell asleep in bed reading Porochista Khakpour’s new memoir Sick, the story of her lifetime of physical and mental health crises that eventually leads to a diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease. In that sleep, I had a terrifying dream that my skin suddenly ripped open between my second and third ribs, and while the air leaked out of my body, I wasted time panicking about which jeans to wear to the hospital. In my waking life, I was wading through a bout of post-MFA anxiety the likes of which I’d never felt before, and I got a call from my older brother who told me he’d been bitten by a tick and diagnosed with Lyme disease (and successfully treated it with antibiotics) for the second time in two years.

Interview with Anthony Madrid

Devin King

Anthony Madrid is the author of two books of poetry: I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say (Canarium, 2012) and Try Never (Canarium, 2017). Both books are built around the investigation of specific forms—I Am Your Slave explores the possibilities of the ghazal, a medieval Arabic form, and Try Never uses the linked engylnion, a form of early Welsh nature poetry. Madrid also enjoys the pleasures of rhyme, though he is never lazy or cheap in the utilization of this texture. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2013, Boston Review, Fence, Harvard Review, Lana Turner, LIT, and Poetry. He is also insistent as a critic of poetry—most notably at The Paris Review blog.

Shira Dentz's HOW DO I NET THEE

Winners of the fourth Veterans’ Writing Contest

Sarah Viren's MINE

Porochista Khakpour’s SICK

Interview with Anthony Madrid

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