The Blog

John Leland's READINGS IN WOOD

Mitch Nakaue

“When but a child, I learned that our ancestors came out of the trees, stood upright on the savannahs, and became human.” So begins John Leland’s essay collection Readings in Wood. A nature writer, Leland makes his home in the southern Appalachian mountains of Rockbridge County, Virginia, a region known for its wilderness and as a repository of American history dating back to the Revolution. Against this backdrop, each piece interrogates what it means to be wild or domesticated, native or transplant, deliverer or destroyer.

NEA awards TIR 2016 Art Works grant to support writing by veterans

TIR staff

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu announced on Dec. 8 that The Iowa Review, the literary magazine at the University of Iowa, will receive a $10,000 NEA Art Works grant to support the publication of creative writing by U.S. military veterans and active-duty service members.

Giving Tradition a Facelift: An Exploration of Richie Hofmann’s SECOND EMPIRE

Peter LaBerge

“Standing at the water’s edge, I watch myself / loosen into a brief, exquisite blur.” Though we begin our journey through Richie Hofmann’s stunning debut poetry collection Second Empire with the freedom to move and self-express, it is a destination of sorts for Hofmann himself. The collection functions as a deeply personal glimpse into the immediate and long-term effects of the tension Hofmann experienced growing up as a queer man in Western society: tension between security and connection, beauty and fragility, tradition and identity. The collection as a whole is far from sole introspection, however.

Human Rights Index #44: World Sports

TIR staff

The Human Rights Index is prepared three times a year by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights. The Iowa Review is proud to feature the Index on our website, to suggest the global political and socioeconomic context within which we read and write.

Human Rights Index #44

Prepared by The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR)*

Geoffrey O'Brien's IN A MIST

John Tamplin

Geoffrey O'Brien's poems are full of things vanishing. The first three poems in his new book, In a Mist, appear to be elegies for vanished people. "For S." concludes:

A wisp is too harsh.
At mere hint of sight
all parts of you
drop into the glare.

"A Yard at Daybreak" ends:

The shop is shuttered
and the yard so quiet
you can hear the noise
of shadows vanishing.