Volume 42, Issue 2 — Fall 2012

Horizontal Tabs

Table of Contents

In this issue: anonymous macaroni, if God lived on my block, waiting in line at the food bank, a terrible concentration of hares, a bullock-cart to Chandapur, Blackfisk in Norway, Memaw on piano,the white shadow of afternoon, and falling in love over chicken-butt soup

Poem

Story

Essay

Artwork

Erin Kay Carnes | Digesting Dystopia

Editor's Note

We don’t usually have themed issues here at TIR, as each table of contents is shaped mainly by the happy randomness of the couple thousand unsolicited submissions we read each year. We choose what we love rather than what fits a predetermined theme, and hence any given issue may sandwich an essay about pet rabbits between a short story about a novice nun and a poem inspired by a modernist sculpture of an empty frame.

Despite this seeming lack of a design, there are always strange coincidences in each issue: during proofreading we’ll realize there are references to Wal-Mart in four different pieces, or three instances of the word “moniker,” or two cameos by barn owls. But in this issue, it was more than that. Meenakshi Gigi Durham’s essay, “Hunger Pangs,” which we accepted early on, documents the author’s sojourn in a “food desert” of graduate-student impoverishment. Soon afterwards, we took Ayse Papatya Bucak’s short story “Iconography,” a tale of another foreign student who fasts, this time on purpose. Then came Elizabeth Cullen Dunn’s “A Gift from the American People,” an anthropologist’s account of the symbolic value, or non-value, of food aid given to South Ossetian war refugees. Capping off a remarkably thematically tight group of submissions was Naomi Kimbell’s esssay “Bounty,” which recounts the author’s walk of shame leading to the door of her community food pantry.

For most magazines, the idea of a Food Issue conjures up sumptuous color spreads, aspirational recipes, accounts of treks around the world to sample the most exotic repasts. But since TIR isn’t mandated to promote the quest for consumer bliss, but rather given the freedom to seek out and present a much wider slice of human experience, our Food Issue could perhaps more accurately be called the Non-Food Issue. Or the Hunger Issue. And our answer to the lavish four-color spread is Erin Carnes’s photographic series Digesting Dystopia, in which idealized images of plants, animals, and agriculture roost amid more disturbing views of the modern food production and consumption industries. Yet, despite the dark themes one would expect from a Hunger Issue, each of the pieces mentioned above also hints at the plenitude of Kimbell’s title: a spoonful of honey that provides a taste of home for war refugees, a bumper crop of Roma tomatoes at the food bank, the “chicken-butt soup” Durham’s future husband teaches her to cook as they fall in love.

In such company, even brief references to food in the rest of the essays, poems, and stories we accepted for this issue started to stand out. The smoked salmon dubbed “Blackfisk” in Wendy S. Walters’s imagined account of a mass African-American migration to Norway. The Tennessee butcher shop where Kimberly Elkins memorably sets a scene of adultery. The sunflower, pumpkin, and cantaloupe seeds that reveal Mehdi Tavana Okasi’s otherness in his native land. Talk about migration, lust, belonging, or almost anything else, and often you end up talking about food. And even the pieces that mention nary an edible could be seen as grappling with other kinds of hungers—for perfection, for possession, for meaning—and thus seem perfectly at home.

As the issue took shape, I found myself keeping track of our own little food world, the snacks that appear on TIR’s conference table where submissions are read and discussed. Highlights included apple crisp made with apples from the tree in Jenna’s yard; Korean “hallabong”-flavored chocolates sent by Hannah’s mother after a trip there; miniature challahs from the Co-op that appeared during Rosh Hashanah; and, on Valentine’s Day, sugar cookies displayed under a Post-it from our intern Sarah reading “Attack of the Iowa Review Cookie Fairy!” We freely admit to being an office obsessed with food. Perhaps it is the fact that we work in a converted 1960s classroom, where the minimal surroundings—narrow windows and bare brick walls—attempt to encourage abstract thought and shut down sensual distraction. In this less than stimulating environment, what we’d turn our noses up at elsewhere—neon-pink frosted cupcakes from Hy-Vee in a plastic clamshell—becomes the Holy Grail in the spare environs of the English-Philosophy Building at 4 p.m. on a Thursday.

Even in one tiny office, the food eaten tells a story of community, of the seasons, of tradition, of friendship and family. All food does. Food lures our staff and volunteers into the room to read, discuss, reject, champion, and accept manuscripts, but it also creates personal bonds. It helps us identify with the disparate lives our authors write about, as food is a common denominator. The pieces in this issue, whether about food or other human hungers, remind us of privation and unmet desires but also of unexpected sources of abundance, including the ones in our own lives.

Contributors' Notes

DESIRÉE ALVAREZ has previously published poems in Poetry, Boston Review, and Prairie Schooner. In 2011, she was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her nonfiction received an award from Denver Quarterly. As a visual artist, she received the Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

ANNE BABSON's opera Lotus Lives is currently touring with Meridian Arts Ensemble orchestra. She has four chapbooks, two Pushcart nominations, and many other prizes and publications in verse and in creative nonfiction.

AYŞE PAPATYA BUCAK directs the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University.

SCOTT BUTTERFIELD is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in Broome Street Review, Tarpaulin Sky, and DIAGRAM. He lives in limited splendor with his two cats.

ERIN KAY CARNES received her BFA from Northern Michigan University in 2007. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 2011 with an MFA in photography. She has traveled around the world with National Geographic Student Expeditions, leading trips as a photography instructor.

ARDA COLLINS is the author of a collection of poems, It Is Daylight (2009), which was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.

MARK CONWAY's books of poetry are Dreaming Man, Face Down, and Any Holy City. This poem is from a new manuscript with the working title Fuse.

MAROSA DI GIORGIO (1932–2004), known for her surreal and fablelike prose poems, has one of the most distinctive and recognizable voices in Latin American poetry. Descended from Italian immigrants, she was raised in the countryside near Salto, Uruguay, a landscape that influenced the mystical world of her poetry. Her collected poems, Los papeles salvajes (The Wild Papers), were published in a single volume in 2008 by Adriana Hidalgo. Diadem, Adam Giannelli’s translations of her poems, will be published by BOA Editions in the fall of 2012.

ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN is an anthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2009, she spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar, working with victims of ethnic cleansing in a camp for displaced people in the Republic of Georgia. She is currently writing a book about life in the humanitarian condition.

MEENAKSHI GIGI DURHAM’s essays and short fiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including the Chronicle of Higher Education and Harvard Review. A former newspaper and magazine journalist, she is now a professor in the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she teaches writing. Her essay “Grieving” was selected for inclusion in Best American Essays 2011.

KIMBERLY ELKINS's work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Best New American Voices, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. A finalist for the National Magazine Award, she received a fellowship from the Houghton Library at Harvard for research on her novel, What Is Visible, forthcoming from Grand Central. A visiting lecturer for the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Hong Kong, she has an MFA from BU and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

STEPHANIE FORD’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Harvard Review, Lo-Ball, and Denver Quarterly. She lives in Los Angeles.

ADAM GIANNELLI’s poems and translations have appeared in New England Review, Field, New American Writing, Two Lines, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and elsewhere. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Utah. Diadem, his translations of prose poems by Marosa di Giorgio, will be published by BOA Editions in the fall of 2012.

DANIEL KHALASTCHI is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of Manoleria (Tupelo Press, 2011). His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including MAKE, 1913: A Journal of Forms, jubilat, Forklift, Ohio, Court Green, and iO: A Journal of New American Poetry. Daniel is co-founder/editor of Rescue Press, and he currently lives in Iowa City, where he is the Assistant Director of the University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Certificate in Writing Program.

NAOMI KIMBELL is from Missoula, where she lives and writes creative nonfiction. In 2008, she earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. Her work has appeared in journals such as Calyx, the Black Warrior Review, and the Indiana Review. Her essay “Whistling in the Dark” was listed as a notable essay in the 2010 edition of America’s Best Essays. She lives with her husband, her dog, and her bird at the base of a mountain that looks like an elephant in repose.

DEBORA KUAN’s first collection of poems, Xing, was published by Saturnalia Books in 2011. She is working on a short-story collection and a second volume of poetry, from which these poems come.

PAULA C. LOWE lives and works on a ranch in California. Her poems appear in A Bird Black As the Sun, California Poets on Crows & Ravens, Askew, Dogwood, Sow’s Ear, Solo Café, and New Times. She collaborated with six poets to publish Poems for Endangered Places. She is the managing editor of Solo Press and its poetry journal, Solo Novo.

ALICE MILLER completed an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow. She now lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

MEHDI TAVANA OKASI is currently the Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the recipient of the career award from the National Society of Arts and Letters and fellowships from places like Key West Literary Seminars. His work appeared in Best New American Voices 2009.

JEFFREY PETHYBRIDGE lives in Austin with poet Carolina Ebeid and their son Patrick. His work appears in journals such as the Chicago Review, Volt, Ploughshares, the Southern Review, LIT, New American Writing, and others. His fist book Striven, The Bright Treatise will be published by Noemi Press in the spring of 2013.

VERONICA RAIMO debuted in 2007 with her novel Il dolore secondo Matteo (Pain According to Matteo, Minimum Fax); her short stories have since appeared in journals and anthologies throughout Italy. She recently co-wrote the screenplay for Bella Addormentata. She translates from English to Italian for different publishers, contributes regularly to the Italian magazine Rolling Stone, and is working on her second novel.

SEAN M. RUMSCHIK has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an Sc.B. in neuroscience from Brown University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, RHINO Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Interim, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.

TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. During the 2011 spring semester, he taught at Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His recent books translated into English are The Blue Tower (translated by Michael Biggins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) and On the Tracks of Wild Game (translated by Sonja Kravanja, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012).

ZACH SAVICH is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Firestorm. His fourth collection, Century-Swept Brutal, is forthcoming from Black Ocean Press.

WILL SMILEY lives in Iowa City.

ELEANOR STANFORD’s first book is The Book of Sleep. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, the Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in the Philadelphia area.

MICHAEL THOMAS TAREN is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Poetikon, Fence, and elsewhere. His chapbook, 08 September 2009, was published by Factory Hollow Press.

DIANA THOW graduated from Barnard College in 2003 and holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa. In 2009 she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Italy for her work on the Italian poet Amelia Rosselli. She has published translations in journals such as Carte Italiane, Or, the Quarterly Conversation, and Transom. Her co-translation with Gian Maria Annovi of Rosselli’s long poem Impromptu is forthcoming with Guernica Editions. She is currently pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

VENKATARAGHAVAN SRINIVASAN is a storyteller, poet, and musician with a day job. He lives in Bangalore, India.

WENDY S. WALTERS is the author of Longer I Wait, More You Love Me. She is a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry. Her prose has appeared on Bookforum and in Harper’s Magazine.

Masthead

Russell Scott Valentino, Editor

Lynne Nugent, Acting Editor

Jenna Hammerich, Acting Managing Editor and Web Editor

Hugh Ferrer, Robin Hemley, Nick Twemlow, Senior Editors

Jeremiah Bodner, Nonfiction Editor

Hannah Kimei, Fiction Editor

Rae Winkelstein-Duveneck, Poetry Editor

Lauren Haldeman, Webmaster

Pocket Knife Press, Type Composition

Alea Adigweme, Raquel Baker, A K Beck, Catherine Blauvelt, Blair Braverman, Thea Brown, Garrin Bufo, Charlene Choi, Gemma Goodale-Sussen, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Fatima R. Espiritu, Christa Fraser, A. Naomi Jackson, Grace Koong, Brent Krammes, Elliott Krause, Jacob Lancaster, Tom Mooseker, Hong-Thao Nguyen, Bob Plantenberg, Dan Poppick, Lauren Rosales, Montreux Rotholtz, Mason Scisco, Adam Segal, Kayla Soyer-Stein, Annmarie Steffes, Deborah Taffa, Lindsay Vella, Editorial Assistants

Sarah Kosch, Sevy Perez, Alyssa Perry, Interns

Lan Samantha Chang, Ed Folsom, John D. Freyer, Loren Glass, Christopher Merrill, Adalaide Morris, Horace Porter, Editorial Board

Cole Swenson, Contributing Editor

David Hamilton, Editor Emeritus

Horizontal Tabs

Poem

Story

Essay

Artwork

Find Us