Volume 40, Number 2: August 2010

For perspective, we begin with the obituaries. Then we reach, fingers and tongues, ears, toes, and eyelashes (think orgy as metaphor), as far as we can for the sense of it all. A wrong move, I know, like asking, what are all those people doing in that train station? The answer that fits all is the most inane. Only looking into each can even begin to satisfy, if it can.

And so Geoffrey G. O'Brien's catalogues of order and meaning (mostly failed) and "values day puts a boot through." And so Timothy Donnelly's rumored existence, our own "access to upwards of a dozen sherbets," and looking murderously hard at complicity, being alone, being all one. That hanging bird, those islands beyond the horizon, sounds that tickle and sing, what happens in war and what after and through it, the story and the loop, and the gaps, the enormous embarrassing gaps of sense we patch up in the end the best we can. With physical therapy, brackets, tearful humor. A strawberry.

A hearty thank you to Michael Fauver, TIR's outgoing associate fiction editor, and to Emily Liebowitz, TIR's outgoing associate poetry editor, who kept our station buzzing and whose exemplary work helped make our switch between editors and formats work like a well-oiled engine. Michael and Emily, you may have cleared your desks off, but we see you sitting at them still, working away. Come visit.

A note on our contest: The Iowa Review Awards, a contest offering $1,000 prizes in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, announces that its 2011 judges will be Allan Gurganus, Claudia Rankine, and Patricia Hampl. The deadline is January 31, 2011. Click "Contest Rules" to your left for more information.

And yet another note, on our reading period: We are currently reading submissions to the magazine. Poetry, fiction, essays, translations, interviews, or unclassifiable—we'd love to see what you're working on. Our open submission period is September 1 through December 1. There is no reading fee to submit. See "Writers' Guidelines" at left for details.