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The Threepenny Review – Winter 2010

Issue 120

Winter 2010

Quarterly

Sima Rabinowitz

This thirtieth anniversary issue of the magazine (noted only on the cover, no grand recapping of great accomplishments or even an editorial remark on the milestone publication) is like every issue that has preceded it and, let us hope, every one that will follow – intelligent. I count on the The Threepenny Review to reassure me that there are intelligent voices, thoughtful and critical minds, broadly educated thinkers, careful writers, and intellectually viable perspectives producing consistently high quality work that doesn’t seek to grab attention, shore up trends, or even to set them.

This thirtieth anniversary issue of the magazine (noted only on the cover, no grand recapping of great accomplishments or even an editorial remark on the milestone publication) is like every issue that has preceded it and, let us hope, every one that will follow – intelligent. I count on the The Threepenny Review to reassure me that there are intelligent voices, thoughtful and critical minds, broadly educated thinkers, careful writers, and intellectually viable perspectives producing consistently high quality work that doesn’t seek to grab attention, shore up trends, or even to set them.

As always, there’s nothing you’ll be likely to want to skip in the issue, which features fiction by Chloe Aridjis, Teolinda Gersão (of Portugal), Wendell Berry; poetry by Robert Gibb, David J. Rothman, Kay Ryan, C.K. Williams, Dean Young, and Adam Zagajewski, among others; essays (on opera, theater, film, medicine) and review essays by Elizabeth Tallent, John Barth, Bert Kizer Adam Phillips, Steve Fineberg, Jess Row, Greil Marcus, among others; and a memoir by Javier Marías.

Absolutely not to be missed are Alex Webb’s remarkable black and white photographs on the front and back covers and throughout the issue. These are photos Webb took in the ‘70’s in the American South, Haiti, and Mexico, as well as in Massachusetts. The issue was planned, of course, long before anyone could have predicted what photos of Haiti might mean to us in Winter 2010. Singly, these photos are unforgettable, haunting, stunning. Together, they are overwhelming, portraits of people so perfect in their capturing of a particular feeling and moment in time, they mirror impeccably the intelligence and clear-eyed vision of the essays, poems, and stories in the issue.

Adam Zagajewki’s poem “Impossible,” beautifully translated as much of his work has been by Claire Cavanagh, reminds us:

They insist: poetry is fundamentally impossible,
a poem is a hall where faces dissolve
in a golden haze of spotlights, where the fierce
rumblings of any angry mob drown out
defenseless single voices.
Then what? Fine words perish quickly,
ordinary words rarely persuade.

There are no ordinary words in this issue. If a literary magazine as intelligent, original, and consistently worthwhile as The Threepenny Review can survive thirty years and counting, nothing is impossible.
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