• Arm In The Excavator's Shovel

    Shane McCrae

    Spring 2021

    The excavation ripples through the body

    The skeleton in dirt the  dirt at certain

    Depths relative  to the skeleton corre-

      sponds to the shape  of the living person


    Thus anyone  with the right coordinates

    Could dig the shape of the person from the dirt

    But made of dirt  but with his skeleton

      Inside it would it  be an it


    When cradled  in the living arms of the worker

    Because no  excavator has yet been

    Shane McCrae's most recent books are Sometimes I Never Suffered and The Gilded Auction Block, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

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    Remembering Earl Rovit

    The Sewanee Review

    The Sewanee Review has received word that longtime contributor Earl H. Rovit passed away on April 16 at the age of ninety. Rovit was a contributor of essays and criticism to the Sewanee Review for over forty years. A leading literary scholar of the writing of Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow and William Faulkner, Rovit was one of the first in the early 1960s to discern and explore what became known as the Jewish American literary tradition, including writers such as Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth.

    Staff Picks: Summer 2021

    The Sewanee Review

    As we wade into summer, our staff came together to share some reads to accompany you wherever you are, whether you’re staying put or gingerly taking advantage of slackening travel restrictions.

    The Uses of Fear: Notes on Boxing & Novels

    Laura van den Berg

    For both sparring and novel writing, I have found no solution to fear. Experience has not helped ease my fear when I am sparring. I feel the same tightness in my stomach each time I step into the ring. I am working on a new long-form project now, and I know that period of fear will descend at some point in the process. I have decided that the presence of fear is, more often than not, a good thing. Fear is really only a problem when it derails our ability to work, undermines our sense of well-being, or when it compels us to make fear-based decisions. Once while sparring, compelled forward by my fear of getting trapped in a corner, I lunged at my opponent with a messy three-punch combo and was countered by a crisp and powerful jab, resulting in my first bloody nose.

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    sewaneereview@sewanee.edu

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