• helen of troy cranks the volume on “like a prayer” in the ballet studio parking lot

    Maria Zoccola

    Fall 2023

    listen, madonna, he’s worth it like a box of hot krispy kremes is worth it, six glazed cavity grenades pounded in the eight minutes it takes the kid to finish gabbing with her dance-class kill squad and sling her way into my passenger seat and no she won’t take a jam-filled anything because her plié overlord says it’s time to lose the babyfat, babygirl, so that’s the rest of the box forsworn to the back bench while i sticky-finger steer my way home unzipping my attention between the road tonight’s dinner my ingrown toenail gas prices at the texaco how many weeks it’s been since my last period and the monosyllabic gossip from the kid on lila elise’s mama who drank too much and had to go to a special home in nashville so when i park and go inside

    Maria Zoccola is the author of Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner 2025). She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University. Her work has previously appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. She lives in Memphis.

    Read More

    A Conversation with Allan Gurganus

    The Sewanee Review

    It is generally acknowledged that where words fail, music succeeds. The great conductor Sir Thomas Beecham went so far as to describe music as “A respite, however brief, from the tyranny of conscious thought.” This maxim proved true until about a year ago, when I first encountered the fiction of Allan Gurganus.

    Goombahs

    Ben Eisman

    This was in downtown Chicago, a cold November night, 1992, at an almost-pretty-nice Italian place. I was seventeen, three inches taller than my father and thirty pounds lighter. My mother was living alone at the house back in Framingham, and my father had moved to Back Bay, where he rented “an apartment with a very young woman,” as my mother put it, as if the place had come equipped with her.

    The State of Letters

    Adam Ross

    This editorial, like many elements of the Sewanee Review, has a long history. The poet and critic Allen Tate created the State of Letters in Autumn 1944 to announce his editorship when he took over from Tudor Seymour Long, and every subsequent editor assuming the mantle—John Palmer, Monroe K. Spears, Andrew Lytle, and George Core—has employed it to reiterate the Review’s editorial policy and reinterpret its core values.

    Merch

    Love The Sewanee Review? Shop our new merch!

    Contact

    The Sewanee Review
    735 University Avenue
    Sewanee, Tennessee 37383 USA
    931-598-1185
    sewaneereview@sewanee.edu

    Subscribe

    To enjoy The Sewanee Review in print and on your computer or mobile device, subscribe today.

    Already a member? Login

    © 2022 The University of the South

    Back to top
    Web Design and Development by Riverworks Marketing