The Iowa Review
Volume 20
Issue 1 Winter
1990
Facing Pages
David Hamilton
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Hamilton, David. "Facing Pages." The Iowa Review 20.1 (1990): 1-4. Web.
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Article 2
Facing Pages
i
KIM
WHEN
MERKER,
letter
extraordinaire
and former
pressman
than a dozen years ago
asked me more
editor of this magazine,
someone should have
Imight
like to edit The Iowa Review, maybe
"
But no one did, and here I still
asked, "Hey, shouldn't he have a license?
our
into
Review
the
twentieth
am, stepping with
year. Surely it is one of
the more amiable aspects of small and smaller magazines
that most are pro
managing
whether
duced by the unlicensed.
of people scattered all over the coun
Thousands
on
a national
this
work
and
similar
if you will,
try
magazines,
producing,
of many chapters from many odd corners. However
simi
much
magazine
larity
and overlapping
one
finds,
one
also finds
there being
into our national
difference,
many disparate doorways
emerge
through which writers
literature. Overseeing
the help, over time, of
part ofthat work here, with
many others, most of them graduate students, has become my continuous,
seminar, the longevity of which
floating
gives me after all some sort of li
cense.
So to assume
that leverage and to take further advantage of it, I in
the three issues of this twentieth
anniversary year with
on the
romance
brief commentaries
and
of editing as I
practice, worry,
can turn a
it. Each essay will be short and, if you
have known
prefer, you
our first story.
few pages and begin directly with
tend to introduce
If that story can wait,
let's consider matters of format and form, the semi
otics of amagazine.
You hold one in your hands: nine by six inches,
perfect
a classic
a
bound, with matte paper, Bembo,
typeface, and glossy cover with
a full-color
format or a very
image. This is either an archetypal magazine
quiet parody of it. Inside, as in the last issue and the next, you will find four
or five stories,
to
thirty
forty pages of poems, several essays and reviews, and
an occasional
interview. Each of these writings
has been chosen with care.
With
toomuch care?With
aesthetic,
political,
those particulars,
stick with
form.
Within
too little?With
or theoretical
but
imperfect
doubt we falter in each of
posture?
let that be the subject of our next essay. For now let's
an issue a kind of
landscape
tend to begin with
of our contents. We
care applied from an
No
emerges
prose,
through
often with
the arrangement
a story or
pair of
1
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is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to
The Iowa Review
®
www.jstor.org
stories. We
divide
the poems into two or three groups, balancing
length
or breadth of line within
those groups,
and set
or three stories, or a
clusters of prose ?two
contrasting
and tone and narrowness
ting them against
or an essay bracketed
pair of essays,
by stories,
vide a sense of varying pace and contour within
too many male
or female voices
and so on. We
try to pro
an issue and to avoid clus
too
tightly together. Other kinds of
also
be
sometimes
will
and
kinds
apparent
variety
played upon. Different
contrast
or
of poems and stories may
stories with
with
each other,
essays
a
that are also narrative.
If the assemblage
of all this becomes
I
landscape,
a
a sudden storm now
midwestern
suppose it is usually
landscape, with
tering
and then but,
on
the whole,
with
few moments
of violent
transition.
our desire for
a flexible
Any number of details reveal
consistency within
sense of form. Our covers, for
same
have
been
the
for
white
example,
glossy
a cover
an
the last seventeen issues, with
fea
image
increasingly prominent
an earlier, reasonable observation ?"Some
ture. Guided
essays read like
by
and some stories like essays; then there are prose poems" ?we
in our table of contents; but we do make
making
generic distinctions
on some of our title lines and in the index that comes
distinctions
stories,
end of each year. Throughout
every issue we worry
words
and
some,
compound
eliminating
hyphens,
still others even as we go to print. We
restoring
about consistency
avoid
those
at the
with
others,
introducing
fuss similarly with
and
the
varieties
of ways authors signal internal divisions ?using
white
space, and
or
or
or
as
in other
Roman
small. In these
numbers,
letters,
numerals,
large
we
to
an
nor
a
to let
neither
into
wish
author
house
details,
straitjacket
style
or
seem
a
we
I suppose,
random. Overall,
freeform
feel constant pres
usage
sure from
the side of the tidy to urge what's
the section lines of an idealized midwestern
pages
of a perfect
issue; but we
hope,
less than tidy to shape up, as if
the
landscape might
justify
at the same time, not
to overdo
it.
:
:
?we
answer to each of these terms. The
Magazine
journal
periodical
first implies a sheltered load of explosives;
the second, something
of the
?a
a writer's
the
the
and
third, the
journal,
day
ship's log,
daily paper;
of a regular curve. This predictability
of pattern, both of physi
periodicity
to
and in a form that seeks to endure beyond
cal and timely appearance,
seems a root
of amagazine.
Thus amagazine
stands
morrow,
expectation
a
a
is
Ameri
less likely than
between
and book. Ours
newspaper
midway
a book ismore
can
to be found
to
But
Review
fish.
wrapping
likely
Poetry
2
remain on its purchaser's
in
shelves year after year. Our magazine,
bookish
format, seems to beg to be taken as a book, almost, and allowed to linger
on the bedside
or than
table longer than the Sunday Times Book Review,
or The New Yorker,
Review
be it The
any other magazine,
Threepenny
a
that's folded like
and, perhaps,
stapled.
pamphlet
At the same time amagazine
is unlike a book in that it remains a frag
mented
collection.
have a centrifugal
and fugitive
The issues of amagazine
an issue, each of
quality: they tend toward being dispersed. Even within
to
the items included aspires
become part of its own book,
shed of the
writers who had surrounded
it first. From awriter's point of view, that es
seem an ethical
sential fragmentation
form.
might
principle of magazine
awriter's work
a lesser purpose.
it
of
for
Every compromise
appropriates
an
and arranging
every impulse an editor has in gathering
resonate
in
contents
in
that
with each other,
issue,
seeking works
ordering
or
to reflect themes
is to find awhole
discovered,
planned
serendipitously
to
so
undermine
authorial
greater than its parts and
separateness.
Yet
almost
are
new issues. T. S. Eliot once
a
between
hardly
distinguished
a
"review" and
that "a magazine which makes up
"miscellany"
by noting
its contents merely of what
the editor considers
'good stuff' will obviously
... of a
have the character of amiscellany"
and be the "feeble reflection
These
feeble
value"
The
Eliot
editor."
believed
that a review
should
demonstrate
"critical
and that
bound
volumes
of a decade
should
represent
the keenest
of
the development
of ten years. Even a
sensibility and the clearest thought
to illustrate, within
number
its limits,
should attempt
single
time and the tendencies of the time. It should have a value over
above
contents
the
aggregate
should exhibit
can resolve
into order.
value
of
the
individual
contributions.
which
the intelligent
heterogeneity
New
Criterion,
January,
1926)
(The
the
and
Its
reader
For my own part, I've come to see things
differently. My favorite idea
nor as bound volumes,
of The Iowa Review
is as neither amiscellany
des
now we have a
tined for the library, but as a kind of conversation.
Perhaps
continuum,
with
Eliot's
terms
the extremes
and "conversation"
at amid
point, nearly; but if so, I'll tie a string to my term and pull it ahead, as an
we can
apex, or leading edge of what is possible. And from "conversation,"
?
a
from the word with
step nimbly at times to "forum"
quick displacement
3
seize upon a pleasant though
began?and
"Forum"
and "form" have no serious connection
which
we
false etymology.
at all: "form"
goes
to words
for "door" and being out of
"forum,"
morph?,
than the first. My ideal would
doors. The second is amore open notion
be
a
cultural stances, and ideas, and so an
trading place of artistic gestures,
back to the Greek,
issue full of voices
taking up, and contrasting with each other.
Even when
don't seem fully to meet on these pages, when
the participants
connect with
from
rather
than
each other,
I'd like to think
they diverge
come
the reader would
take part ?that's
the "u" in "forum" would
where
in?sometimes
differences.
off,
playing
the gap,
bridging
On
the best
occasions,
natural
tug toward seeing
to themselves,
background
tinue
the conversation
I have no wish
though
writers
from
sometimes
noting
the writers
themselves,
in an issue in which
everything
would
become
on
and commenting
immersed
despite
their
as
they appear
as readers and con
a
part. For,
already played
nor
to hinder
into
order,
everything
out on their own,
the notion of a forum remains a
in which
they have
to resolve
striking
behind
shadowy
in print, and our
of writers
these gatherings
on which
there is some tendency for individ
landscape
template
a
landscape
peopled
uals to cluster.
a new
a Subscribers'
In closing,
like to announce
Award,
then, Iwould
Indi
of our magazine.
annual feature that should extend the conversation
a
soon
receive
for
their
favorite
form
work
vidual subscribers will
asking
in each of the three genres we regularly publish: Essay, Poem,
one work
in any or all of these categories and return
Nominate
us. Your
dated
nominations
In our next
1989.
as Subscribers'
Award
and Story.
the form to
should come only from issues of Volume Nineteen,
the winners,
honor them
issue we will announce
Winners
for 1989,
and award
each writer
$100.
a
the
they will be among
year's subscription,
to vote for themselves,
it inelegant for writers
and we can infer a great deal from postmarks.
Then, finally, after the last
send out a new form for Volume
issue of this year, we will
Twenty
(all
Since
receive
contributors
voters. We
will
consider
writing by staffmembers is ineligible).We would like to recognize what
from year to year and include your voices in
worthy
to solicit new work from the winners.
We
also promise
our readers find most
our conversation.
D.H.
4