Editor's Note
“Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers.”
Amid a global pandemic and a milder-than-usual winter, the “little life” of The Penn Review seems to persist despite the challenges. A sincere thank you to our contributors, readers, and staff from all of us on the editorial board. Your passion for the literary arts has always sustained our magazine.
Issue 71 Winter is the cumulative product of the daily scrutiny of our content mangers, late nights of deliberation at the editorial table, and the collaboration of all the small but essential pieces that come together to make our magazine what it is. Following an extended hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this issue features all accepted submissions from 2020 to early 2021. We cannot express how grateful we are for the abundant patience of these poets, authors, and artists.
Peer carefully into this issue and you will find invasive species of fish, sensory fruit murder, and a new take on a Japanese poetic form. Look again and you might see cultural inversions, glimmers of lost youth, the false promise of a new mattress, and more. Like the embrace of T.S. Eliot’s winter, the work that we receive at The Penn Review keeps us warm on the coldest of nights.