Aspects of Kafka by John Pilling

Franz Kafka John Pilling Kafka is one of the most inventive geniuses of our age, and yet his personal life belies the truth about our society’s treatment of those who could truly enrich it with their ideas. Franz Kafka lived a life of consecutive and unending tragedy, repetitive and brutal torment, ending with the contraction …

Listen. This is the Noise of Myth by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland, alongside often submitting to PN Review, has published with Carcanet many times Boland tells the story of another story, as it is told to a community. This meta narrative is developed throughout the poem but the reader is never allowed to sink too deeply into the story, with constant reminders to “listen”, or …

4 Poems by Peter Huchel

German Poet Peter Huchel (Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger) British Translator and Poet Michael Hamburger Even during the time it was called “Poetry Nation”, PN Review was a wholly international (if staunchly anglophone) affair, with translations making up a significant portion of the work published. These four poems from the German were from …

Legacies by Bill Manhire

This poem is taken from PN Review 34, Volume 10 Number 2, November – December 1983. Bill Manhire is a frequent PN Review contributor It was nothing like a legacy. We didn’t know the word. We dug a hole and buried things in bottles, . a home-made picture dictionary and seven orange stamps, an outline map …

Anatomy of Ideology

This article is taken from PN Review 5, Volume 5 Number 1, October – December 1978. While almost all mainstream political theory purports to be the objective response to facts, David Levy here makes it clear that in actual fact ideology insofar as it is a worldview is perpetually observing and revising itself in the minds …

I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Rain: Vietnam Again by Dudley Young

This extract is taken from PN Review 10, Volume 6 Number 1, September – October 1979. In this time of daily apocalypse, it is important to consider why we are supplied with harbingers of doom with such alarming frequency; the end is no doubt coming, but then again, that’s never not been the case. This article, …

A Note From The Curator

It has been my utmost pleasure, as a college-aged reader, in the last few weeks to find myself entrusted with the keys to this historic institution, and to pick through the archives to find those pieces which most succinctly embody all that PN Review believes itself to be. I hope that as these articles and …

The 250th Issue of PN Review

In November this journal will reach the milestone of 250 issues, and in order to celebrate this we will be releasing one piece of poetry, criticism or journalism each week from the 46-year back catalogue which continues to exemplify PN Review’s conviction that poetry, at its best, is enactive, and what it does matters more …