Penn Review: Winter 2017 (49.1)

Volume 49, Issue 1 Editor’s Note This pocket edition of the Penn Review will not change your life. It will not tell you the meaning of life or the purpose of great art. If those questions could be answered in 32, or 320, or even 3200 pages, the philosophers of ancient history would have cause for embarrassment.

But this issue of the Penn Review is nonetheless special.

It is dedicated to the problems of division: to space and confinement, connection and desire, love and anxiety, the walls and bridges of our daily experience. Within, you will find voices of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and political persuasions­—shades of thought and love and longing.

These stories signify. They speak to us. In those moments when our path is barred, when the doors of opportunity snap shut and language itself ripens into passionate poison, we sense the strange geographies and geometries of walls that have confined us all along.

I encourage you to consider this pocket collection your own personal crowbar. Turn the pages and allow the words to pry away.

Daniel Finkel Editor-in-Chief 1