The unofficial writer’s bar of the Iowa MFA program—Dave’s Fox Head Tavern—sits at the corner of Market St and Gilbert St, near the hospital and John’s Grocery. It is charming or repellent—depending on your mood—but Foxhead is reliable in giving off an attitude of indifference, more like a Brooklyn hipster bar than someplace you might expect to find in the Midwest. I went there recently to hear poetry and made a couple of new friends, Margaret (a Fiona Apple fan) and Ethan (who likes postmodern literature). With luck, we will meet again for conversation in an extended silence between jukebox songs.
