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Contributors’ Notes

contributors’ notes Winter 2005–06 ralph angel‘s Neither World received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. His third and most recent collection, Twice Removed, is available from Sarabande Books. A fourth collection, Exceptions and Melancholies, as well as his translation of Federico García Lorca’s Poema del Cante Jondo, are forthcoming from Sarabande…

Talk About Failure

Well, there’s the lack of vacuuming, carrot juice spills on the ivory couch, dust running along the floorboards like a pet, veiling the TV, sills, the furnishings of books, shoes without glue, the lack of comfortable seating or dining, the canopy I gave away, childhood desk sold, gold chair left in a spidery garage, rose…

August Snow

Our father wanted to climb Mount Moriah and we refused to go unless it was understood we were going against our will— unless we could climb by suffering, dragging ourselves step by step through the boxwood glade, withheld birch, glinting ash, oak bent to the will of the south wind— that was our secret, denial,…

About David St. John

Meet the other man in black: David St. John, poet of the lush, the surreal, the erotic, and the exotic. His work is intellectual yet always sensual. His poetic voice is at once profound yet grounded in contemporary diction and idiom. St. John lives in Venice, California (even if his psychic self resides in that…

Goldsboro Narrative #27

The dark and heavy coat she always wore hid From her as much as anyone What grew her belly out one thought at a time. And she who did not know her body, Who was surprised to feel it Created with some boy she’d barely met, Ignored the word so much a shock She was…

Cypress Knees

Some name them knees, those roots of the cypress trees in that murky swamp, rising up out of the water, though their legs beneath them, the feet, the toes, even the bodies down there at the mud’s bottom still haven’t shown up yet. So far, it’s only those bold knees that point the way. Some…

Introduction

We live in a time of extraordinary literary riches. I believe that contemporary literature—both our poetry and our fiction—is not only healthy, but thriving. I believe the work of many of my contemporaries has been remarkably innovative, startlingly powerful, and deeply compelling. I believe that the greatest strength of American literature has been, at its…

Chasing Birds

Maybe it had been raining for years. By the second night, it was easy to feel that way. They had come to this spot, in the heart of Panama, two days ago, and even then it had been raining. There was no sign of respite. It was as if they had come to a different…