I harbor a painful memory of a day and an evening in the life of Ploughshares in its early days. It was early afternoon on October 6, 1979, a Saturday, and I was living in New Hampshire at the time. DeWitt Henry, the founding editor, had invited me to introduce the Irish writer Mary Lavin,…
Tacked on the wall, a map of my sad luck, places self-pity has planted its flag. In the bed, my body, a book in its hand. In my skull, a voice reciting the words on the page one moment—an exegesis of a bungled kiss—and then the next enumerating the canyons and cliffs, the familiar indigenous…
When I think of those early years, I think of hard labor in brutal conditions — ridiculous, I know, patently false and nostalgic, as if we were working in a gulag, an outpost in the literary tundra. I first volunteered to read manuscripts for Ploughshares in 1986, then began working part-time as an assistant editor…
Elizabeth Spires, I Am Arachne: Fifteen Greek and Roman Myths, children’s fiction: In this engaging, whimsical collection, fifteen heroes and heroines give their own dramatic, first-person accounts of their tales of wonder, woe, love, and jealousy. (Frances Foster/FSG)
Please note well, all you writers, editors, directors out there: when a phone call is terminated by the other person you do not, NOT, hear the buzz of a dial tone. You hear a faint click and then silence, absolute silence, the Great Silence, more eloquent than any electronic buzz could ever be. In fact…
Libby killed herself just before the holidays, and so the flamingo stayed where it had been hidden-in the rotten shed at the edge of our yard. I’d often sneak out to look at it. The flamingo seemed incredibly big, its wooden neck reaching up past the shelves of potting soil and garden shears. It stood…
Eighty-one degrees a record high for the day which is not my birthday but will do until the eleventh of June comes around and I know what I want: a wide-brimmed Panama hat with a tan hatband, a walk in the park and to share a shower with a zaftig beauty who lost her Bronx…
Maura Stanton, Glacier Wine, poems: Stanton’s fifth collection marries a delightful comic innocence with worldly skepticism as she slyly examines phobias, historical anecdotes, fables, and travelogues. (Carnegie Mellon)
Because her hair looked cool Because some of the best alien minds are watching developments closely Because she is the traditional Daisy poised fragile before the masculine mills Of production, yet wearing out six black pantsuits To bring us to acculturation and consequence Because the Nasdaq is plunging and there is a mandate…
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