I first heard of Paul Muldoon through the affectionate enthusing of Seamus Heaney, who donned his conspiratorial mien — as if agents of some imagined opposition might be lurking near — and confided that his somewhat younger compatriot was “the real thing.” I sought the work out, though I’ll confess I was some time coming…
It’s been suggested: well kept lawns and fences, white porch swings and toast by the fire. It’s been requested: puppies, a window of blossoming pear trees and a place for robins to nest. But I know that somewhere, out there the town is lit. The players begin to make music in all the…
My eyes must be open because light through the woof of the hut’s weave shows my arm in pin shivers. What wakes me? A howl unfolds outside, fear-in-the-mouth, a breathing trill, certifying the silence after. Sheep in a barn as flimsy as mine drum panic that my bones pick up, an arthritis of fear….
Marilyn Hacker, Squares and Courtyards, poems: Precise, haunting, elegant, and elegiac, Hacker’s ninth volume celebrates her community of friends in Paris and New York and their courage as they live with HIV and cancer. (Norton)
It was one of those things you just have to believe to see. Let’s call him, Kenneth— yes, Kenneth Oboto— sitting statue still, no, say: still as machete death— in a silk, leopard-skin tutu blouse and skullcap, Parade Magazine in hand— on a green-slatted Iowa City park bench, day-one, freshman orientation— like a beautiful, black-eyed…
He returns her valentines with the misspellings underlined. Her life story read like a subpoena. Her pen leaks in his pocket. He wears the shirt for years. His life reads like an instruction manual. He wears red socks to her mother’s funeral. Her life story reads like a purchase order. She memorizes the work of…
DeWitt Henry, Breaking Into Print, an anthology: Collecting first and early stories from Ploughshares by writers who are now literary lights , Henry serves up an invaluable reference for new writers. Headnotes for each story and interleafed shoptalk make this a sparkling commentary on craft. (Beacon)
A Play in One Act commissioned by McCarter Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey PLAYWRIGHT, middle-aged BLOND ACTRESS, childlike but about thirty Lights up. The Playwright is typing on an old portable typewriter on a stool or a small raised table. His actions need not seem realistic. He faces the audience, brooding. The Blond Actress appears at…
Gyn’s packaged in pastel. I’m in the pink suite of X-Ray wrapped in baby blue (opens-in-the-front) behind a pink- flowered curtain, waiting for the pink- and-white-clad tech. The dressing room’s a cell smaller than solitary, papered pink. In the waiting room a fretful pink- with-fever baby settles at the breast of her mama. I reminisce:…
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