Favorite Poems Robert Pinsky has just finished two consecutive terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and he has ensured that he will be a difficult act to follow. Traditionally, the only specific duties of the poet laureate, who is appointed by the Library of Congress, are to give a lecture and reading…
Charles Baxter can’t sleep at night. An insomniac most of his adult life, he takes comfort in Nabokov’s claim: If writers don’t stay awake thinking about their work, how are they going to make their readers stay awake? Baxter — the author of two novels and four collections of stories, as well as a book…
Because God wants us to have indefinite life, like Him, Richard Seed intends to electroshock an egg to implant his image and likeness into Gloria, his wife (to implant into Gloria, his menopausal wife, his shocked image and likeness) after inducing quiescence in its nucleus (moon-pause) so his DNA might nest there and…
MASTHEAD Guest Editor Mark Doty Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Gregg Rosenblum Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Associate Poetry Editor Susan Conley Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Kris Fikkan and Kathleen Stole. Staff Assistants: Eson Kim and Tom Herd. Fiction Readers: Nicole Hein, Kris Fikkan, Darla…
Leonard Michaels, The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995, a memoir: This frank, resonant collection of journal excerpts reveal more than a man, but also an era, going from Greenwich Village, where Michael’s first wife, Sylvia, committed suicide at the age of twenty-four, to upstate New York and Berkeley. (Riverhead)
While Wanda had an abortion, I had lunch with her mother. “Please,” Wanda had said, swathed in large paper napkins, “just get her away from here.” Then she closed her eyes, and her boyfriend, Ramon, nodded, so I took Wanda’s mother to a Chinese dumpling shop. Once there, she told me the old story about…
Like other identical twins, they can be better told apart in adulthood. One is fast to wrinkle her brow, her brain, her quick intelligence. The other dreams inside a constellation, freckles of Orion. They were born when I was thirteen, they rose up, half out of my chest, now they’re forty, wise, generous. I am…
David with the Head of Goliath, 1609–10? No bronze, paraphernalia, or feathers. No euphoric cheers or parade. Simply The slayer and his prey. The boy’s body Shines horrific as a candle. Without Tenderness, the light cuts his skin Across the arm; around a nipple; his chest And neck; across the wrinkles of his brow, His…
According to her housemate, she is out with Bob tonight, and when she’s out with Bob you never know when she’ll get in. Bob is an English professor. Bob used to be in a motorcycle gang, or something, or maybe Bob rides a motorcycle now. How radical of you, Bob— I wish I could ride…
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