A wolf whose eyes glow red and jaws close quick meets the voluptuous Miz Nude Bo-Peep beside a shepherd with a crooked stick: and, ever after, they enthrall lost sheep. The wolf prowls round the shed. Straw, timber, brick— he’ll blow through walls, smash every windowpane. But wait—he’ll cut the sheep a deal. It’s trick…
Is infinite, said my wife, Quoting Solomon, Which made me see stars, The vastness of the universe. The one who is not a fool, Like a sugar cube that fell in the sea. The one who is not a fool Like a tarantula On a slice of wedding cake— So I covered my ears.
The good news is that Tim O’Brien is writing fiction again. In 1994, after his sixth book, In the Lake of the Woods, was released, he distressed his many fans by vowing to stop writing fiction “for the foreseeable future.” Then, a few months later, he published a now famous essay in The New York…
1. Eisenach, birthplace (in 1685) of J. S. Bach. Close-by, on a high hill, Schloss Wartburg, the Thuringian landgraves’ ancestral stronghold. Which also sheltered music, judging from Elisabeth’s aria in Act II of Tannhäuser, a paean addressed to the castle’s Great Hall as she waits for the Minnesänger to file in and join her. Music…
A tree spooked By its own evening whispers. Afraid to rustle, Just now Bewitched by the distant sunset Making a noise full of deep Misgivings, Like bloody razor blades Being shuffled, And then again the quiet. The birds too terror-stricken To make their own comment. Every leaf to every other leaf An apparition, A separate…
Born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1934, Mark Strand spent much of his childhood in Halifax, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. As a teenager he lived in Columbia, Peru, and Mexico. Upon graduating from Antioch College, he went to Yale to study painting with Joseph Albers. Turning from painting to poetry “wasn’t…
In barracks, Grandma, did dust chafe your lips? The men played poker, the women played bridge. And guards, rifles, the chain of black sleek boots? The girls cut out dolls, ripped paper in skirts. Or towers, gleaming, plugged with silver barrels? The copperheads slid through tundra and thistles. My mother, born in camp, draining your…
Glenn Thrip failed to notice the bullet hole in the rear window of his pickup until several days later, after they had removed his wisdom teeth. Snowed on codeine, he was clearing the Nissan’s floor of pennies, trying to extract the keys from beneath the mat, when he looked up and saw the fresh Amnesty…
Andre Dubus: Dancing After Hours, a new collection of thirteen stories, two of which were originally published in Ploughshares, from a short-fiction master-America’s resident Chekhov. (Knopf, Feb. 1996)
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