(Or, Sr. Calvino's Shaving Brush) In a note accompanying "A Letter from the Sahara," Italo Calvino described that piece of writing as a page "from life." It was just days before his death last September in Siena, Italy. Had he lived, he would be in the U.S. at the time of publication of this issue,…
trans. Italian Alan Williamson You are life, you are death come with the wind of March onto the naked earth— your shiver grips, and holds. Blood of the young year, first anemone or spring cloud, your lightly passing footfall violates the earth. The way of sorrow opens. Under a poor sky the earth lay motionless…
The rain had long since stopped. In the pilgrimage church in Moravia, where I had sought shelter from a storm, they were chanting a Marian song which stopped me from leaving. I used to listen to it back home. The priest had genuflected at the steps and left the altar, the organ had sobbed and…
We lived on the bottom floor, four rooms in a new brick complex (rooms stacked on rooms) with a view of world enough: the school, also brick; the paved playground and remnant meadow beaten to dust by Sears-shod kids. Beyond was not our need. From the gravelled (“No Admittance”) roof, we could see the small…
Both Erato the Muse of Lyric Poetry and Mime and Apollo the God of Poetry and Music are said to be with us, in us, above us, and behind us, and are often figured to be with a lyre, one singing and playing with it, and the other having it at her feet and waiting…
And the night too resembles you, the remote night that grieves speechlessly, in the unreachable heart, and the stars pass, exhausted. One cheek touches another— it's a brief shiver, someone debates with himself and turns to you, but alone, shipwrecked in you, within your fever. The night suffers and waits for the dawn, poor leaping…
trans. French Richard Wilbur The plot of Racine's last "secular" play is sufficiently well-known. Phaedra, the virtuous wife of King Theseus of Athens, is afflicted by Heaven with an illicit passion for her step-son Hippolytus, and the consequences are tragic for all concerned: the death of the falsely accused Hippolytus, the bereavement of his beloved…
MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue Thomas Lux Managing Editor Susannah Lee CONTRIBUTORS Ralph Angel's first book of poems, Anxious Latitudes, is due out from Wesleyan. Michael Augustin is a young poet from Bremen, West Germany. He was in residence at the International Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa…
trans. Greek Martin McKinsey The clouds of the deep cast a spell on you Those pale Erinyes of the mistral Igniting the envy of the flesh But when the sun's unravelers laughed Striving for an earthly pride The infinite's coloring was suddenly yours. Now as a I wander the mountainside Across pinecones strewn by a…
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