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From Nineveh to the Harbour Bar

Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978, O.U.P., London, 1979; £5.75. In `Tradition and the Individual Talent,' T. S. Eliot warns against the tendency to single out and praise those aspects of a writer's work `in which he least resembles anyone else', adding that `the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead…

The Black Lake

After Gerard Dillon Across the black lake Two figures row their boat With slow, leaning strokes. The grind of their rowlocks Is rhythmic as a heartbeat. Seven stooks stand In a moonwashed field — Seven pillars of gold — While beyond, two haystacks Are tied down to the earth. Three lean cattle munch The heavy…

Contributors’ Notes

MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue James Randall Associate Editor Joanne Randall CONTRIBUTORS SHARI BERKOWITZ is an editor of the Emerson Review. ANNE BERNAYS is finishing her latest novel, The School Book, and living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. HAROLD BOND, author of Dancing on Water (Cummington Press), teaches poetry workshops in…

Springs

Dying, the salmon heaves up its head in the millstream. Great sores ring its gills, its eyes, a burning rust slowly corrodes the redgold skin. Great river king, nearby the Nore pours over foaming weirs its light & music, endlessly dissolving walls into webs of water that drift away among slow meadows. But you are…

Bunco

Mrs. Endsley was paid to keep everyone happy. Her latest project involved composing a Conwoody Convalescent song, something on the order of a school song, but with some of the parts left out. And it was in her line of duty that, on a Wednesday in early May, just before supper, she smacked her little…

The Baggage and the Toff

Her long straight uncombed tangled tresses and miscellaneous modern dresses and double chin and sloppy carriage led to her being called a baggage, while he was an outstanding figure somewhat declined in shape and vigour but proud. The Baggage and the Toff: these two were star turns, nothing put them off. He muttered, “Mutton dressed…

Northern Light

Almost overnight the summer had disappeared. The morning I was to leave for the cottage and meet Peter there was a damp, north wind, and constellations of leaves flattened on the sidewalk two stories below seemed strangely three-dimensional. I wasn't sure if I were staring or looking. I had been thinking about one of my…