Article

At Home, Far Away Inside

First, let us move away,      but leave behind us The grand piano, the Steuben glass, books and Phonograph records, what might distract us, And since this is a real journey—surrounded By stars and their shadows and what is beyond Them—we will not travel. We sit all day and night and watch the moths Eat our…

Bodies Like Mouths

During the winter of 1955, Chris took courses at Columbia. He came from Indianapolis; New York stunned him. Knowing nothing, he took a room in a railroad flat uptown near school: one room, 11 x 7, bed with a defeated mattress. It was cheap, and he could use the kitchen along with the three other…

To the Welcome Wagon Lady

Little lady of the Welcome Wagon in the suburb I now call home, I waited eight months to hear your voice chirping across my telephone, and when you came, and when you came, I heard your wings flap you away before I could reach my door to see what love sent you here, and why….

Contributors’ Notes

MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue Jane Shore Associate Poetry Editor James Richardson Editor for Fiction Supplement DeWitt Henry Associate Fiction Editors John Domini David Gullette James Randall Ellen Wilbur CONTRIBUTORS TOM ABSHER teaches in the Adult Degree Program at Goddard College and was awarded an NEA fellowship in 1976….

The Great Anonymous Eye and Ear

With its boarded-up windows At the end of a dead-end street, In the dead of winter, A huge, grim institution I return to, I have unfinished Business to complete With its night-nurses, And other shadowy hirelings. *     *      * At daybreak, darkly, When the doors of its emergency entrance Flap across The line of vision, From…

Letter to Heather

     1. I keep listening. Where are the words? I wander between stations. The damnation of the beloved Keeps me in fascination. Who shall be made real?      2. Will you arrive With your soft dresses Rolled away in your suitcase? Will you speak elegantly of clouds, Of forgotten shapes? Will you tell me with your subtlety…

An Interview with Bill Knott

The following interview took place on two occasions in July of this year at my apartment in Cambridge. Bill Knott drank instant iced tea, as is his custom, and talked easily once we had started. Knott is the author of nine books of poems, most of them published by small presses, beginning with the Naomi…

Photographer’s Hood

They were naked and the earth Was covered with light snow. They squatted and said nothing. The children appeared asleep. It got dark and they were still there: On a vast plain without landmarks, Under a sky the color of slate and lead, On an evening in late December. I’m told, but do not believe,…