Nonfiction

from The Book of Jon

The time of us on earth is spent lightly on good peas and gravy good enough for a second time in an hour -poem by Jon, when he was eighteen years old, as remembered by my mother Chapter (Dear) Dear Dad Dear Father Dear Jon Dear Pop, (This letter is now a part of the…

The Uses of Doubt

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Muriel Spark. I was speaking to her over the phone at her house in Italy, and so, in addition to my great admiration for her and the distance between us in years, there was a substantial geographical distance. Knowing that she hadn’t published her first…

Introduction

Last autumn I found myself talking about my new novel at a fundraiser for a college library. Only after I’d committed to doing this did I discover that I was following a man who had written a popular book about the human genome project and preceding a woman who had written about recent war crimes….

Introduction

Editing my second issue of Ploughshares, in my seventy-third year, I look back on a life’s worth of editing. It began in high school, continued at Harvard, then at Oxford. Late in my Oxford time, I took up editing poetry for the new Paris Review, and lasted nine years. I edited or helped to edit…

Introduction

Down with a bad case of that mysterious Texas howdy-do called Cedar Fever, I’ll make these prefatory remarks as short and sweet as possible. I embarked on this project with a powerful will to feature young and unknown poets of extraordinary talent. You may not yet recognize the names of most of the poets who…

Introduction

I was very casual about the way I chose poems for this issue of Ploughshares. I asked a few friends — those I happened to be in touch with — for recent unpublished work. I picked what I wanted. Then I went through poems that had come directly to Ploughshares and which the editors thought…

Introduction

It had been twenty years since I’d taken a turn in the editorial trenches, so the invitation to return to Ploughshares for one of its anniversary issues seemed an irresistible symmetry, a chance to observe directly some of the changes in the magazine and perhaps, by extension, in American poetry. Three differences are clear. First,…

Introduction

What is the meaning of a “little” magazine in the life of poetry in American culture today? Is it a forum for the inquisitive reader to see what is being written, what kinds of thoughts and forms of thought are occupying the minds and hearts of writers both established and unknown? Is it a place…

Introduction

A certain college professor used to say that one sits down to write ABC, but in the process discovers — ah! — DEF! He was talking about writing nonfiction, but there is DEF in fiction, too. We discover through writing that we know more than we know — hopefully, if we’re writing with honesty and…