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As we change the past, so are we changed. These words, from Eleanor Wilner’s essay "Playing the Changes," are striking for how profoundly they speak not only to the poet and to the practice of poetry—indeed the practice of all art—but for how appropriately they also reveal the human situation—or at least, that impulse within us…
mistranslation after “Fellah” by Taha Muhammad Ali You: Beethoven I mean to say: Mr. Beethoven I don’t get it: I spend the day removing obstacles, Me and all my neighbors, we’ve covered all the bases But behind our backs, on the phone, the sun still going up and down There are those who hurt…
BETTY ADCOCK is the author of five books of poems, most recently Intervale: New and Selected Poems, finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize and co-winner (with Caroline Kizer) of the 2003 Poets’ Prize. Adcock has won two Pushcart Prizes, in addition to the North Carolina’s Governor’s Medal for Literature and the Texas Institute of Letters…
1. I knocked on the picture window of the Marlin Cafe, trying to get the bartender’s attention, so I could get in and have a Sunday morning hangover drink. The Marlin was an old man’s dive on Broadway near Cathedral Parkway, a street that everyone in the neighborhood called 110th Street. Technically, the bar was…
Cohen Awards Each year, we honor the best poem and short story published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners—each of whom receives a cash prize of $600—are selected by our advisory editors. The 2008…
Venice, 1448 Installed in a high wooden pulpit, the professor Drones on aloud from his book, was it Stephen of Antioch’s spin on Abbas’ translation of Galen the Greek? The music of it all, anyway, the muscular rhythms, Phrase knit to phrase with the delicate Sinew of assonance—! The students in the foreground milling about,…
Although Philip Levine turns eighty this year, he continues to be one of our most energetic and prolific American poets. A working poet for more than a half century, he is still writing and publishing new poems, mentoring younger poets, taking on editorial projects like this issue of Ploughshares, giving readings all over the country,…
rick barot‘s second volume of poems, Want, will be published by Sarabande Books this spring. He teaches at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. christian barter‘s first collection of poetry, The Singers I Prefer (CavanKerry) was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. His…
I was twenty-two, pretty maybe. It was a small town county fair: hot dogs, freak show, cotton candy, and heavy wheels laden with light, all tuned to the gaudy air. The Octopus—remember that one? Eight arms like extended girders, the thing was a metal Shiva juggling worlds: a cup spun at the end of each…
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