Nonfiction
Fall 2014
Gerald Stern’s Encounters with the Sublime
In the introduction to his edited anthology of ecstatic poets, Gerald Stern wrote: “Ecstasy not only means to be ‘placed outside,’ that is, to be ‘placed outside the body,’ but […]
Poetry
Winter 2011
Lament
While I was gone, I lost my finches. The first lilies bloomed. The second and third. My town lost a lamp store and light in its windows. My camellias, how […]
Book Reviews
Summer 2009
‘Flat death’: Irretrievable Loss in Three Contemporary Poets
Matter of Fact by Eamon Grennan. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2008. 88 pp. $15.00, paperback. Elegy by Mary Jo Bang. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2007. 80 pp. $20.00, hardcover. Backwards Days by […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
What Kind of Man
What kind of man hides in the duck blinds? The days of description are over. The days of It was April so Everyone Felt Hopeful, where you could find in […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Jazz
The slippery elms were statuesque, one nice way of saying Ohio was a slag heap. Most were stumps by the time I got there. The War was going on, what […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
At the Grand Canyon
We were fleeing from the tourists, Germans and Japanese, hiking the thick canyon brush, trying to forget the copperhead sliding between the rocks, sliding toward us like a florid […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
A Missed Opportunity
If Christ slept with the sparrows he would have heard the same grating cheep I had to listen to in a Jersey boarding house of prostitution and needle work where […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Resurrection
Why come back to the siegeto rise again, morally superiorbut pale as an image? Impaledbut saved. For one week in autumn, the chanterelles thrived, and we sliced theminto crystal bowls. […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
I Forgive the Sparrows
I forgive the sparrows for befriending me. I know they need the seed. The shrill voice of the jay reminds me of a jewelry box. A perfume scent. Was she […]