An issue of Ploughshares from Fall 1986, guest-edited by Charles Simic. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
This classic poetry issue, with select nonfiction, is guest-edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Simic, and features the work of a number of masters including Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Karr, Philip Levine, Thomas Lux, Franz Wright, Al Young, and Stephen Dobyns. This issue also contains the nonfiction work by Mark Strand, Fanny Howe, William Corbett, and Richard Jackson.
INTRODUCTION
Charles Simic, “Why I Like Certain Poems More Than Others”
POETRY AND PROSE
Mark Strand, “Narrative Poetry”
Philip Levine, “Picture Postcard from the Other World”
Linda Pastan, Three Poems
Thomas Lux, Four Poems
Elizabeth Tornes, Four Poems
William Matthews, “Self-Knowledge,” “Schoolboys with Dog, Winter”
Cleopatra Mathis, “A Seasonal Record”
Charles Wright, from “A Journal of the Year of the Ox”
Mekeel McBride, “Annunciation,” “Taking Pleasure”
Daniel Halpern, “Tango,” “Stanzione”
Jane Kenyon, “With the Dog at Sunrise,” “Staying at Grandma's”
C. K. Williams, Four Poems
Fanny Howe, “Secondary Indifferents”
Russell Edson, Three Poems
Al Young, from “22 Moon Poems”
James Tate, “Poem,” “Aunt Sophie's Morning”
Lynn Boulger, “The Power of Bridges”
Stephen Dobyns, Three Poems
Sarah Cotterill, “blue wing”
Gregory Orr, “To the Muse,” “Sex”
Mary Karr, “The Lynched Man”
Ira Sadoff, Three Poems
Roberta Bienvenu, “This Garden”
Lucie Brock-Broido, “After the Grand Perhaps,” “Ten Years' Apprenticeship in Fantasy”
William Corbett, “Philip Guston 1913-1980”
Franz Wright, “Winter Entries,” “The Talk”
Alice B. Fogel, “Snowstorm”
Stuart Dischell, “Little Foot”
Anne Zuckerman, “Night,” “Saint Francis”
Jonathan Aaron, “Then,” “The Fourth Grade”
James Kirk, “Cows in Snow”
Karen Propp, “Who Sweeps the Sidewalk,” “Nothing But Heart”
Kenneth Rosen, “Sheep in Wales”
Donald Hall, “'Richard'”
George Starbuck, Three Poems
John Pijewski, Three Poems
William Corbett, “The New Selected William Carlos Williams”
Richard Jackson, “Many Happy Returns: The Poetry of John Ashbery”
