Winter 1990

FOCUS ON POETRY
 
CONTENTS
 
SPECIAL FEATURE ON JAMES WRIGHT
Peter Stitt, Editor’s Notes, 7
E. L. Doctorow, “James Wright at Kenyon,” 11
James Wright, “To Justify My Singing,” “Contradictory Existence,” “Untitled,” “Lame Apollo,” “To Critics, and to Hell with Them,” “Sonnet: On My Violent Approval of Robert Service,” “Sonnet: Response,” “Poem,” and “The Angry Mother,” 23
Peter Stitt, “An Introduction to the Poet James Wright,” 35
 
ESSAYS
Floyd Collins, “The Language of Illumination” (review of The Burden Lifters,by Michael Waters; The Man at Home, by Michael Heffernan; Days of Awe,by Maurya Simon; Out in the Open, by Margaret Gibson; and The Great Bird of Love, by Paul Zimmer), 53
Peter Cummings, “The Making of Meaning: Sex Words and Sex Acts in Shakespeare’s Othello,” 75
Monroe K. Spears, “Robert Penn Warren and the Literary Life,” 203
James A. Grimshaw, Jr., “Robert Penn Warren: A Reminiscence,” 207
Peter Klappert, “I Want, I Don’t Want: The Poetry of Margaret Atwood” (review of Selected Poems, 1965–1975 and Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976–1986, by Margaret Atwood), 217
David Weiss, “Refusing to Name the Animals,” 233
 
FICTION
Stephen Dobyns, “Saratoga Phoenix,” 85
Philip Levine, “The Key,” 183
 
POETRY
Patiann Rogers, “To Complete a Thought” and “The Mad Linguist,” 49
Linda Pastan, “In the Fall,” “Lost Luggage,” and “Maria Im Rosenhaag ,” 71
David Kirby, “Othello” and “Nosebleed, Gold Digger, KGB, Henry James, Handshake,” 81
Quinton Duval, “In Vino Veritas,” 168
Gary Fincke, “The Extrapolation Dreams,” 177
Paul Mariani, “What Can We Expect of Language!?,” 199
Debora Greger, “Vermeer,” 201
Michael Heffernan, “The Blessings of Liberty,” “The Light of the Living,” and “The Atonements,” 214
Jane Somerville, “All the Pathos, All the Triumph,” 231
Robert Wrigley, “Ravens at Deer Creek,” 242
John Meredith Hill, “Waiting,” 243
 
GRAPHICS
Sarah Raphael, Paintings, 169