October/November 2013 Cover Image

A Spiral Walk Through the Golden Mean: A Foray into the Structure of Thought & Invention

Article Image

Leslie Ullman
Motion, process, and the passage of time are inherent to the nature of spiral. It is holographic and endlessly compelling.
Read more...


More: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield

Article Image

Amy Pence
Poetry comes from that second, hungrier part of the self. It can look quiet, but it is always a path into greater amplitude. It’s as grand a technology as I know for the netting and distillation of vastness, condensing huge swaths of existence into something portable, memorable.
Read more...


An Inteview with Kristen Iversen

Article Image

Cassandra Kircher
I never intended to write social commentary or a polemical work; my intention was to tell a story of something important that happened, a story that I felt people should know.
Read more...


Economy, Intensity, & Ferocity: The Poems of R.S. Thomas

Article Image

Stephen Dobyns
...if there is an apparent conflict between form and content, if the reader cannot duplicate the poem’s affective emphasis within the telling of the poem, then the poet's credibility is weakened.
Read more...


The Changing Publishing Landscape

Article Image

Ronald Goldfarb
All five publishers who were charged with colluding with Apple have settled rather than fight the government’s charges, claiming innocence...
Read more...


Hearkee, Ye Raskal! Hear Me, Sirrah: The Conundrum of Dialogue in Historical Fiction

Article Image

Larry Feign
...when writing dialogue for a story set any time before 1930, we have no way to know with precision how people conversed. The best an author can do is guess.
Read more...


The Golden Pelt: Berryman & the Fame Equation

Article Image

Michael Shou-Yung Shum
Immortality as an artist was a fundamental goal for Berryman. His early work was not received well— like Beckett, he may have wondered in relative maturity whether he was ever going to make it or not. When notoriety came, Berryman seized it and held onto it dearly.
Read more...


Marianne Moore & the Politesse of Protest

Article Image

Joy Ladin
Though Moore's cohorts spoke of her with unstinting respect, as Timothy Morris has noted in his study of her reception, the admiring critical discourse that made Moore's reputation portrayed her in terms that fed the image of Moore as modernism’s maiden aunt, plucking her words with white-gloved fingers and setting each precisely among the meticulously dusted bric-a-brac of her poems.
Read more...