September 1990 
Censorship, Obscenity, & Secrecy: Slapping the Face of the Body Politic
T.R. Hummer
In January of 1990, a Texas writer named Ewing Campbell (Weave it Like Nightfall; The Rincon Triptych; Piranesi's Dream) received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in the field of creative writing/fiction. There was, I imagine, appropriate celebration in Hearne, where Campbell lives.
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Who Do We Think We Are?
Philip Gerard
The public infrastructure of the arts in this country is in trouble-the NEA and states arts agencies are feeling the hot breath of censors on their necks, followed closely by the steely fingers of budget cutters. How is it we as artists have lost such public confidence? How is it we lost our political voice, and what can be done about it?
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The Last Dark Violet Plum on the Tree: Modern Yiddish Poetry
Ruth Whitman
The short-lived phenomenon of modern Yiddish poetry is still one of literature's best-kept secrets. Although students of the Yiddish language, as well as translators of Yiddish poetry have proliferated in the past ten years, they comprise a small minority in the mainstream of world literature.
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NEA Rejects Four Grants & Issues New Obscenity Guidelines
AWP Editor
The chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), John Frohnmayer, vetoed grants to four performing artists, even though the NEA theater panel had unanimously recommended that the artists receive funding.
Frohnmayer took the unusual step of overruling the panel's decision in late June after consulting with the National Council on the Arts.
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An Open Letter from The Paris Review
George Plimpton & Deborah Pease
Literary magazines, among the many beneficiaries of the National Endowment for the Arts grants, recently have been confronted with a crisis of conscience because of the much publicized restrictive wording, amounting to censorship, in the terms of the grant. Our budget will be heavily dented by this refusal of grant monies but we are in the fortunate position of being able to act on principle.
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The Naked Senator
Frederick Busch
Any resemblance to legislators, living or dead, is perhaps worth noting. This is an ode to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and to the Republic on which he sometimes stands with all his weight, and most especially to his imagination.
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