New Letters, Volume 69 Number 2-3

New Letters Archive Table of Contents

New Letters, Volume 69 Number 2-3
7 / Editor's Note, Robert Stewart

E S S A Y S

26 / On Rediscovering Vincent O. Carter, an introduction, Chip Fleischer
55 / Robert Stackhouse: Artist As Shapeshifter, an introduction, Elisabeth Kirsch
73 / Real Words, Paul Zimmer
101 / How Many of You Are There In the Quartet?, Brian Doyle
119 / Alice, Judy Ray
157 / Looking Out, Gary Gildner

P O E T R Y

8 / Six Poems, Naomi Shihab Nye
14 / Four Poems, Quincy Troupe
20 / Two Poems, Marilyn Hacker
93 / Tools, Joseph Millar
94 / Luminous Blue Variables, Michelle Boisseau
133 / When I Left, Vanessa Sooy
136 / On the Holy Friar Crossing a Suspension Bridge to Paradise, Joanna Goodman
138 / We are not Creatures of a Single Day, trans. by David McDuff, Pia Tafdrup
140 / Two Poems, Judith Berke
170 / Looking for the Man in the Moon, Suzanne Rhodenbaugh
210 / The Summer Carnival, Luisa Igloria
212 / Two Poems, Donald Junkins

F I C T I O N

33 / The Song of Evening, Vincent O. Carter
59 / Songs Without Words, Charlotte Holmes
65 / Kismet, Sarah A. Odishoo
79 / Amnesty Barracks, Daniel Woodrell
215 / The Pleasure of Man and Woman Together on Earth, Thomas E. Kennedy

I N T E R V I E W

142 / The Subject is Life, conducted, by Angela Elam, Naomi Shihab Nye

T H E L I T E R A R Y A W A R D S

172 / Awards, an introduction, Aleatha Ezra
173 / Stone or Water, first place, The Alexander Patterson Cappon Award for Fiction, Janet L. Thompson
189 / On the Edge of Ice, first place, The Dorothy Churchill Cappon award for creative nonfiction, Monica Devine
199 / Five Poems, first place, the New Letters poetry award, Ellen Bass

R E V I E W S

241 / H. L. Hix, "Modes of Sacred Speech": A review of poetry books by Grace Schulman, Miranda Field, Natasha Trethewey, Jacqueline Marcus, Linda Gregerson.
253 / Conger Beasley Jr., "Anything Could Occur": A review of Hart Crane: A Life, by Clive Fisher.

A R T W O R K

Robert Stackhouse, drawings, etching, lithographs, front cover & pages, 6, 53, 54, 58, 72, 78, 118, 131, 132, 156, 171, 188, 198, 209, 214. (Introductory essay by Elisabeth Kirsch, page 55.)
258 / Awards Honor Roll
260 / New Programs: New Letters on the Air
260 / Celebrations: News From Our Authors
261 / Visitors' Log: The New Letters Guest Book
262 / NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS


S T A F F

Editor: Robert Stewart

Administrative Director: Betsy Beasley

Assistant Managing Editor: Aleatha Ezra

Producer, New Letters on the Air: Angela Elam

Assistant Producer: Leslie Koffler

Readers: James McKinley, Thomas Russell, Karen Subach, William Trowbridge

Student Staff: Valerie Benz, Regan Cochran, Jason Holmes, Adam Kraft, Jannie Morrison, Stuart Smith, Amy Thomas

Past Editors: Alexander Cappon, David Ray, James McKinley

New Letters website: umkc.edu/newletters. Webmaster: Joe Short

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NEW LETTERS (ISSN 0146-4930)

Copyright 2003. The Curators of the University of Missouri.

VOLUME 69 NUMBER 2/3

Printed in the United States


Electronic edition published by Cultural Heritage Langauge Technologies and funded by the National Science Foundation International Digital Library Program. This text has been proofread to a high degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using typesetters source files.

Looking Out (Gary Gildner)

    turn toward me, and her green eyes shine. I think of climbing to a branch in my grandfather's apple orchard, to better watch him as he sits in the high timothy gazing at the sky. What is he looking for? He will sit there a long time - has been sitting there a long time, an eternity. I am nine or ten. We will never exchange a word, he and I, for I don't understand Polish and he speaks, when he does speak, nothing else. He will smile, pat me on the head, give me a hand up so I may sit on Nelly, his big Belgian's brown back. But not one word. And yet words, I will discover, will bring us closer than I can ever guess.

Miles Davis once asked John Coltrane why he took such long solos. Coltrane said, "It takes me that long to get everything in."

How to get everything in?

Last summer, a couple of months before September 11th, my smoky-eyed dog, Henry, and I were into our poky jog through the timber, of an evening a body could haul itself uphill or down and feel pretty fine either way - and I said, "Henry, where do you reckon all the women have taken themselves these piney-sweet nights under such moons turning the everlasting yearning ever so keenly near? Henry," I said, "you don't need to answer that woeful wonder; it's just a thought I thought I ought to throw out - " and he didn't.

I don't mind sounding foolish. It somehow clears the air sometimes, puts me in my place. Or did. Now, I'm not so good at it. Now, more and more, I spend time looking out. I stand by the river where it makes a large curl, an almost perfect question mark without the dot, and pick out the stars in the water. Are they really there? I see them, but science reminds me they have already left.

I leave, too. I go home, suddenly hungry for flavor: for fresh salmon and red peppers roasted with lots of garlic. Then I sit in my leather chair beside the woodstove and reread "In the Ravine," a Chekhov story. When my eyes tire,

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