Literary Matters 17.1
(Fall, 2024)
Editorial Preface:
Ryan Wilson: ExcelsiorInterview
Caitlin Doyle: A Conversation with Don PatersonPoems
Don Paterson: ReedDon Paterson: Die
Book Reviews:
Diana Senechal: “Awe Is Not Denial”: John Wall Barger’s The Elephant of SilenceRyan Wilson: Losing to David Kirby at Dance Dance Revolution
A Retrospective
Memoir
Hope Coulter: A Label for My FatherJudith Ortiz Cofer: Las Muchachas
Fiction
Becky Hagenston: Wild CreaturesIsaac Bashevis Singer: The Pass
Julia Ridley Smith: Et tu, Miss Jones?
Interview
Caitlin Doyle: “Branching Ever-Outward” on the Page: A Conversation with Carl PhillipsRyan Wilson: “Singing a New Song”: A Conversation with Rock-n-Roll Hall-of-Famer DION
Criticism
David Bromwich: The Language of Knowledge and the Language of PowerMaryann Corbett: The Monsters and the Translators: Grappling with Beowulf in the Third Millenium
Paul Dean: The Annals of Annie Ernaux
Maggie Greaves: Back to the Light: Seamus Heaney’s Virgilian Quest
Edward Hirsch: On David Bottoms: Hymns to the Unknown
Stephen Kampa: Another Way of Breaking the Pentameter
Eric McHenry: Mister Bleaney and the Bean Eaters
Mary Jo Salter: Our Auden
Timothy Steele: On Helen Pinkerton
Parker Stoker: Hemingway’s Dante Revisited: In Our Time & The Mythical Method
Interviews
Reading Habits: Alissa Valles in Conversation with Edwin FrankCaitlin Doyle: Becoming an Instrument of the Poem: A Conversation with Paul Muldoon
Essays
John Wall Barger: In the Cold Theatre of the PoemMaryann Corbett: Capital Improvements: The Initial-Caps Wars
Chad Davidson: Not Being Original
Caitlin Doyle: The World’s Weight: Artifice & Reality in Richard Wilbur’s Poetry
Rachel Hadas: The Trembling Web and the Storage Facility
Mark Halliday: Bidart’s Thirst
Maurice Manning: Place and the Composition of the Poetic Self
David Mason: Incarnation & Metamorphosis
Joshua Mehigan: “Where the Life Is”: Hearing and Reading David Ferry
Elise Partridge: “Take the Bathtub Out”: New Criticism in Robert Lowell’s Classroom
Interviews
Daniel Bosch & George Kalogeris: Ancestral Lines: An Interview with David FerryBrian Brodeur: “The Sound of the World Alive”: A Conversation with Maurice Manning
Caitlin Doyle: Poetry as a Timeless Place: A Conversation with Shane McCrae
Appreciations
Jane Greer: “A poet, dangerous and steep”: Reintroducing Josephine JacobsenA.E. Stallings: Afterglow: An Appreciation of Robert B. Shaw’s What Remains to Be Said
Fiction
Cidinha da Silva: I Have Shoes for You (translated from the Portuguese by J.P. Gritton)Cidinha da Silva: Full Moon (translated from the Portuguese by J.P. Gritton)
Cidinha da Silva: “The Boat that Doesn’t Float” (translated from the Portuguese by J.P. Gritton)
Interviews
Caitlin Doyle: Mysterious Encounters in Life & Art: A Conversation with Dana GioiaMaurya Simon: Time Sits High on a Throne of Calcium: An Interview with Robert Mezey, pt. 1
Maurya Simon: Time Sits High on a Throne of Calcium: An Interview with Robert Mezey, pt. 2
Poetry
Chad Abushanab: The DiveBetty Adcock: Cold Spell
Kim Addonizio: High Desert, New Mexico
Austin Allen: In Mudville
James Arthur: To Geoffrey Chaucer
David Baker: Art of Pottery
Ned Balbo: Miraculous Spirals
John Wall Barger: A Briefe & Marveyllous Hystory of Franklin
Bruce Bond: Skull
Brian Brodeur: What We Told the Children
Danielle Chapman: Our Twenties
Fred Chappell: Five Poems
George David Clark: A Few Keys
Alfred Corn: Foreseeable Future
Hope Coulter: Dr. Jones at the Piano
Morri Creech: Mileage
Armen Davoudian: Coming Out of the Shower
Erica Dawson: There
Carl Dennis: Babel
Stephen Dunn: At the Intersection
Rhina Espaillat: How Like a Winter…
Gregory Fraser: Nothing But a Few Bare Trees
Amy Gerstler: Woman with Her Throat Slit
Juliana Gray: Skipping a Friend’s Barbecue Because the Invitation Said ‘Family Friendly’
Rachel Hadas: Riders, Parthenon Frieze
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Botticelli and the Beginning of Spring
Joseph Harrison: The Compromised Ventriloquist
Ernest Hilbert: Lesser Feasts
Richie Hofmann: Shades
Anna Marie Hong: New Year’s Eve
Garrett Hongo: The Surfaces of the Sea
Didi Jackson: Spring Peepers at Flanders Hill
Rodney Jones: How Much I Loved This Life
Stephen Kampa: Someone Else’s Gift
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman: Vestibule
David Kirby: Bernardo Buontalenti
Ted Kooser: In Transit
Jenna Le: Purses
David Lehman: Caviar to the General
William Logan: Agassiz’s Desert Tortoise
Amit Majmudar: Charmed Life
Maurice Manning: The Gospel of Music
Charles Martin: So Many Hiding…
Toby Martinez de las Rivas: The Mountain
Shane McCrae: The Player on the Bridge
Eric McHenry: Lives of the Poets
Orlando Ricardo Menes: Havana, 1955
A.F. Moritz: High Windows
Jesse Nathan: My Career on the Boards
Linda Pastan: Prologue
Carl Phillips: Mechanics
D.A. Powell: Space Race
Mary Jo Salter: Carlo Crivelli and the Trees
Alexis Sears: For My Father: A Sonnet Redoublé
Grace Schulman: Thebes, Revisited
Philip Schultz: My Mistakes
Robert B. Shaw: Ferrying
Charles Simic: Truck Stop
Austin Smith: Country Things
Dave Smith: Black Ice
Matthew Buckley Smith: Object Permanence
A.E. Stallings: Empathy
Catherine Tufariello: Clear Water
Brian Turner: The Poet
Jean Valentine: For a Friend Who Died Young
Deborah Warren: Down-to-Earth
Robert Wrigley: Camp Robber
C. Dale Young: On Nomenclature
David Yezzi: Tyger, Tyger
Flash Fiction
Amina Gautier: HowlAmina Gautier: You’ll Go
Amina Gautier: Why Not?
Interviews
Caitlin Doyle: A Conversation with Philip SchultzT.R. Hummer: An Interview with Garrett Hongo
Translations
Christopher Childers: Sappho 31Alfred Corn: Duino Elegy II (from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke)
Bill Coyle: ‘I do not follow Dante down’ (from the Swedish of Håkan Sandell)
Armen Davoudian: Swan Song (from the Persian of Mehdi Hamidi Shirazi)
Rhina Espaillat: Love That Endures Beyond Death (from the Spanish of Quevedo)
David Ferry: from The Aeneid, VII
Aaron Poochigian: The Swan (from the French of Charles Baudelaire)
Rosanna Warren: Stella Maris (from the French of Max Jacob)
Book Reviews
Robert Archambeau: Little Boots: On Ernest Hilbert’s CaligulanBrian Brodeur: Komunyakaa’s Everyday Mojo
Kelly Cherry: Review of The Borrowed World: Poems by Emily Leithauser
Jennifer Clarvoe: “A Line that Bears its Leveling Pain”: The Craft of George Kalogeris’ Winthropos
Sarah Brown Ferrario: On The Greek Plays
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman: Jazz & Seraphim: On Grace Schulman’s The Marble Bed
Lee Oser: William H. Pritchard and the Twilight of Literary Criticism
Marjorie Perloff: On The Hatred of Poetry
John Poch: How a Singer Can Sing in Prose
Christina Pugh: Selecting Texture: Elise Partridge’s The If Borderlands
Jane Satterfield: Treasures Reclaimed: The Collected Poems of Adrienne Rich
Matthew Buckley Smith: About Suffering: A Review of Morri Creech’s Blue Rooms
A.E. Stallings: Cool Pastoral
Daniel Tobin: The Gravities of Heaven
Daniel Cross Turner: Still Looking: Dave Smith’s Late Poetry
Rosanna Warren: A Saga of Mothers and Daughters: On Honor Moore’s Our Revolution
Reminiscences
Joseph Harrison: Remembering Harold BloomMaxine Hong Kingston: Dear Diary, dear Willis
Yusef Komunyakaa: On Willis Barnstone
Robert Pinsky: Remembering “Ellery Street”
Maurya Simon: Fire Undressed My Bones: Remembering Bert Meyers
Willard Spiegelman: Harold Bloom: A Grateful Remembrance
Dave Smith: Of David Bottoms, My Friend
A.E. Stallings: Paying (Homage to) the Ferryman