Diversity/Adversity Issue

An issue of Ploughshares from Winter 1989, guest-edited Marilyn Hacker. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

This classic issue, guest-edited by the poet Marilyn Hacker, explores the themes of diversity and adversity. “What is in our experience can enter the canon,” Hacker writes in her Introduction. “This is part of an American populist heritage that stubbornly refuses a disjunction between art and life: domestic, sexual, economic, and political life. As many poets here look out as they do look in.” 

The issue features the work of many established as well as lesser-known voices, including Hayden Carruth, May Swenson, Rita Dove, Alberto Rios, J. D. McClatchy, Toi Derricotte, and Eavan Boland.