Contributors' Notes

MASTHEAD

Guest Editors

Howard Norman & Jane Shore

Editor

Don Lee

Poetry Editor

David Daniel

Associate Editor

Susan Conley

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maryanne O'Hara

Founding Editor

DeWitt Henry

Founding Publisher

Peter O'Malley

Editorial Assistants: Darla Bruno, Gregg Rosenblum, and Tom Herd.
Poetry Readers: Paul Berg, Brian Scales, Michael Henry, Renee Rooks, Charlotte Pence, R. J. Lavalee, Tom Laughlin, Bethany Daniel, and Ellen Scharfenberg.
Fiction Readers: Thomas McNeely, Billie Lydia Porter, Emily Doherty, Michael Rainho, Leah Stewart, Tammy Zambo, Monique Hamzé, Karen Wise, Holly LeCraw Howe, Andrea Dupree, Scott Clavenna, Jessica Olin, Jeffrey Freiert, and Mary Jeanne Deery.

CONTRIBUTORS

julie agoos is the author of
Above the Land (Yale, 1987),which was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and
Calendar Year (Sheep Meadow, 1997). She is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College/CUNY.

robin becker's fourth collection of poems,
All-American Girl, won the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. In 1995-96, she received a fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. She is currently an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, where she teaches in the M.F.A. program and serves as Poetry Editor for
The Women's Review of Books.

molly bendall's collection of poems,
After Estrangement, was a winner in the Peregrine Smith Poetry Series and was published by Gibbs Smith in 1992. She currently teaches at the University of Southern California.

holly st. john bergon is a poet and teacher who lives in the Hudson Valley of New York and the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. She has lived and traveled in Mexico, Spain, and, most recently, England. Her work has appeared in
Pequod, Sequoia, and
College English. She is currently teaching at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is married to the novelist Frank Bergon.

chana bloch directs the creative writing program at Mills College. Her books include the poetry collections
The Past Keeps Changing and
The Secrets of the Tribe, as well as translations of Yehuda Amichai, Dahlia Ravikovitch, and
The Song of Songs. New poems of hers appear in
The Atlantic Monthly, The Marlboro Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Salmagundi, and
The Threepenny Review.

jody bolz is a poet and essayist who teaches at George Washington University. Her work has appeared recently in such publications as
The Indiana Review, River Styx, Poet Lore, Sonora Review, and the anthology
Her Face in the Mirror (Beacon).

peg boyers is Executive Editor of
Salmagundi. Her new poems are forthcoming in
The Paris Review and other magazines.

kurt brown founded the Aspen Writers' Conference and Writers' Conferences & Festivals. He is the editor of
The True Subject, Writing It Down for James, and
Facing the Lion, which gather outstanding lectures from conferences. He is also the editor of
Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars and the co-editor, with his wife, the poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, of
Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants & Bars. His first full-length collection of poems will be published by Four Way Books in 1999.

richard cecil has published two collections of poems,
Einstein's Brain and
Alcatraz. He teaches in the English department and the honors division at Indiana University, Bloomington.

ann choi studies Korean literature at UCLA and is a former Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She lives in Los Angeles.

michael collier'smost recent book of poems is
The Neighbor (Chicago). The editor of
The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry, he teaches at the University of Maryland and directs the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

kathryn davis'smost recent novel,
Hell, will be published this winter by The Ecco Press. She teaches at Skidmore College and lives in Vermont with her husband and daughter.

stuart dybek is the author of three books. He currently teaches at Western Michigan University.

karen fish has published two books,
The Cedar Canoe and
What Is Beyond Us. "Another Republic" is from a recently completed manuscript entitled
The Nights of Knowing. Currently she teaches at Loyola College in Maryland and is at work on a novel.

nick flynn's last appearance in
Ploughshares was in 1992 in the "Emerging Writers" issue edited by Christopher Tilghman and Marie Howe.He received his master's degree from NYU, and his manuscript of poems,
Some Ether, was a finalist for both the Walt Whitman Award and the National Poetry Series. He lives in Brooklyn and works for Columbia University's Writing Project.

jonathan galassi'stranslation of Eugenio Montale's
Collected Poems 1916-1956 will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1998.

sandra m. gilbert'smost recent collection of poems is
Ghost Volcano (Norton), which won the Paterson Prize for 1995. Other recent publications include
Wrongful Death: A Memoir (Norton) and, with Susan Gubar,
Masterpiece Theater: An Academic Melodrama and the second edition of
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. She teaches at the University of California, Davis.

jody gladding lives in East Calais, Vermont. Her book,
Stone Crop, appeared in the Yale Younger Poets Series in 1993. The poems in this issue are drawn in part from
The Medieval Health Handbook, a compilation of plates from fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts.

barry goldensohn is the author of
St. Venus Eve, Uncarving the Block, The Marrano,and
Dance Music, and he is completing another book of poems tentatively called
The Work of Ending. His poems and essays have appeared in
Salmagundi, Poetry, The Yale Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He teaches at Skidmore College.

lorrie goldensohn has published two poetry collections,
The Tether and
Dreamwork. She is also the author of
Elizabeth Bishop: The Biography of a Poetry.

daniel gutstein has poetry forthcoming in
The American Scholar, Poet Lore, and
The Midwest Quarterly. He has also published work in
Fiction. A former economist, farmhand, and tae kwon do instructor, he has taught creative writing at two universities. He is at work on a collection of poems entitled
Undoing.



tony hoagland's first collection of poems,
Sweet Ruin (Wisconsin), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from
Ploughshares. His second collection,
Donkey Gospel, which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in April, won the James Laughlin Award this past fall. He teaches at New Mexico State University and Warren Wilson College.

joyce johnson'spublished books include
Bad Connections, In the Night Cafe, What Lisa Knew, and a memoir,
Minor Characters, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Columbia University.

hettie jones is the author of
How I Became Hettie Jones, a memoir of the Beat scene, as well as award-winning books for children and young adults. Her poetry collection,
Drive, is just out from Hanging Loose Press. She teaches in New York at Parsons and the 92nd Street Y.

lily king lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She recently completed a novel called
Plaire.

philip levine's most recent collection of new poems,
The Simple Truth (Knopf), won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1995.

jon loomis currently directs the Summer Workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His poems have appeared in
Poetry, Field, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The North American Review, and other journals. His first book,
Vanitas Motel, won the
Field Poetry Prize and is due out from Oberlin College Press in December 1997.

david mamet's plays include
Oleanna; Glengarry Glen Ross, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1984;
American Buffalo; and
The Cryptogram, a 1995 Obie Award winner. His films include
The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, The Untouchables, and
The Edge. He is also the author of three children's books, four volumes of essays, a collection of poems, and a novel.

gail mazur is the author of three poetry collections, most recently
The Common (Chicago). She is the founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge and is 1997-98 Poet-in-Residence at Emerson College. In 1996-97, she was the Fellow in Poetry at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College.

david mcaleavey has taught creative writing and literature at George Washington University since 1974. His fourth and most recent book of poems is
Holding Obsidian (Washington Writers', 1985). He has published in numerous magazines, including
Poetry, The Georgia Review, and
The Antioch Review. Last winter, he was an exchange fellow from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts to the Schloss Wiepersdorf colony near Berlin, Germany.

gardner mcfall is the author of
The Pilot's Daughter (Time Being, 1996). Her poems have appeared previously in
Ploughshares, as well as in
The Nation, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. She teaches literature at The Cooper Union in New York City.

nora mitchell is the author of two collections of poems,
Proofreading the Histories (1996) and
Your Skin Is a Country (1988),both from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in
Ploughshares, Calyx, College English, Hanging Loose, Radical America, and
Sojourner, among other magazines. She directs the M.F.A. program at Goddard College.

eugenio montale (1896-1981) is generally considered one of the greatest Italian poets of the twentieth century. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

carol muske's two new books are
An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Penguin) and
Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography and the Shape of the Self (Poets on Poetry Series, Michigan). She is Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where she teaches creative writing.

paul nelson lives in Machiasport, Maine. His books are
Cargo (Stonewall),
Average Nights (L'Epervier),
Days Off (Virginia), and
The Hard Shapes of Paradise (Alabama). A new book,
Cold Watch, is ready for publication. Recent poems appear in
The Ohio Review, Salmagundi, River Styx, Willow Springs, and
The Sandhills Review.

josip novakovich teaches at the University of Cincinnati. Graywolf Press published his collection of stories,
Yolk, and his collection of essays,
Apricots from Chernobyl, and will be releasing his new collection of stories,
Salvation and Other Disasters, this coming spring.

gregory orr's most recent collection is
City of Salt (Pittsburgh, 1995). His first book,
Burning the Empty Nests, has just been reissued by Carnegie-Mellon University Press. He is the co-editor, with Ellen Bryant Voigt, of the essay collection
Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World (Michigan, 1996). He teaches at the University of Virginia and is completing a memoir and a book about lyric poetry and survival.

joyce peseroff'stwo books of poems are
The Hardness Scale (Alice James) and
A Dog in the Lifeboat (Carnegie-Mellon). She is currently Visiting Professor and Poet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

stanley plumly's most recent book of poems,
The Marriage in the Trees, appeared last spring from The Ecco Press. He currently teaches at the University of Maryland.

jack pulaski is the author of
The St. Veronica Gig Stories. His stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including
The
Ploughshares Reader and
The Pushcart Prize. "Laura Providencia in the New World" is from a book that he expects to complete shortly.

mark rudman is a poet, essayist, and translator. His recent books include a long poem,
Rider, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for 1994; a book of essays,
Realm of Unknowing: Meditations on Art, Suicide, and Other Transformations (1995); and
The Millennium Hotel (1996)-all three with Wesleyan University Press. He has recently completed
Provoked in Venice, the third volume of his trilogy.

mary jo salter is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently
Sunday Skaters (Knopf, 1994). She is also a co-editor of the fourth edition of
The
Norton Anthology of Poetry (1996). She teaches at Mount Holyoke College.

lloyd schwartz is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a regular commentator on NPR's "Fresh Air." For his articles on classical music in
The Boston Phoenix, he received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. His most recent book of poems is
Goodnight, Gracie.

laurie sheck'smost recent book of poems,
The Willow Grove (Knopf, 1996), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She currently teaches at Princeton University.

tom sleigh is the author of three books of poetry:
After One (Houghton Mifflin, 1983),
Waking (Chicago, 1990), and
The Chain (Chicago, 1996). His fourth book,
The Dreamhouse, will appear in 1999.

elizabeth spires'smost recent book of poems is
Worldling (Norton, 1995). A Whiting Award recipient in 1996, she lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College. Recently, she finished editing
The Instant of Knowing (Michigan),a collection of Josephine Jacobsen's occasional prose.

philip st. clair teaches at the University of Kentucky at Ashland. His latest book,
Acid Creek, was published in 1997 by Bottom Dog Press. He was awarded an NEA fellowship in 1994 and the Bullis Prize from
Poetry Northwest in 1986.

david st. john is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently
Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 1994), which was nominated for the National Book Award. He has also published a collection of prose,
Where the Angels Come Toward Us: Selected Essays, Reviews, and Interviews (1995).

maura stanton'snew book of poetry,
Life Among the Trolls, will be published by Carnegie-Mellon in 1998. She teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington.

ruth stone'seight books include
Simplicity (1995) and
Ordinary Words (forthcoming in the fall of 1998), both from Paris Press. A collection of essays on her work by eighteen fellow poets and scholars,
The House Is Made of Poetry, was recently published by Southern Illinois University Press.

chase twichell'smost recent book is
The Ghost of Eden (Ontario, 1994). A new book,
The Snow Watcher, is forthcoming from Ontario Review Press in 1998. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Goddard College.

susan walp is represented by the Fischbach Gallery in New York City, where she exhibits regularly. Her most recent solo exhibition was in August 1997 in Montecastello di Vibio, Italy, where she spent part of the summer on the painting faculty for the International School of Art. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the New York Creative Arts Public Service Program. She lives in Washington, Vermont, and teaches at Vermont College of Norwich University.

kevin young'sfirst book,
Most Way Home (William Morrow, 1995) was a National Poetry Series winner and also won the 1996 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from
Ploughshares. "Satchmo" is taken from a series inspired by the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in
The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, and
DoubleTake, as well as in
Two Cents, a traveling exhibit and catalogue. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Georgia.