Introduction

I . Ends and Beginnings

The Americans, a story by lê thi diem thúy

The Birth of the Poem, a poem by Adélia Prado,
translated by Ellen Doré Watson

Eighteen Apocalypses, fiction by Lucy Corin

Climbing Toward the Peaks, a poem by Robert Bly

Notes on the Mono-Culture, an essay by Mark Edmundson

Pomegranate, a poem by Marilyn Hacker

You Can’t Tell a Book by Its Cover?, an essay by Grace Glueck

July 12, 2006, a poem by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated
by Marilyn Hacker

II. Harmony

A Conversation with Cornel West, by Cornel West,
Thomas Dumm, and David Lenson

Foghorns, a poem by Tony Hoagland

Music Is Force, an essay by Arun Saldanha

Tutti Frutti, a poem by Charles Wright

People’s Politics: Amiri Baraka, Hip-hop, and the Dialectical Struggle for a Popular Revolutionary Poetics, an essay
by Casey Hayman

Rain, a poem by Rita Dove

III. Utopia in Ruins

Ask ZZ if You Don’t Believe Me, a story by Elizabeth Denton

I Like Aluminum Foil for It Has No Emotions, a poem
by Dara Wier

No Name Commune, a memoir by Marianne Boruch

Sayonara Marijuana Mon Amour, a poem by Chase Twichell

IV. Hand-Picked Poets

On Being Asked What Result of Racism Would You
Have Difficulty Giving Up?, a poem by Aracelis Girmay

Stolen, a poem by Shira Erlichman

My Love is Like Oh, a poem by Christopher Kang

God, a poem by Amy Leach

Helwa’s Stories, a poem by Deema Shehabi

V . Ghost Memory

The Ghost of Stephen Foster, a story by Aaron Hellem

The Years between Wars, a poem by Steve Orlen

Global Art, National Values, Monumental Compromises: “German” 9/11 Commemoration in America, “American” Holocaust Commemoration in Germany,
an essay by Peter Chametzky

Palm Reading, a poem by Barbara Ras

The Door Man, a story by Lisa Vogel

Yakov, a poem by Philip Levine

The Day We Buried You in the Park, a poem by Martín Espada

VI. I Carried the Things I Loved in a Red Sack

Golden Birds, a story by Robert H. Abel

At the Pitch, a poem by Maxine Kumin

Richard Dawkins: My Encounter with a Heartthrob, an essay
by William Giraldi

Where Are You Now?, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Pure Love, a story by Amy Bordiuk

The Wisdom of Solomon, a poem by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies, a poem by Joy Harjo

Apples and Angels, a story by Elizabeth Collins

Value, a poem by Christopher Howell

Love Is the Crooked Thing, a story by Stephen O’Connor

Poem, a poem by e. e. cummings