Volume 37, Issue 4
FRONT COVER: James Hendricks
ORBITAL PLEASURE, 1996
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
Photograph by Stephen Petergorsky
Table of Contents
Repetition; Boom, Poetry by Ruth Stone
No Longer and Not Yet, Fiction by Joanna Herman
The Messiah, Poetry by Kenneth Rosen
The Language of Cells, Non-Fiction by Spencer Nadler
The Exchange, Poetry by Maxine Kumin
An Interview with Maxine Kumin, Non-Fiction by Enid Shomer
Apothecaries Weight: Twenty Brains Make One Scruple, Poetry by Liz Waldner
The Waiting to Dying House, Non-Fiction by Jeffrey Heiman
Softly My Soul, Poetry by Meena Alexander
A Golem in Prague, Fiction by John Shepley
‘He Coulda Bin a Contendah’: The Curious, Unprecedented, Enigmatic Political Career of General Colin L. Powell, U.S.A., Ret., Non-Fiction by Michael (Ekwueme) Thelwell
A Mining Incident; Food, Poetry by Rich Ives
Malere Sou Latè: Paupers of the Earth, Poetry by Patrick Sylvain
Three Estates, Poetry by James Vink
Coming of Age with the Blues, Non-Fiction by Robert Fox
More Black Panoramas: An Addendum, Non-Fiction by Allan D. Austin
Contributors
Meena Alexander, who teaches at
CUNY, has written three books, to
be published this year: Manhattan
Music, a novel; River and Bridge, a
book of poems; and The Shock of
Arrival: Reflections on the
Postcolonial Experience.
Allan D. Austin, who teaches African-
American Literature at Springfield
College, will publish in December
with Routledge African Muslims in
Antebellum America.
Robert Fox’s fiction has received a
number of awards; he has written
essays about southeast Ohio, where
he farmed for fifteen years; and he
plays blues piano and guitar.
Jeffrey Heiman is on the adjunct faculty of
the English Department at CUNY.
Joanna Herman’s work has appeared
in various magazines; she teaches at
the Center for Worker Education at
City College.
Editor of Owl Creek Press and a teacher
at Everett Community College in Seattle,
Rich Ives has poems forthcoming in Iowa
Review, North American Review and other
journals.
Maxine Kumin’s Selected Poems,
1960-1990, will be published in 1997 by
Norton.
Spencer Nadler has practiced
surgical pathology in the Los Angeles
area for twenty-five years; he is working
on a collection of essays.
Kenneth Rosen’s latest collection of poems
is called No Snake, No Paradise.
John Shepley’s stories, essays and reviews
have appeared in dozens of journals,
and he has translated a number of
Italian writers; he is a member of PEN
and its Translation Committee.
Poet and fiction writer Enid Shomer has
published collections of both short
fiction and poetry.
Ruth Stone, who has published
several volumes of verse, has most
recently published Simplicity with
Paris Press.
Patrick Sylvain, who was born in Haiti
and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1981,
works as a bilingual teacher and a researcher
for PBS Frontline. His poetry has appeared in
various magazines.
Ekwueme Michael Thelwell is Professor of
Afro-American Studies, Univ. of Massachusetts,
Amherst.
James Vink has taught English at several
universities and published essays in a
number of publications.
Liz Waldner’s poetry has been published in
several quarterlies; she teaches creative
writing at Tufts and the School of the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston.