Volume 27, Issue 2
FRONT COVER: This “emblematic picture,” drawn by John Gabriel Stedman and engraved by his friend William Blake, is the final illustration in Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam… 1772 to 1777, printed in London in 1796 and reprinted by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1972. Stedman’s original drawing is lost, but there is little doubt that Blake agreed with his feeling about the picture: “Going now to take my leave of Surinam, after all the horrors and cruelties… I will close the scene with an emblematical picture of Europe Supported by Africa and America, accompanied by an ardent wish… they may henceforth and to all eternity be the props of each other… we only differ in colour, but are certainly all created by the same Hand.”
Table of Contents
The Value of Race in Literature, Non-Fiction by Victoria Earle Matthews, afterward by Fred Miller Robinson
CONTEMPORARY ISRAELI POETS, all translated by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Our Blood is the World’s Petrol, Poetry by Asher Reich
On Rabbi Kook’s Street, Poetry by Yehuda Amichai
Practical Poems, Poetry by David Avidan
Script, Poetry by Natan Zach
Terminal, Poetry by Natan Yonatan
Family Vacation at Banias Golan Heights, 1982; I’m So Glad, Poetry by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Pockets of Power, Poetry by Fred Will
Grand Hotel Lembang, Fiction by Kester Freriks, Translated by E.M. Beekman
Things That Look the Same, Poetry by Don Stap
Nostalgia; Surf; Late Fire Late Snow, Poetry by Robert Francis, with woodcut by Leonard Baskin
Rushdie’s Whale, Non-Fiction by Rustom Bharucha
Hosanna in the Highest; Mr. World, Poetry by Edward Baratta
Conferring, Poetry by Joseph Cady
ESSAYS ON ETHNICITY AND LITERATURE
Ethnicity and Beyond: An Introduction, Non-Fiction by Jules Chametzky
The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America, Non-Fiction by June Jordan
Becoming a Literary Person out of Context, Non-Fiction by Helen Barolini
American Indian Oral and Written Narratives, Non-Fiction by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff
The Mulatto, an American Tragedy?, Non-Fiction by Werner Sollors
Mali is very dangerous, Fiction by Reginald McKnight
Alphabet; Before Her Life, Poetry by Charlotte Nekola
Fruit; Banner of Fish, Poetry by Stefanie Marlis
Behind the Swastika, Non-Fiction by Josephine Herbst. Edited and with introduction by John Nelson
Song Two; Song Twelve; Song Twenty-nine; Granny Mary Came Our Way; Under an Aboriginal Tree, Poetry by Colin Johnson
The Rise and Fall of the Stockbridge Indian Schools, Non-Fiction by James Axtell
Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Non-Fiction by Joanne M. Braxton
Contributors
Poet, critic and fiction writer KAREN ALKALAY-GUT is on leave from Tel Aviv University. A book of her poems, Mechitza, has just been published in New York.
YEHUDA AMICHAI is well known as the leading poet of Israel; a new edition of his collected poems is scheduled to appear this fall (Harper & Row).
The foremost innovator in language and form in Hebrew, DAVID AVIDAN has translated his own work into English and has appeared in many other languages as well.
JAMES AXTELL teaches history at the College of William and Mary and is at work on a three-volume ethnohistory of French, English and Indian cultural interaction in colonial America.
Born and raised in Jersey City, EDWARD BARATTA is at work on a manuscript of poems entitled Mr. World.
Novelist HELEN BAROLINI has a novel forthcoming from Schocken Books, The Dream Book.
Artist LEONARD BASKIN‘s original woodcut portrait of Robert Francis is in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.
E. M. BEEKMAN has just been named Multatuli Professor of Dutch Literature, Language and Culture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
RUSTOM BHARUCHA is engaged in an inter cultural theatre project in Asia; a book, Double Exposure, is forthcoming.
Teacher, scholar and poet, JOANNE BRAXTON writes on the autobiographical traditions of black American women.
JOSEPH CADY is an independent scholar, poet and psychotherapist in New York City.
JULES CHAMETZKY is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; his latest book, Our Decentralized Literature, has just been published by the University of Massachusetts Press.
We are publishing new poems by ROBERT FRANCIS in celebration of his 85 th birthday; his new book, The Satirical Rogue on All Fronts, and a broadside, The Pumpkin Man, have just been published.
orn in Indonesia, KESTER FRERIKS has published, in Holland, two collections of stories and a novel, Hölderlin’s Tower, which won the prestigious Van der Hooft Prize in 1982.
A member of the aboriginal Bibbulman tribe of Australia, COLIN JOHNSON has just had a novel, Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, published here by Available Press; a volume of his poems is due this year from Hyland House.
JUNE JORDAN has published over fifteen collections of poems and stories; the essay published here is included in her newest volume, On Call.
STEFANIE MARLIS, who received a Marin Arts Council Grant in 1985, is the author of a book of poems, Red Tools (Dooryard Press, 1984).
REGINALD MCKNIGHT has published stories in Prairie Schooner and other journals, one of which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 1985.
JOHN NELSON teaches English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has edited a computer-control manual which is being translated into Chinese.
ASHER REICH, co-editor of Israel’s leading literary magazine, Moznaim, will have his seventh book in Hebrew, his first book to be translated into English, published this autumn.
FRED MILLER ROBINSON teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the author of The Comedy of Language.
A. LAVONNE BROWN RUOFF is professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle.
WERNER SOLLORS is professor of English and Afro American Studies at Harvard.
Michiganer DON STAP has published in Poetry, Poetry Northwest and other journals, and edited The Western Review for eight years.
FREDERIC WILL‘s most recent book of poems, The Sliced Dog, was published by L’Epervier in 1984.
Over two hundred of NATAN YONATAN‘s poems have been made into popular poems in Israel. His second book to be translated into English, Wind Prayer, will be published this autumn by Cross-Cultural Press.
Two books of poetry by NATAN ZACH have appeared in English translation. He is both a leading poet and a major critic in Hebrew.