Volume 34, Issue 2
FRONT COVER: Claire Heimarck
“Before Names”
monotype collage
BEFORE NAMES
I don’t care about the word, that commonplace.
What I want is the grand chaos that spins out syntax,
the obscure birthplace of “of,” “otherwise,”
“nevertheless,” and “how,” all those inscrutable
crutches I walk on.
Who understands language understands God,
Whose Son is the Word. It kills you to understand.
Words only hide something deeper, deaf and dumb,
something invented to be silenced.
In moments of grace, rare as they are,
you’ll be able to snatch it out: a live fish
in your bare hand.
Pure terror.
–Adélio Prado
[Tr. from “The Portuguese” by Ellen Watson]
*The poems and images in this issue are reprinted as they appear in Parallels: Artists/Poets, Midmarch Arts Press, NY, wherein acknowledgements are given to original sources
Table of Contents
Poetry and its Rubble, Non-Fiction by Marianne Boruch
Eight poems from César Vallejo’s Trilce, Poetry by César Vallejo, Translated by Magda Bogin
Raya in Ramapo, Fiction by L. K. Gornick
The Rain, Poetry by Greg Kuzma
Middle Passages: Representations of the Slave Trade in Caribbean and African-American Literature, Non-Fiction by Carl Pedersen
Parallels: Artists/Poets, introduction by Anne Halley; poems by Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Helene Johnson, Dilys Laing, and H.D.; art by Oriole Farb Feshbach, Claire Heimarck, Lucy D. Rosenfeld
WITNESS: Konza, Non-Fiction by Elizabeth Dodd
from The Cinnamon Bay Sonnets, Poetry by Andrew Kaufman
W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Conversation of Races” and its Context: Idealism, Conservatism and Hero Worship, Non-Fiction by Wilson J. Moses
A Town Lit by the Sea; From the Hye Hilles, As When a Spryng Doth Fall, Poetry by James Woodbrown
The Revolt of Everyday Things, Fiction by Karen Heuler
Beauty and the Beast of L.A., Non-Fiction by Kirby Farrell
Contributors
Magda Bogin, a writer and translator, lives in New York City.
Marianne Boruch has published two poetry collections, and a third is forthcoming in Spring 1994 from Field Editions. An essay on Sylvia Plath will appear in Parnassus.
Elizabeth Dodd teaches creative writing and literature at Kansas State University. Her critical study, The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet (Univ. of Missouri Press) and a poetry collection, Like Memory, Caverns (New York Univ. Press) appeared in December 1992.
A professor of English at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Kirby Farrell‘s most recent books include Snuff (a novel) and Play, Death and Heroism in Shakespeare.
Artist Oriole Farb Feshbach has published two previous books, including the illuminations for William Carlos Williams’ Asphodel, That Greeny Flower. Along with artists Claire Heimarck and Lucy D. Rosenfeld she has completed a third, Parallels: Artists/Poets, excerpts from which appear in this issue of MR.
L. K. Gornick has published fiction in Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, and other journals.
Poet Anne Halley is also a poetry editor for MR.
Claire Heimarck, painter and printmaker, is represented by the Jan Weiss Gallery in NYC.
Karen Heuler‘s work has appeared in Tri-Quarterly, Boston Review, Carolina Quarterly, et. al.
Andrew Kaufman teaches at John Jay College in NYC. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and he has recently completed a book-length sonnet sequence.
Greg Kuzma teaches poetry workshops at the University of Nebraska; a new collection of poems will be published this year by Orchises.
Wilson J. Moses, a professor of History at The Pennsylvania State Univ., has published a number of books, most recently The Wings of Ethiopia (Iowa State Univ. Press).
Carl Pedersen, Assoc. Professor of English at the Univ. of Roskilde, Denmark, is currently Scholar-in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Adélio Prado lives and writes in Divinópolis, Brazil. A volume of her translated work, The Alphabet in the Park, is available from UPNE.
Lucy D. Rosenfeld, artist and author of seven books, has most recently co-authored Art on Site.
James Wood, a marketing consultant in the Philadelphia area, has poems forthcoming in The Colorado Review and several other magazines.