Volume 43, Issue 2
FRONT COVER: Nanny Vonnegut
WAKE UP CALL, 1995
GOUACHE, COLORED PENCIL ON PAPER
30 X 15 INCHES
IN THIS ISSUE MR raises memories, memories of people and ideas alive and awake in the labyrinth of our hundred-and seventy-odd issues. We remember the poet Agha Shahid Ali, colleague and contributor, with Christine Benvenuto’s inspiring interview, and a poem by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller in whose translation Shahid participated. Through the generosity of Daniel Hales (who also contributes a ghazal of his own), and the Agha Shahid Ali Literary Trust, we have some pages from Shahid s manuscript of “The Floating Post Office,” including the colorful one on the back cover. And by courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company, we reprint the poem itself from Shahid s 1997 volume The Country Without a Post Office.
We renew our interest in African-American issues, recollecting our WE.B. Dubois special issue of 1994 with a magisterial new examination of the idea of double consciousness by Ernest Allen, Jr; and with Jennifer Jensen Wallach s essay on Fawn Brodie, the historian who first chronicled the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings; and then with Gail Hall Howards memoir of interracial marriage in the Chicago 1960s.
Among these rich memories bright new things walk, led by Valerie Martin through “The Open Door.”
—David Lenson, Editor
Table of Contents
The Open Door, Fiction by Valerie Martin
Where Do I Crawl; Grace; Peace to the People of the Earth, Poetry by Tomaž Šalamun, Translated by Joshua Beckman and the poet
Last Day, Poetry by Timothy Liu
Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument, Non-Fiction by Ernest Allen Jr.
There Be Phantasies, Poetry by Eva Hooker
Good, Brothers, Fiction by Peter Markus
The Woman in a Purple Coat, Poetry by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller, Translated by Agha Shahid Ali with Stephen Clingman and the poet
Conversation with Agha Shahid Ali, Non-Fiction by Christine Benvenuto
The Floating Post Office, Poetry by Agha Shahid Ali
Dear Shahid, Poetry by Daniel Hales
The Vindication of Fawn Brodie, Non-Fiction by Jennifer Jensen Wallach
Flag Etiquette, Poetry by Chris Kingsley
The Agonist, Poetry by Ogaga Ifowodo
Landscape with Abandoned Trash, Poetry by Kate Northrop
The Price, Fiction by E.M. Beekman
Deer, Poetry by Steven Lapinsky
Crucifixion, Poetry by Therese Svoboda
Father, Poetry by Joel Brouwer
Chicago Spring, Fiction by Gail Hall Howard
Contributors
Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Rooms Are Never Finished. Originally from Kashmir, he was a professor in the Master of the Fine Arts in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Ernest Allen Jr. is Associate Chairman of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts.
E.M. Beekman is the author of twenty five books, including two novels and a collection of poems. He has published stories and poems in journals in both the United States and Europe. He is a professor of Germanic Languages at the University of Massachusetts and is also currently the MacBryde Professor at The Kampong, one of the National Tropical Botanic Gardens. He is working on an annotated translation of Rumphius’ Herbal of Tropical Flora.
Christine Benvenuto‘s short stories and essays have appeared in many publications, including The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Poets and Writers, and the Gettysburg Review. She is an associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College.
Joel Brouwer‘s first book of poems, Exactly What Happened, won the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and the Larry Levis Reading Prize. His poems and essays have appeared in Agni, Boston Review, Chelsea, Paris Review, Parnassus, Ploughshares, The Progressive, Southwest Review, and other publications. “Father” is from Centuries, a collection of prose poems that will be published by Four Way Books in 2003.
Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller is a poet and translator. Born in Israel, her poetry has appeared in a number of Israeli literary reviews. Yehudit’s first book of poetry, written in Hebrew, The Woman in a Purple Coat, was published by Eked Publishing, Tel-Aviv. Her second collection of Hebrew poems, Even in the Summer It Rains Here, will be published by Eked in Fall 2002. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts.
Daniel Hales lives, writes, teaches, and rocks out in the band S.H.ArQ. in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Eva Hooker teaches Shakespeare and Creative Writing at Saint John’s University in Minnesota. A finalist for the Minnesota Book award, she has poems forthcoming in Orion and Salmagundi. She is a Sister of the Holy Cross.
Gail Hall Goward teaches a memoir writing class at Norwalk Community College, where she also finds internships for students. Her work has appeared the Voice Literary Supplement and previously in the Massachusetts Review.
Ogaga Ifowodo‘s work includes Homeland and Other Poems (Kraft Books), which won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Prize for poetry in 1993. He earned a law degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria. He was detained for six months under the military regime of General Abacha in 1997.
Chris Kingsley‘s work has appeared in Aura, Brooklyn Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Poem, among other publications. He lives in New Hamburg, New York with his wife and two children.
Steven Lapinsky has had work published in The Southern Poetry Review, Red Cedar Review, The New Orleans Review, and Columbia Poetry Review. His two collections of poetry are currently available to an interested publisher. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Timothy Liu‘s most recent book of poems is Hard Evidence (Talisman House, 2001).
Peter Markus is the writer-in-residence at a number of Detroit’s public schools. His stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, New Orleans Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, and Third Coast. He the father of two beautiful children and is in love with his wife, who is also very beautiful.
Valerie Martin “cravenly confesses” that she actually writes with a pen, a Pilot Extra Fine. She is the author of two collections of short fiction and six novels, including Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, and Mary Reilly.
Kate Northrop graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshops in 1995. She has been an Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing at West Chester University and an assistant editor at American Poetry Review. Recent poems have appeared in Raritan, Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other journals. She lives in Philadelphia.
Tomaž Šalamun is the author of The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems (White Pine Press, 1997) and Feast (Harcourt, 2000). He is the author of numerous books in Slovenian.
Terese Svoboda‘s fourth book of poetry, Treason, will be published in the Fall of 2002. Her third book of fiction, Trailer Girl and Other Stories, was published by Counterpoint Press in 2001.
Jennifer Wallach is a doctoral student in the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts. Her essay “Our National Amnesia About Race: A Review Essay of David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” will be published in The Ethnic Studies Review.