Volume 43, Issue 2

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

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