An issue of Ploughshares from Fall 1986, guest-edited by Charles Simic. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
This classic poetry issue, with select nonfiction, is guest-edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Simic, and features the work of a number of masters including Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Karr, Philip Levine, ...
An issue of Ploughshares from Fall 1986, guest-edited by Charles Simic. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
This classic poetry issue, with select nonfiction, is guest-edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Simic, and features the work of a number of masters including Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Karr, Philip Levine, Thomas Lux, Franz Wright, Al Young, and Stephen Dobyns. This issue also contains the nonfiction work by Mark Strand, Fanny Howe, William Corbett, and Richard Jackson.
INTRODUCTION
Charles Simic, “Why I Like Certain Poems More Than Others”
POETRY AND PROSE
Mark Strand, “Narrative Poetry”
Philip Levine, “Picture Postcard from the Other World”
Linda Pastan, Three Poems
Thomas Lux, Four Poems
Elizabeth Tornes, Four Poems
William Matthews, “Self-Knowledge,” “Schoolboys with Dog, Winter”
Cleopatra Mathis, “A Seasonal Record”
Charles Wright, from “A Journal of the Year of the Ox”
Mekeel McBride, “Annunciation,” “Taking Pleasure”
Daniel Halpern, “Tango,” “Stanzione”
Jane Kenyon, “With the Dog at Sunrise,” “Staying at Grandma's”
C. K. Williams, Four Poems
Fanny Howe, “Secondary Indifferents”
Russell Edson, Three Poems
Al Young, from “22 Moon Poems”
James Tate, “Poem,” “Aunt Sophie's Morning”
Lynn Boulger, “The Power of Bridges”
Stephen Dobyns, Three Poems
Sarah Cotterill, “blue wing”
Gregory Orr, “To the Muse,” “Sex”
Mary Karr, “The Lynched Man”
Ira Sadoff, Three Poems
Roberta Bienvenu, “This Garden”
Lucie Brock-Broido, “After the Grand Perhaps,” “Ten Years' Apprenticeship in Fantasy”
William Corbett, “Philip Guston 1913-1980”
Franz Wright, “Winter Entries,” “The Talk”
Alice B. Fogel, “Snowstorm”
Stuart Dischell, “Little Foot”
Anne Zuckerman, “Night,” “Saint Francis”
Jonathan Aaron, “Then,” “The Fourth Grade”
James Kirk, “Cows in Snow”
Karen Propp, “Who Sweeps the Sidewalk,” “Nothing But Heart”
Kenneth Rosen, “Sheep in Wales”
Donald Hall, “'Richard'”
George Starbuck, Three Poems
John Pijewski, Three Poems
William Corbett, “The New Selected William Carlos Williams”
Richard Jackson, “Many Happy Returns: The Poetry of John Ashbery”
Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he had a traumatic childhood during World War II. In 1954 he emigrated from Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United States. They lived in and around Chicago until 1958.
His first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. In 1961 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor's degree from New York University while working at night to cover the costs of tuition.
His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published the following year. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the U.S. and abroad, twenty titles of his own poetry among them, including That Little Something (Harcourt, 2008), My Noiseless Entourage (2005); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems (2003); Night Picnic (2001); The Book of Gods and Devils (2000); and Jackstraws (1999), which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.
His other books of poetry include Walking the Black Cat (1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; A Wedding in Hell (1994); Hotel Insomnia (1992); The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1990); and Unending Blues (1986).
Simic has also published numerous translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poetry, and is the author of several books of essays, including Orphan Factory. He has edited several anthologies, including an edition of The Best American Poetry in 1992.
Simic was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2007. About the appointment, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, "The range of Charles Simic's imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor."
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Overview
This classic poetry issue, with select nonfiction, is guest-edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Simic, and features the work of a number of masters including Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Karr, Philip Levine, ...