Table of Contents

1989 The Bridge of Intellectuals • "Socialism with a Human Face" • After Frank Zappa's Visit to the Castle • St. Vitus • Weekend • The Book of Complaints AN UNTETHERING Rehab • The Dog • The Car, the House • Saint Roch • Second Marriage TUCKED Love Poem for an Enemy • The Boxers Embrace • When Someday the President-Elect of the United States Requests That I Compose and Recite a Poem for Her Inauguration, I Shall Stand at the Podium and Speak the Following: • Elegy for Robert L. Jones • On the Day After Allen Ginsberg's Death Someone Thinks of Me • The Comfort Inn WIND IN THE CHIMNEY The Letters • Meluzina • Elegy for Miroslav Holub • In Memory of Miroslav Prochazka, Scholar of Czech Literature • Libuse • Germans in the Pool • An American Lawyer in Olomouc • Tick • Prague Winter FEUILLETONS The Art of Teaching • The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival • My Best Lesbian Friend • Movie Critics • Pariah • The Art of Revenge • If I Were a Jew • The Gossip • The Cumulative Weight of Despair • Rich People Slumming in Academe • As When Someone with Long Beautiful Hair Turns Around • George W. Bush Was Very Nice to Me • Each Customer in an Odious Task • In America They Would Get Shot • The Slovaks • Ordinary Czechs Singing on TV • There's No Tragic Weather Here • The Liberal Arts • The Super Rich Are an Oppressed Minority • Two Fellows Only a Little Swarthier Than I • A Brief History of Your Conception