The Literary Review articles from September 1997

The Literary Review archives from September 1997

Scenes of Lake Atitlan. (short story)
September 22, 1997... Perhaps a night shot of Lake Atitlan to start off will allow us to produce in the spectator the sensation of quietude. That's it, / some evening shots in December, a starlit sky, with the atmosphere cold and pristine: / several panoramic views...

First book of the moon. (poem)
September 22, 1997... And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.... I New Moon (Moon as Utterance) I can't remember the first time we said moon. We were lightheaded by...

Translation. (poem)
September 22, 1997... On the train from Cambridge, I stared out at a frozen path. The tall marsh grass, iced over, gleamed like a wolf's back. The trees bloomed with ice. Black, silver, white-- if spring came in the underworld it would...

Grace. (short story)
September 22, 1997... In all my time in airports and railway terminals, the sentimental junctions of the world, I have seen only one parting that moved me. It was a July afternoon in Northern Italy, at a small train station ornate as a wedding cake. Two gay men stood...

Relinquish. (poem)
September 22, 1997... It is during the night when Van Gogh materializes on a shadest-retched corner of Amsterdam. He takes your hand, and leads you through the slendering dark, the secret cobbled walkways; a five-star tour guide. With him you feel how large the...

Charlie's at the wire waiting for you to sleep. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Weekly poems, reruns of prisoners in a pirate film walking the plank, you jumped in San Francisco, hand wrapped with your own red bandana unlike your father who tied one around his head after dipping it in blood from bodies that couldn't deny...

Forbidding mourning. (poem)
September 22, 1997... In this light, at the window, her reflection finally looks as thin to her as everyone's been saying. Her wrist is tired of supporting her head, her nose tissue-sore, the eyes dry as ash. It's going to be another ...

Goodbye pork pie hat. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Mingus said most cats thought the beat was a dot they had to hit. But he saw it as a circle, and the trick was to land somewhere inside. Memory's like that. Best when it's imperfect, a soft suggestion that slips in...

'Alala. (short story)
September 22, 1997... I drive the compact rental car through the large open gate, under the curved sign spelling out Hale Aina, Hawaiian for "house of the land," in lazy cursive letters of forged iron. The Blanchards own a lot of land -- the ranch is the third largest...

As I recollect the July you (Milledgeville, 1944). (poem)
September 22, 1997... Come with the Summer red toes of your open-toed wedgies lighting your way, or in your mysterious golden snood, or one of the sarongs you & your wartime cronies concocted, coping with good times & transferred husbands. Come...

That's all. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Just as the first year at Saint Alphonsus ended, teachers and parents recognized a sort of genius. A nineteen-year-old cousin from Venezuela saw glimpses of it while we played games of wit. 1986. I had barely reached...

Soldiers killing hours (Ft. Bowie, Arizona Territory, 1881). (poem)
September 22, 1997... Find nests of red and black ants; dig a hole in each and insert cans emptied of peaches or jam. It works precisely and unrelentingly as a clock. Once swarming-full, dump the cans into a big basin and watch how...

Lunch at the army canteen. (poem)
September 22, 1997... The British Army Barracks were fun to see -- I remember it in the jungle outside Lucknow, wide paths to broad tan buildings, and men wore caps with quarter-moon fronts to keep the sun from shining in. I wondered, do...

In the dream of the red world. (poem)
September 22, 1997... In the dream of the red world the sun stalls low on the horizon, dawn and dusk wait in the wings like anxious relatives and all the artists of Botticelli's school return incongruously to the city. Let them...

Vlaminck. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Vlaminck -- you were right. Impasto is best, the heavy reds, blues, greens, trowled on with the knife after a day of bicycle racing, the sweat abead on the end of the nose, the head lathered with sweat....

This picture. (poem)
September 22, 1997... The sun makes the darker colors bright On the hills the hilly clouds pierced with light The little fishes panning out in spurts Across my reflection leaning on the bridge Background watermusic over stones The goat,...

Seeing. (poem)
September 22, 1997... 1 On January tenth at the Modern, a painting we liked asked us to step forward. Down, that is to say, fly, I mean, as if our overcoats were wings to follow a riverbank to a canal. The difference between green...

Training the eyes. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Walking to the river with Alexandra on my shoulders, her hands half blinding me, is better than sitting around thinking how you are stricken, white-eyed, unable to move a thing or shape a word. ...

Two poets. (short story)
September 22, 1997... 1. Shortly after midday, swerving to avoid three children, a recklessly overloaded truck rolled on its side, spewing a shipment of Malaysian refrigerators and steel sinks across the recently finished Presidential Highway. The sight of new...

Recovery #9. (poem)
September 22, 1997... In the space of vast creation: play of fireworks sky across sky, with suns and stars from age to the end of age. I too have come from the beginningless invisible with a tiny dot at the end of the spark to this...

Profit and loss. (poem)
September 22, 1997... I'm lying again, with grace, I bow respectfully before the mirror reflecting my collar and tie. I believe I am that gentleman who goes out every morning at nine. The gods are dead one by one in long lines of...

If I'm to live. (poem)
September 22, 1997... If I'm to live without you, let it be hard and bloody, cold soup, broken shoes, or in the midst of opulence let the dry branch of a cough jerk through me, barking your twisted name, the foaming vowels, and let the bedsheets ...

What the crow does is not singing. (poem)
September 22, 1997... On winter mornings when no bird sings, the crow represents all ideas. On fire with purple and green, blazing black against the snow, its feathers eat the sun. The silence is pure as the ring of the rim...

The empress Dowager's marble boat (Summer Palace, Beijing). (poem)
September 22, 1997... "Let my boat be launched out of whiteness, fretwork cut in filigree of stone. Curve the prow, the stilled wheel half-submerged in clearing waters that I may test their buoyancy."...

Degrees of September moonrise. (poem)
September 22, 1997... The moon above windbreak pine is overfull. Horizon cloud-mountains surround the clear sky. Crop flowers nearly sparkle in crop beginning to darken, to gray, alongside a russet fallow. The moon darts among pine trunks I...

New night snow. (poem)
September 22, 1997... In the first moon rising to this year, I can follow the wires drawn onto snow, pole after dim pole home, count insulators--there's little else. No owl, no lovers lean to this skimming wind. A plow chinks back and forth,...

The Sea Goddess. (short story)
September 22, 1997... There Were seven of us trekking in Indonesia. Seven until Jim died, of course, and then there were six. The natives said the sea goddess got Jim. Some of the group believed this, I think, after certain inexplicable circumstances were pointed out....

What the earth gives up. (poem)
September 22, 1997... I come home today to find another small death on my doorstep. This time it's a baby mole, its nose a dull beacon, a half moon ripped from its haunches. Now, our insatiable razor-eyed cat is out by the back fence ...

Lacuna. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Trains are panting between stations. Four billion lives hesitate. The world -- a meringue glacee, is eaten by moonlight. The sea dies. Father, solve me; pull me out. ...

Belief in three climates. (poem)
September 22, 1997... What he thought was his soul was not his soul; it was a noise, the sound of an engine idling; it was the flapping of pigeons by the dried up plaza fountain, each one the color of a different winter day. A...

The face that. (poem)
September 22, 1997... She didn't launch anything. Only herself, when she left Menelaus, snoring, every couple of weeks grabbing her, poking a jagged fingernail, stinking ale. Always she had known, from her swan-feather youth, she herself...

Meteor shower. (poem)
September 22, 1997... It's our habit of seeing connections that makes the meteor shower look like a constellation shattering, when in fact these particles of matter are debris, not shooting stars but defunct comet dust on fire. We,...

Impurities. (poem)
September 22, 1997... I see them now: segmented legs, feelers, Chitinous breast plates in the ice cream Melting, untouched, in my dish. It just Makes sense: enough poison to kill the bugs Would foul the chocolate more than the stray ...

Naturalization. (short story)
September 22, 1997... When I started with the service I was fresh out of college, a young pup with more pimples than common sense. I got an apartment in a little corner on the far east side of Hollywood near the city college. One day I got a piece of mail from the...

Southtrust at sunset. (poem)
September 22, 1997... You can see each separate stone glow in the cold of October, waver -- and all but give over. The sun grows old. It floats lower. Something like dust or like smoke (or like love?) seems to hover high up,...

When theories collide. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Eye on a microscope I float on my back in protoplasm wade through protein of a breathing liquid, see myself in a mirror of DNA. Sometimes, I break loose from an atom and wander the streets, become...

How to watch a movie. (poem)
September 22, 1997... When you play with your friends, wear cowboy hats, put a cigar in your mouth, wear masks, bleach your skin if you have to. You will want to play the cowboy. Shed the earrings and tattoos that brand you....

Adultery. (poem)
September 22, 1997... Not believing, his fingers find the wet seam of her strangeness, and not believing, she opens. Outside her windowpane the autumn explodes in lit clusters across the lake. Now comes the long season. ...

Golomkis. (poem)
September 22, 1997... First time I make them is 1921. My sister give me the recipe but I read it wrong, still tangled in my English, so the golomkis exploded in the stove. My God what a mess! By now of course they're art triumphant, ...

Stalking a swallowtail. (poem)
September 22, 1997... "You will be most successful if you remember these simple rules: go slow, go low, approach from behind, and don't cross the butterfly with your shadow." Butterflies do not believe in eclipses. They believe in...

No matter what happened. (poem)
September 22, 1997... You two were wrestling. Who has actually defeated whom you'll never know. Your fingers still burn from having touched the gluey, rough fur cape. Blood is oozing out of your skin. Once the creature had given up, ...

Just before. (poem)
September 22, 1997... As the clock strikes chords of tin, sun bores in and I stare at cracks and knot holes in boards, the crib packed away in a corner. A bird passes across light, gliding like black rag lazy among branches. ...

The glass motel: personal reflections on the fortieth anniversary of 'Lolita'. (child pornography and sexual abuse of children)
September 22, 1997... A decade ago, living in Denmark without writer friends, I learned that there was an American novelist who made his home in the little north Zealand town where I sometimes summered. My mother-in-law had discovered him one morning on the beach as...

The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Robert Bly's anthology of spiritual poetry, The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy, is one more evidence of a recent surge of interest in the poetry of what Goethe referred to as "the holy longing" -- for wine and bread from the world beyond, or...

My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Readers craving those rare publications comprising both Spanish- and English-language poetry may appreciate two recent bilingual arrivals which, in practically all other respects, could scarcely be more dissimilar. William Lawlor's Let's Go...

Let's Go Down to the Beach: Poems and Translations. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Readers craving those rare publications comprising both Spanish- and English-language poetry may appreciate two recent bilingual arrivals which, in practically all other respects, could scarcely be more dissimilar. William Lawlor's Let's Go...

Girl Hurt. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... E.J. Miller Laino. Farmington, Maine: Alicejamesbook, 1995. A child stares out from a tinted '50s photo on the cover. Perched on the edge of her seat, she is wary, both vulnerable and tough. On each knee, a garish pink Band-aid flashes out...

Wise Women. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Susan Cahill, New York: Norton, 1996. Wise women is editor Susan Cahill's ninth anthology of writing by and about women. Spanning twenty centuries and dozens of cultures, it gives us eighty-nine writings (essays, stories, poems, prayers,...

The Bride Wore Red. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Robbie Clipper Sethi, Bridgehampton, NY: Bridge Works, 1996. Can true love survive a pair of nosy but well-meaning in-laws? Can any love survive a round dozen or so of them? And what if the bride is a young white American, and her husband a...

Crawling from the Wreckage. <Subdivision> (book reviews)</Subdivision>
September 22, 1997... Clifford Lawrence Meth, Morristown, NJ: Aardwolf, 1996. Let me confess, right off, that Cliff Meth is a friend of mine. Normally, I don't like to review books by friends, as it's difficult to be honest. However, I've been known to do it when a...