New Letters, Volume 69 Number 2-3

New Letters, Volume 69 Number 2-3
7 / Editor's Note, Robert Stewart

E S S A Y S

26 / On Rediscovering Vincent O. Carter, an introduction, Chip Fleischer
55 / Robert Stackhouse: Artist As Shapeshifter, an introduction, Elisabeth Kirsch
73 / Real Words, Paul Zimmer
101 / How Many of You Are There In the Quartet?, Brian Doyle
119 / Alice, Judy Ray
157 / Looking Out, Gary Gildner

P O E T R Y

8 / Six Poems, Naomi Shihab Nye
14 / Four Poems, Quincy Troupe
20 / Two Poems, Marilyn Hacker
93 / Tools, Joseph Millar
94 / Luminous Blue Variables, Michelle Boisseau
133 / When I Left, Vanessa Sooy
136 / On the Holy Friar Crossing a Suspension Bridge to Paradise, Joanna Goodman
138 / We are not Creatures of a Single Day, trans. by David McDuff, Pia Tafdrup
140 / Two Poems, Judith Berke
170 / Looking for the Man in the Moon, Suzanne Rhodenbaugh
210 / The Summer Carnival, Luisa Igloria
212 / Two Poems, Donald Junkins

F I C T I O N

33 / The Song of Evening, Vincent O. Carter
59 / Songs Without Words, Charlotte Holmes
65 / Kismet, Sarah A. Odishoo
79 / Amnesty Barracks, Daniel Woodrell
215 / The Pleasure of Man and Woman Together on Earth, Thomas E. Kennedy

I N T E R V I E W

142 / The Subject is Life, conducted, by Angela Elam, Naomi Shihab Nye

T H E L I T E R A R Y A W A R D S

172 / Awards, an introduction, Aleatha Ezra
173 / Stone or Water, first place, The Alexander Patterson Cappon Award for Fiction, Janet L. Thompson
189 / On the Edge of Ice, first place, The Dorothy Churchill Cappon award for creative nonfiction, Monica Devine
199 / Five Poems, first place, the New Letters poetry award, Ellen Bass

R E V I E W S

241 / H. L. Hix, "Modes of Sacred Speech": A review of poetry books by Grace Schulman, Miranda Field, Natasha Trethewey, Jacqueline Marcus, Linda Gregerson.
253 / Conger Beasley Jr., "Anything Could Occur": A review of Hart Crane: A Life, by Clive Fisher.

A R T W O R K

Robert Stackhouse, drawings, etching, lithographs, front cover & pages, 6, 53, 54, 58, 72, 78, 118, 131, 132, 156, 171, 188, 198, 209, 214. (Introductory essay by Elisabeth Kirsch, page 55.)
258 / Awards Honor Roll
260 / New Programs: New Letters on the Air
260 / Celebrations: News From Our Authors
261 / Visitors' Log: The New Letters Guest Book
262 / NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

S T A F F

Editor: Robert Stewart

Administrative Director: Betsy Beasley

Assistant Managing Editor: Aleatha Ezra

Producer, New Letters on the Air: Angela Elam

Assistant Producer: Leslie Koffler

Readers: James McKinley, Thomas Russell, Karen Subach, William Trowbridge

Student Staff: Valerie Benz, Regan Cochran, Jason Holmes, Adam Kraft, Jannie Morrison, Stuart Smith, Amy Thomas

Past Editors: Alexander Cappon, David Ray, James McKinley

New Letters website: umkc.edu/newletters. Webmaster: Joe Short

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NEW LETTERS (ISSN 0146-4930)

VOLUME 69 NUMBER 2/3

Printed in the United States

Electronic edition published by Cultural Heritage Langauge Technologies and funded by the National Science Foundation International Digital Library Program. This text has been proofread to a high degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using typesetters source files.

Songs Without Words (Charlotte Holmes)

screen before the video clicks on "play." Your child is there, a single image defined by sound waves, as long as a cocktail shrimp. Perhaps the story is that all these years you've misunderstood. The marvel is not that children die, but that so many survive.

You're a woman who thinks things through, who holds her heart in check until she's sure it won't be broken. But tonight you're one person in a crowd sipping wine in a friend's kitchen, almost certain that you are, quite unrea-sonably, selfishly, heartbroken, your loss a drop in an endless sea of losses.

Get over it, you tell yourself, smiling fiercely at your friends. Get over it right now.

When you leave them, escape to the deck for air, your friends' voices float through the open doors. We lost our first child twenty years ago, a man says, and I don't think Betsy ever got over it. They tell each other you're taking it well, that you're a trooper, tough as nails, a rock. They're talking about someone else; they'd have to be . . . you lift another glass of wine to your lips.

Out here it's just you and the cool spring night, the moon rising through the pine boughs and a form disap-pearing through the back gate into the alley - just a shape scissoring across the darkness, too distant to identify. The gate clicks shut, and you know that you haven't imagined it entirely. Something was there, yes, circumscribed by absence.

All week you're sure you've misplaced something though you can't imagine what. You open your wallet and count your credit cards. You spill the contents of your jewelry box onto the bed and put the pieces back, one by one. In the warm light of early evening you stand in the yard and look up at your house, your eyes moving from window to window, trying to remember. Was there somewhere to go? Someone to call?

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