AGNI 67
Contents
Editor's Note
In the Commissaries of Hell
Fiction
Professor Arecibo
by Ken Kalfus
Drill and Song Day
Translated from the Russian by Andrea Gregovich and Mikhail Iossel
Connected
Essays
On Not Being Proust: An Essay in Literary Failure
Alberto de Lacerda: A Remembrance
Visions of Gerard
Crucibles: The Orchestration of Surprise
A Note on Steven Berg’s Rimbaud: “. . . still unilluminated I . . .”
by David Rivard
Poetry
Epiphany
The Charges Are Stalking & Arson
by Amy Beeder
Against the Neighbors, Bury Bottles
by Amy Beeder
Silverfish
by Amy Beeder
Skin Trade
by Nicky Beer
The Last Days of Jaco Pastorius
by Bruce Bond
Tigers
Litany of Resistance
In Maryland
by Stephen Burt
A Walk in the Morning Sun
by Stephen Burt
The Thinker
À la Turka
by Joanne Diaz
Bullied Into Thoughts About the Body & Desire at the Colorado State Fair
by Matt Donovan
How Graceland’s Decorator Landed the Gig
by Matt Donovan
Bessie Smith’s Last Recorded Song
by Matt Donovan
Two Songs About the Work of Hands
by Matt Donovan
Morphine: Eugene O’Neill Remembering
by Steve Gehrke
Nihilism: Eugene O’Neill at Sea
by Steve Gehrke
Song for the Returns
by Todd Hearon
Devotion: Dub
by Bruce Smith
Devotion: Fly
by Bruce Smith
A Sea-Change
“Afternoon. Durrant’s…”
“Perhaps it exists . . .”
Just These Miracles
Voice and transformation. This issue features a deep reckoning of friendship by Roland Merullo, a recollection of a mentor by Jhumpa Lahiri, and sharp, smart idiosyncracies by Sarah Gorham and David Rivard. Playing against these are antic and bittersweet stories by Perle Besserman, Ken Kalfus, and Vladimir Makanin, among others. Here are writers marking how the self broods—broods, and then flips loss onto its turtle back; how it damns the damnable and laughs out at all that is tangled and absurd. Pilar Coover’s hallucinatory visual textures aptly counterpoint the voices, which also include those of poets Matt Donovan, Amy Beeder, Paula Closson Buck, Bruce Smith, and Derek Walcott.
| Editor | Sven Birkerts | ||
| Founding Editor | Askold Melnyczuk | ||
| Senior Editor | William Pierce | ||
| Fiction Editors | William Giraldi | ||
| William Charles Delman | |||
| Jessica Keener | |||
| Poetry Editors | Lynne Potts | ||
| Jay Deshpande | |||
| Editor-at-large | Jennifer Stroup (Jennifer Alise Drew) | ||
| Advisory Board | Leslie Epstein | ||
| Robert Pinsky | |||
| Derek Walcott | |||
| Rosanna Warren | |||
| Editorial Assistants | Beth Romano | ||
| David Winter | |||
| Kaitlin Howard | |||
| Sean A. Higgins | |||
| Sumita Chakraborty | |||
| Heather Hughes | |||
| S. A. Spieller | |||
| Alexandra Goldstein | |||
| Contributing Editors | Lucie Brock-Broido | ||
| John J. Clayton | |||
| William Corbett | |||
| Stuart Dischell | |||
| Sharon Dunn, ed. emerita | |||
| Thomas Sayers Ellis | |||
| Marie Howe | |||
| Diane Der-Hovanessian | |||
| Ha Jin | |||
| Alex Johnson | |||
| Susan Johnson | |||
| Fred Marchant | |||
| Fiona McCrae | |||
| Gail Mazur | |||
| Joe Osterhaus | |||
| Dzvinia Orlowsky | |||
| Liam Rector (1949-2007) | |||
| George Scialabba | |||
| Tom Sleigh | |||
| Sue Standing | |||
| Oksana Zabuzhko |