Burning Issues. AGNI 23 muses on problems too pressing to ignore. Margaret Atwood confronts the threat of tyranny in “Shopping,” and William Stafford explores war and its omnipresence in daily life in “Children Still Play,” while Lawrence Millman merges these in “A Child’s Guide to Latin American Politics.” Other bold writers, including Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Morris, Denise Levertov, Ernesto Cardenal, David Wagoner, Rachel Hadas, Irina Ratushinskaya, and Richard Falk, highlight other scourges in an attempt at concrete opposition. Each of their stories, poems, and essays asserts the ability of the written word to bring global change.