AGNI 36

AGNI 36

Celebrate our twentieth anniversary year with AGNI 36, an issue that tugs between the fantastical and the everyday. You will find here writing that is grounded in bodily and cosmic speculation, that challenges inhumane working conditions, that pulls at family ties and pushes our understanding of being human. In addition to our feature on Thom Gunn, which includes an unpublished draft of his poem “Meat” and Joshua Weiner’s close reading, we offer a second feature, “Writing from India,” which includes Mridula Garg’s essay on bilingualism and Indian writers’ work in translation. AGNI 36 also presents essays, fiction, and poetry by Seamus Heaney, Victoria Nelson, Peter Sacks, Ha Jin, Peter LaSalle, Dorianne Laux, Patricia Smith, Vijay Seshadri, Liam Rector, Laura Mullen, Jorge Luis Borges, and Donald Hall.

Fiction

Rhode Island Fish
The Match
Dragon Head
Black Book
Elina Is Happy
Translated from the Latvian by Banuta Rubess

Essays

Women of the Maquiladoras
Frank Bidart: A Salute
The Strange History of the American Fanatic
“What Was Lost”: Dissident Artists after Soviet Communism

Poetry

Self-Defense
by Ai
Mother Hunger and Her Seatbelt
Heraclitus
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Frick
June 1968
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Frick
There Is the Body Lying in State
Inferno * Purgatorio * Paradiso
A Walk Around the Lake
The Scar
Radical Forgetting
Blueberry Pie
Buddies
A Baptist Beat
An Apology
Translated from the Urdu by Andrew McCord
from Memory: II
Translated from the Bulgarian by Lisa Sapinkopf and Georgi Belev
Leopard Man
What I See I Am
Dedikation #5
Translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
The Uncovered Dish
Courage
Credo
A Scene
Translated from the Bulgarian by Lisa Sapinkopf and Georgi Belev
Heart
At the End of the Twentieth Century The Barbary Rim
Dust
Petition
Last Night
For the Dead
Lincoln in Richmond
Beatles
Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Secrets
Working Wrong
Stilling
The Testimonies of Ramon Fernandez
Against the Maker
Annie Pearl Smith Discovers Moonlight
Nickel Wine and Deep Kisses
Self-Portrait as Foreign Policy
Grandmother’s Clothes
Jimmy’s First Cigarette
Démon de la Trompette
Gerald
The Lesson
The Promise
The Horn of Hard Water
A Definition of Poetry
Translated from the Ukrainian by Michael M. Naydan

Reviews

“Also This, Also That”: Robert Pinsky’s Poetics of Inclusion

Thom Gunn Feature

Essays
A Note on Thom Gunn’s “Lament”
Poetry
Two Versions of “Meat”
Conversations
An Interview with Thom Gunn