The Literary Review back issues from January 1999:
Glacier.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> They were, let's say, a couple we once knew(though mostly what we knew was what we readin newspapers, where daily the story changed),and we were following their red Mercedesconvertible home from a rather elegant party--let's say an opening--we'd both attended, ...
"Making His Muscles Work For Himself": An Interview with David Henry Hwang.(Asian-American playwright)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Raised in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb by a first generation, Chinese American fundamentalist Christian family, David Henry Hwang wrote and directed his first play, F.O.B. (slang for "fresh off the boat"), which explores the tensions within and between recent and assimilated Chinese ...
Revisions: Imogene Cunningham at Ninety.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> She had seventy years of images inside her headand closet the year she won a grant to print some negativesshe'd never seen on paper, only in the darkroom's wetand partial light. Her helper found glass negativesthat she'd labelled "not worth printing" fifty years ...
Bound Feet.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Golden lilies, golden lotus, the Chinese called the feetof noble women, bound with silken bandages when theywere four or five, toes drawn into the soles, curving"like the new moon," one admiring Emperor said. Once, at our Museum, an ancient Chinese woman stood...
Landscapes and Architectures.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> 1we feed on the twilightcorner shadowsthose five-thirty a.m.illusions that turnthe hallway into a mansion,my apartment into a city, thecity into a continent,the continent into your eyes and otherhollows of your bodyas we consume ...
Counting Hawks.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> They glide in slow circles above the fieldsof dry September corn, dark eyes corkscrewing downto catch the flicker of mouse or squirrelout foraging this morning. We've watched them for hours, my son and I, since crossing backfrom the island to the mainland, ...
October.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> October: nut and apple of the months,ruins of a gilded architecture,your ripeness gleamsin the last sheaves. Your airy flesh, wing unfurled,fluttering cold plumage,a huge bird, huntedand served in a thirty-one day feast. In the final ...
What We Come To.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> I'm running late as usualand the news from everywhere is bad,but there's your letter on the kitchen tableand I just have to see againhow calligraphy weighs momentum,how first thing each morningyou track down yesterday's mistakesin the log addition ...
Taxi.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... In the back seat of the Volkswagen Beetle, the woman, her baggy eyes shut, chants the Lord's Prayer over and over. She's sitting in between The Monkey, who has a simian arm casually draped over her shoulder, as if he were her boyfriend, and Handsome, who is riffling through the contents of ...
Edges.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> 1.The older I get the more I prefersharp clean edges.Shapes that do not mergewith other shapes,reds that maintaintheir distance from blues.The stiff breezethat trims the fat from August afternoons.A clarinet solo, its final note peeling ...
When I Bury My Face in the Crimson Velvet.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> It's not just the faintmusk of rose or how my skinsmelled, moving against anotherbody but a Xerox of a Xerox of a strange woman's sweat, somewhore in a shadowy room in a basementin China, bent over these sleeves,pressing and smoothing the seams as ...
Shoes.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Magic, these little boats we sail, ridingperilous tides. "Nor can foot feel,being shod," Hopkins claims,but the bound foot feels too wellthe torturer's whim, and what shoes does God want on a woman? Notthe magic red ones that danced a girlto ...
After Giving Questionable Advice To a Friend I'm Attracted To.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> I pull the frayed ropeand the rototiller sputters forward,kicking up a last thin crustof frost. I love this seasonalrhythm: the tug, diffidentcatch, the blades beginning to mixcenturies of clay and earthwith fresh compost I've heaved up and out. ...
Broken Glass.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> In 1070 my father returnedto the sweetness of desolation,wandering past rows of mobile homes,past the hulls of carssplayed in the wheatgrassthat whiskered their silent engines,past the skeletons of stripped machines,dismantled harrows,to the ...
Low-Floating Balloons.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... When Faith comes down from rocking Andrew, tucking him in, the wreckage of the party hasn't disappeared. The house still smells of leftover pizza and sickly-sweet, artificially-flavored icing, and that awful red punch, the shadow of which is still visible on the carpet where the kid in the ...
Lying in Wait.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> The cancer ward lies in waitWith the mess of deathThe clogged cemeteriesWith the ugly haste of burialLying in wait is the slow decayThe wet and dry rot of the body All this bides its timeBehind the bloom of flowersSkirts and blouses...
Night Oak Tree.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> It happened at night that a passerbyheard a sound and turned around:an oak tree was coming from behind. He stopped, he waited. This oak, withits freshly torn roots, was coming,swaying along the pavementon its still-muddied, long snake-legs;like a ...
My Wasted Chance.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Now I won't die young,another one of my wasted chances.My decisions can't be explained by inexperience,I'm seasoned, well matured for death.I no longer weigh what would have been wiserand I no longer am ashamed of myself.I don't treat the wounds of ...
From the Fifties.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Mother's Singer sewing machine,covered up at the bark of the watchdog.Father's fearof being sent for.The Affair of the Anxious Moment.The communists, as if riding wild horses.Celluloid communists, Sunday matinee.Paper airplanes in the bedroom....
Four Stories.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> 1That I oncestayed with friendsin the high pines. 2That the dog hunted in the woodsand we yelleddictator jokes after him. 3You and I. 4That we ...
Night.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> night of screams flowing through the brain stabbed suddenlyin the throatrain streams downthen silenceno windsno sounds of dripping wateremptied out thwarted night sneaking behind back in front of face loft right overhead below feeteyes ...
Princes, Very Late.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... I'm in a car in the club parking lot making out with a summer tourist; or not in the parking lot but down a ways, up on the shoulder of a side road. Going at it pretty passionately and I only met him a few minutes ago and he has light-brown hair, a little long, and his eyelashes at the end ...
The Actor.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Introduction For three weeks, an aspiring young actor waited tables at a Persian restaurant in New York City until he got sick of it and took a second-shift job with a newspaper. This is his story. The Interview Process The actor came into the restaurant ...
Hunting Icebergs.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Death by violence, death by cold ... -- Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails Sousa stood on the shore of Lake Victoria, sobbing into his sousaphone. It was a mournful sight, and we closed our hampers uncomfortably. We had left Entebbe early that morning for a fete ...
O.J., Can You See?(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... I almost never miss, but it's Tuesday this mornin', and somehow Monday just disappeared down an invisible black hole. Truth is, I slept right through breakfast yesterday for havin' taken that damn football game too serious, havin' drunk at least five brewskies over my legal limit, if you ...
Iliad in Another Time and Place.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Agamemnon insists on retaining the company he acquiredand won't accept the tender offer from Nestor,which results in massive strikes, harsh press anda bad fourth quarter, so Achilles, his CEO,argues for divestiture but Agamemnon won't have itunless Achilles ...
Palette.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> The colors of the afternoon, red from August heat,yellow of heliopsis following the sun,purple of coneflowers that aren't purple at all,blue of the sky when the wind is from the north,the milky white that follows on a southerly breeze. The greens come and go ...
Birding.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. --Simone Weil <Pre> Do you remember your first bird,the way it scuttled across the lawn, stopped stiff,tilted its head, and listened to the earth?Don't you still need to hold still sometimesand feel the world ...
Simmer Dim.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> On the longest day of the year,like bee-in-a-bottle memory,the sound of bagpipes in my ears,a Scottish bonnet reveille, pulls me blindly through the slit of tentto pee in midnight light that slaps my eyesback open to my life, I squintand see my ...
Set.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Another sun watched down,one of the ways here we count up life.I've taken pictures, but their souls untie themselvesand slip the camera. Memory, even,fails a brilliance it can't bear.So we like to follow the drop when we can,and with it what does ...
The World of Things.(short story)
Jan 01, 1999; ... In space things touch. In time things part. --E.M. Forester My house is filled with objects taken from my parents' house and other parents' houses, perhaps yours. I have a particular taste for the things of the fifties, the era when my parents were in their prime: ...
Another Street.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> The only explanationmust be that behind this street, somewhere,there is another street, where balls bounceand nothing crumbles.Kitchens and backyards smell of cinnamon,stories find their own time,and all the old generals march in rocking chairs.We ...
so gone he couldn't come back if he wanted to.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> he says baby, come herei'm too busy thoughtryin to close the windows before my curtainsbecome drenched with the rainhe's sittin on the couch we got from searsdrinking his beerbreathin so hard and he says baby come hereand ...
The Secret of Life.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Evenas the murderous gardenerkneels in the grassand driveshis screwdriver deepinto the milk heartof a last renegadegrowing on the front lawn, the sly forestof dandelions with theirgauzy globes on slender red tubesare poised ...
Passing.
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> Centuries ago when people were stupidone way to dispose of a wartwas to throw a stone at a coffinduring a funeral cortege, recitethe Trinity and ask the corpseto bear life's imperfectionto the flawless Hereafter. Surely the dead should do us...
Dust to dust.(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... <Pre> It seemed to Amos as to Hoseadesert mornings of late bristled with signsportending stark changes, stark comings on, signals of God knows what from God knows where.Amos felt buoyant, as if a riverof fresh rain hissed and shrilled over dry bones, over ...
Pop Culture and Poetry: An Interview with David Trinidad.(poem)(Interview)
Jan 01, 1999; ... David Trinidad is the author of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently Answer Song (High Risk Books, 1994). His other books include Hand Over Heart: Poems 1981-1988, Pavane, November, and Monday, Monday. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Harper's, The Paris Review, ...
Blessings.(Ukraine)(poem)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Late on the first Saturday in May, a week after Orthodox Easter, on a plaza across the street from Independence Square, nee Great October Revolution Square, when the sun has already set and the stars are just coming into view, a group of old women and men dance in a circle. Their music -- ...
Because They Wanted To.(Review)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Mary Gaitskill's debut collection, Bad Behavior (1988), and her novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), introduced her as a promising writer, noted for her risky subjects and keen perception. Gaitskill has ...
The Various Reasons of Light.(Review)
Jan 01, 1999; ... Renee Ashley, The Various Reasons of Light. New York: Avocet Press, 1998. This is a wonderful book of poems, deeply serious yet imbued with the sense of humor that a sharp eye and empathetic heart bring to the most serious subjects. Thus, in one of the poems from "Sonnets for ...