The Southern Review back issues from March 2005:
Elk-Spotting in Church Park: An Eschatology.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... In February 1974 I met Robert Penn Warren while preparing a descriptive bibliography of his works. He was most kind and supportive of that project, published in 1981 by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Warren and his poetry were naturally still on my mind when in ...
Warren in Thibodaux.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... In the spring of 1985 Robert Penn Warren appeared at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and read from his verse as the first Marie Fletcher Lecturer in American Literature. The university inaugurated this lectureship in conjunction with the Southern Literary Festival, which ...
A note on "Uncertain Season in High Country".(Critical Essay)
Mar 22, 2005; ... UNCERTAIN SEASON IN HIGH COUNTRY" was one of the last poems Robert Penn Warren wrote. Composed after he had completed preparing his New and Selected Poems (1985) but before that volume appeared in print, it was one of only a handful of poems Warren was happy enough with to bring to ...
Uncertain Season in High Country.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> UNCERTAIN SEASON IN HIGH COUNTRY By the descending mountain track, soundlessAt damp impact of foot, a fewPine-tops are tall enough to liftInto the hover of mist. Horizon,Encircling the clotted gray dubiety of lightWe call the sky, has no definition in ...
Sunflowers in a Field.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Sunflowers in a Field Sunflowers in a field.Goldfinches everywhere.They gorge on seed. They riseTo rest along the power line, then fallLike drizzled lemon drops, like lozengesOf candied yellow light.Two weeks a year, goldfinchesGather on ...
Ode to Rafflesia.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Ode to Rafflesia for Suzanne Robertson I, too, am weary of poems for flowers. Weary of grape- vines and panorama, of moon in water, pine and birch. Yesterday I would not have written to you ...
Across the Dardanelles.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Across the Dardanelles fifth century BC Furious weather destroyed the partiallybuilt pontoon bridge, 674 boats long, Xerxes was throwing from Persia to Greece and in his anger, the ruler punished ...
Conversion.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> ConversionThat's a gorgeous piece of beef,the guests always said with feeling. A roast,bougainvillea pink in the center and adrizzle of gravy hidden under a napkin,after a Sunday park walk. She always lovedthe underdog, the smallest ...
The Poem as Samurai.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Poem as Samurai Dangers are seasonal: too much green, too little. If only the blade could open the belly without themess. As if the hole could gently speak of beesand hard blue skies. In your humble house imagine invisible walls.Words moving in ...
Hot coffee, summer.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... SATURDAY, AND FRANCO WOKE UP ALL VINEGAR. He didn't want the kids climbing into our bed. He didn't want the kids getting lippy. He wanted only the paper and some hot coffee. He made the coffee, but the percolator's dying, so the coffee was bad, more like tea. He couldn't even put milk in ...
At Marx's grave.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... The guidebook said it wouldn't be easy to find. I was killing an hour in London, a student on holiday, my first time abroad. I remember the sun could almost make a shadow. The path took a turn and then there was Marx's marble head, looming, unconcerned at the shabbiness of his ...
Scientists Claim Fish Feel Pain.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Scientists Claim Fish Feel Pain Since Father Adam, Mother Eve droppedtheir lines, we've told ourselves that nothing else can ache. August dawns, a child milesfrom Cleveland--Lake Mohican--I'd thrill to strikes of blue gill, sunfish, carp, the tug...
Sclerosis Poem.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Sclerosis Poem In comedy, it's someone else who hurts.You're tragedy, the pain's all yours,your fate the public, stumbling faux pas.The MRI affords no room to dance.Cat's got your tongue, arms and legs jerk on,jerk off. You start to cough, I crack...
Chamber Music.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Chamber Music Every day some memory in me diesand finds its life without me, in this roombeyond my room, and takes its place in the ensemble--plucks pitch, props bow--and begins.All night I listen, the bedspring like a soundingbone ...
To a Nightingale.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> To a Nightingale After the cries, after the night of painafter the tongue that gave the cries was gone,you were this: a girl, who wore the ruined shell of a girl--our timeless, our recurrent Philomel.And what your world was: strange and suddenly...
Appalachian Lullaby.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Appalachian Lullaby First song--apple-branching from the firstgreen place, smelling of mulch and apple blossom,recalling bees and memories of horses to the hive or hands that held them; firstlight of morning like a fine shaved plank...
The Backyard.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Backyard A way to keep us in our place.A way to say not-neighbor by half. But blood tracks of the half-thing(Yorkshire terrier)torn dragged from Mrs. Yamamoto's yard this morninginto my rough marigold patch evidences: three paws, a prised ...
Spellbind.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Spellbind for Dante on his tenth birthday, with apologies When the surgeon handed methe squalling package of your life I acquireda mother's imagination.If you were out of my sight for a minute I would forever see you tucked upin ...
Consenting to love: autobiographical roots of "Good Country People".
Mar 22, 2005; ... What would you make out about me just from reading "Good Country People"? Plenty, but not the whole story. --FLANNERY O'CONNOR, The Habit of Being THE YEAR 2004 MARKED the fortieth anniversary of Flannery O'Connor's death from kidney failure brought on from her years ...
A Hundred Wild Geese.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> A Hundred Wild Geese Ma Fen, early twelfth century Each curved necktells me to learn more about geometry, telemetry, reeds.On this scroll, pill bodies suspend in the snowy sky, Ma Fen's monochrome....
Grief Daybook: After Charles D'Orleans.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Grief Daybook: After Charles D'Orleans Heart, who's there?--It's us, everything you've seen. --CHARLES D'ORLEANS It's the third hourin this clear light, a tiny thingcovered neatly in seconds, pacing the long apparatusof a thought ...
Me and Hopkins.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Me and Hopkins Sometimes when I write poetryI am not up to it at all. My handsare deep under the Aegeanwhere an expeditioncouldn't find them. My body is behind the stone in the tomb and Easter is a long way off,and even then, I'm a forsaker, ...
Feast Day Elegy.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Feast Day Elegy Here is the feast day with its large handsand mouth, its river sound and clay color,the town concerned just now with bathing and gathering wood. I won't be here again,this year of three thousand daysclosing its fist to me lovingly as ...
Distal.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Distal As I walk along St. Philips, the dusk fills my lungsand the bells of six o'clock make tiny equationsin the air. On my cornerthe lights of the church set it on fire,the houses surround in a kind of kneel. Where's Fra Angelico now? I've wanted to ...
Dying in the Waysong Living.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Dying in the Waysong Living I set the sky's attune by lyingin a copper dirt, singer to snails& rootsman, tongue in cracksthe river will arrive in. Salmondrying in the aftermath of pools ...
Break.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Break for L. P. and J. K.It's not that I remain a willowfor the cloaked roads, or the Mississippithey traced, splattering gnat-clouds,or that it was tragic like Athenianscould have understood it, but that Iretain the canticle of speed we sung ...
Fires.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... ALREADY THAT the war was drawing closer, close enough on some nights to see in a thin blaze over the northern horizon, and we heard that Seoul was about to fall when the pyobom, the leopard, began to appear in the valley. Each morning we woke to find fresh tracks in the fields like little ...
Just Beyond Auden.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Just Beyond Auden It was by St. Mark's Place where Avedon took Audenalmost alone with the skeleton fire escapes.It was near the back of an empty vegetable truckwhere the poet faced the camera killing any shred of hopethat he would soften up and put a shine on ...
Physician.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Physician The stitches were spindly and black,insect legs down the ridge of my nose,thirteen exquisite bows.They smelt of death and surgical spirit,tiny fissures of dried blood. Where had my doctor learnt to sew?At nine my love was embroidery ....
Pattern.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Pattern I nearly walked into it,the spider's web hung in a sunlit clearingbetween two trees, imagined insteadthe wreckage of silk filaments against my face.This one glistened ...
Sometimes.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Sometimes 1 While the rain ticks the hour on the tin roof and the heronstrides slowly on wet leaves by the waterline, I can feelthe slip and run down the drainpipe,the sloughing and sucking of all things--the longingof the homebound at the end of the ...
In the Next Seat.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In the Next Seat Greyhound Bus Station, Nashville A man sits in stink. The little girlasleep against his chest has wetthem both from Atlanta throughChattanooga and he'sas scared to wake heras you might be to wakethe dead. Awake could be...
Tree House.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Tree House A fort hung in midair,a penthouse clubhouse,a private boys' heavenlookers-up could onlybehold the floor of--that's what we wantedto build in pine woodsnext to David's housewith plywood scroungedfrom construction sites ....
The culvert.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... IT WAS LATE IN THE WINTER, the time of year in that northern place when the snow lay in a hard, dirty crust pocked here and there by frozen footprints. We lived in a mining town, and the smokestacks belched soot high into the sky, and the soot filtered down to the snow, so that the snow ...
The Omen.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Omen Pushkin had a beautiful wife.A man named d'Antheswas flirting with Natalya. Pushkin challenged him to a duel.On the day appointedhe turned back to do something. As everyone knows,once you've set outto go back is a fateful ...
The Afternoon.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Afternoon Having arrived at this placein the day, you wonderwhat to make of lightstealing across counter tops,vases, walls, light so farinto the known it feels likeerosion, old glacial shift.Now is the moment,you think, of nothing ...
Vine.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Vine That year, at the party we threw for our friend's birthday,before I brought the cake in streaming with flameand before the dancing started, before we stood around,ice clinking in our glasses, and talked with too much zestabout the clever meat favors ...
The House of Marriage.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The House of Marriage for CZ It's the scariest house on the block,to be sure. I've been warnedbut I go like mischief,wandering hallways, opening doors.The stillness is enormous;no one's lived within these wallswho survived, at leastnone ...
Double Birth.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Double Birth for my sister Suddenly the hours gapedinto a hole weall fell through, the fearful momentwhen you were nothing,an absence, and all there was was a wheel slowly turning.Your mother's skin yawned,a vase of negative ...
Hard Days.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Hard Days Oracles babble: it's coming,be ready, Deliveries from fatecan't be picked up later,may explode while waiting on your doorstep.The days spool out theirvaricolored terrors. We tryto escape, but ...
A blue to the shadow's black.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... THE OLD MAN'S VOICE had a slippery way, sliding around corners, and when it found Kid beside the barn, on his elbows in pleasant sweat amid the morning's pile of split wood, he held his tongue, as had become his custom. This autumn had carried with it an Indian summer, lately arrived ...
After Having Sex on Palm Sunday, Some Clarity.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> After Having Sex on Palm Sunday, Some Clarity Luke 22:14-23:56 Here--have faith--later,pulling the string on the basement bulb,or later,the night falling down on uslike the shadow of a hill, my husbandand I meet in the empty bedroom--...
Sermon on the Mount Today at My Failing Kmart.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Sermon on the Mount Today at My Failing Kmart Jeremiah 17:5-10, Luke 6:17-26 Jesus, look again at us huddled and shuffling,your gimp, lazy-eyed, pierced and homeless--today the retarded men have arrived in a van.Blessed are their trimmed heads?Blessed ...
I Consider Doubting Thomas at PetKare.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> I Consider Doubting Thomas at PetKare John 20:24-31 There is only love at PetKare.These girls hold empty hermit crab shellsto their ears to hear the ocean.These boys have caught crawfishat a pond and want to keep them alive.One clerk at the ...
My Enemy, Unloved, Has Only Struck One of My Cheeks.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> My Enemy, Unloved, Has Only Struck One of My Cheeks Luke 6:27-38 Nearly soulless today with one burning cheek.Proud, I rear it for all to see: red, shining, taut skin,a hard apple; my jaw, too tender, refuses to chew.I show my burning cheek to ...
No Difference Between Things of This World.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> No Difference Between Things of This World for E. Thomas Stuart Down he runs from the yellow-jacket hill,Down from the sound of water rushing in a rock,Down and shattering the leaves, leaping the fallenTrees with such light-breaking work that the ground...
The Shield of Aeneas.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Shield of Aeneas He sees the future twice,once in, once back from hell,peering out from Virgilas from a yearbook, the war years, the clean-cut high-school herogone to soldier, fierceanthems in his earsdrowning the tears of Dido,...
Ixcuintli.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Ixcuintli The national dogof Mexico,hairless savefor a tuft on top,curly toupeeor stiff gray mohawk,stands its groundand won't yield.Rufino Tamayopainted its jawsdwarfing its body,blood-blind eyesand flame-lined ...
Ghazal, Ghost Written.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Ghazal, Ghost Written One wishes that ghosts were well-bred enough to know they needed an invitation to return.Queued like Englishmen at the bus stop, umbrellas folded, waiting their turn. The date it happened, I remember it each year, I unfold memories ...
Chance.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Chance I is a drunken drivercareening through stoplights andretirement savingsas it sings "God Bless America,"getting lost on the wayto your homebut always finding it in the end. is as inscrutableand flirtatiousas a ...
Flight.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... FIRST IT WAS THE NAMES THAT WENT. Names of neighbors, grandchildren. Sometimes the names of her two daughters, her only son. She knew their faces, of course. The daughter with the sharp eyes, inspecting her gestures, her walk, pressing her onwards--always onwards!--to the ...
Mistral I.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Mistral I Two donkeys graze in a meadow of wild golden buttons.Scents of eucalyptus and honeysuckle mingle in morning air.Distantly, down at the shore, rise the high voices of childrendiscovering things. Childhood burned with a long wick, I have ...
Mistral II.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Mistral II I gave myself to the mistral, which had shouldered its waydown from the north, leaping the careful fields of France,skimming the Alps, running the flat of its hands along the Rhoneto careen over this stretch of ultramarine and ancient seaand seize ...
Stations.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Stations History's braided with memory here at roadside:it has all been provender and materia medica,and may be again, the rose hips' dispensary,cattails my daughter stirred to pancake batter,those fiddleheads we clip for the frying pan, even the ...
Ocean Effect.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Ocean Effect This morning the harbor's surface looked oily,as though a boat had gone down,and I counted the draggers just to be sure-- the Holy Child, Curlew, Avaricious, Azore Roseand the others, none missing, all waiting to belocked into their ...
Forty Pines.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Forty Pines Now we are open one way to July heat,one way to the winter Atlantic.What parable of change will healthese spaces? Necessity saysI should blame the turpentine beetleswho drilled some of these trunks untiltheir sap flowed into stiff ...
In a Small Town, On a Street Corner.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In a Small Town, On a Street Corner Back then I longed to warmmy hands near the fire. Then something caught.A sleeve. A spark. Danger draws us, people say--the idea of getting caught on a street corner,kissing or waiting for a ...
In Ohio.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In Ohio A thousand miles away fires burn.Nearby a man with a wife and two kidslives in a split-level house he hates.At night I wonder what a housecontains. A blue-and-white bowlfrom China. Wood-block print of a hummingbird. Small Russian...
Me in the Absence of Women.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Men in the Absence of Women What they don't know of themselves defines their beauty, theintimacyof men as unfathomable as the blue depths of the sea.A boardinghouse up the Carolina coast, as the story was told, a manpast sixty who roomed for a time with his ...
City of War.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> City of War Sarajevo, 1993 The way a hand curves to the clavicle it loves,so a city is rememberedfor its crescent swirl of arches and bridges.A pantomime of spirits and ditch water. Smoke climbed the door of a two-room flat,and a Sarajevo poet ...
Our Mortality.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Our Mortality A trace of sulfur on the tongue, the aftertaste of adrenaline,what made me leap the first time I saw a pistol twirling in the air,a metal flash curved to the palm of my nightshift replacementat the old hotel where I worked deep in the heart of the ...
To the Outdoor Wedding.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> To the Outdoor Wedding All come, forgive, and bless the dogmatic overripe bridewho insists she will be married in the gardenof her dead mother, though the guests and wedding partyhiss and shiver as the light rain turns unrepentantly to pelting ice. All rise ...
Suet soot suit.(Short Story)
Mar 22, 2005; ... THERE WERE THRONGS of new widowers around town that year. It was as if these men had spawned in the marshes along the Hudson, then shambled into Poughkeepsie fully grown and quietly dressed, to occupy offices in obscure firms and live along quiet streets of slate-roofed Tudors and Capes. I ...
Middle, Nowhere.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Middle, Nowhere Don't argue. This is where we'restopping. Where we'll snack onwhatever's gleaming in this tree.What good the sweetness, what usethe flesh, if not to inch us into dream? Don't answer. Have more. Letthe caption say here we were ...
The Place.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The Place She'd set the urn of him among his blackbooks--codes & seals, ships & bridges--then moved him behind the glass doorwith the vitamins and pills. A windowsillseemed a good spot for a while, latera wicked joke. When she lifts him nowhis ...