Contributors

Ralph Adamo resides in New Orleans, LA and teaches at Louisiana State University and at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts Academy. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including Waterblind: Selected Poems (Portals Press, 2002), from which “New Orleans Elegies” was selected. Adamo has taught at Loyola, The University of New Orleans, and Tulane, where he edited The New Orleans Review from 1993–1999.

Shirlette Ammons was born and raised in Mt. Olive, NC and is the author of Stumphole: Aunthology of Backwoods Blood (Big Drum Press, 2002), and a children’s book, The Train That Needed An Oil Change, which features illustrations by her twin sister, Shorlett Ammons-Stephens. She is also lead vocalist and bassist for the Raleigh-based band, stumP, which won the 2003 United Arts Council’s Emerging Artist Award. She is the recipient of the 1999 Ebony-Harlem Award, and was named Spectator Magazine’s Critic’s Choice for Best Poet in 2001. For more information or upcoming schedule, visit the website www.stumphole.com.

William Baer is author of The Unfortunates (New Odyssey), which received the 1997 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize and his work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The New Criterion. He is also the director of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Series, editor of The Formalist, and has edited two books for the University Press of Mississippi: Conversations with Derek Walcott (1996) and Elias Kazan: Interviews (2000). He lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Barry Ballard has published his sonnets in several magazines, including Smartish Pace, Rosebud, Hollins Critic, and National Forum. He lives in Burleson, TX and has received the Explorations Award for Literature from the University of Alaska and the Boswell Poetry Prize from Texas Christian University. Ballard has also published two prize-winning collections: Green Tombs to Jupiter (Snails Pace Press Poetry Prize), and A Time to Reinvent (Creative Ash Press Poetry Prize).

Andrea Bates, originally from Connecticut, now lives in Wilmington, NC and teaches at Coastal Carolina Community College. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, most recently in The Lyricist, Wrightsville Beach Magazine, and Common Ground Review.

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) As a young man, Baudelaire sailed the seas to Mauritius, Madagascar and Ceylon, returning to Paris at the age of twenty-four determined to become a poet and a man of letters. In 1857 he published his best known book, Flowers of Evil, which created much controversy in France. Since its publication, Flowers of Evil, and later Paris Spleen, as well as his Little Prose Poems, have been touchstones for many of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and artists. Baudelaire is often compared with Edgar Allan Poe, whose work he translated into French, and his notion of “the derangement of the senses” was embraced by later poets such as Mallarme, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Hughes-Alain Dal, and many writers of the Beat movement.

Emily Bedard lives in Seattle, WA and has recently completed her first book of poems, entitled Cargo, and a screenplay collaboration, June Black. Her poems have most recently appeared in the Indiana Review and LitRag.

Daniel Blasi has been a fellow at the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference and a finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Award. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, most recently in Gulf Coast, Quarterly West, Another Chicago Magazine, Passages North, and Nimrod. He lives in Boston, MA and is the editor of Full Circle, a Journal of Poetry and Prose, (www.fullcirclejrnl.com).

Patrick Bizzaro is the author of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, as well as numerous poems published in magazines and journals. His latest collection is Fear of the Coming Drought, (Mt. Olive Press, 2001). He has been awarded the Madeline Sadin Award from New York Quarterly and the Four Quarters Poetry Prize. His criticism includes Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell (LSU Press, 1997), and his pedagogical work includes Responding To Student Poems: Applications of Critical Theory (NCTE, 1993). He currently resides in Greenville, NC and teaches writing and literature at East Carolina University.

Robert Bly is a poet, translator, essayist, editor, and the author of over twenty major volumes of poetic work, including The Light Around The Body, which won the National Book Award. He is also the founder of a literary magazine, which has been called, successively, The Fifties, The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties. His translations from the Spanish (Neruda, Vallejo, Hernandez and Otero), from the Swedish (Martinson, Ekelof Transtromer), from the German (Rilke and Holderlin), and his versions of Kabir and the Sufi mystics almost singlehandedly brought an international awareness of poetry to this country in the last half century. His book, Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller and has been translated into many languages. His most recent books are: Morning Poems (HarperCollins,1997), Eating The Honey Of Words: Selected Poems (Harper Flamingo, 1999), and a new translation of Ghalib called The Lightning Should Have Fallen On Ghalib (with Sunil Dutta, Ecco Press).

Jaime Torres Bodet (1902–1974) was a poet, novelist and diplomat and is ranked among Mexico’s major literary figures of the past century. Mediodia (Mid-day), the poem included here, reveals both his love of pure form and his poetic modesty, an approach to his art bereft of all trace of exaggeration or flamboyancy. Among his many accomplishments, he published over eighteen collections of poetry and six novels, as well as literary criticism and essays. During his lifetime he was granted more than fifteen honorary doctorate degrees from universities around the world and received the Mexican National Literary Award in 1966.

Carol Boggess is Associate Professor of English at Mars Hill College where she teaches courses in writing, literature and English education. Her primary area of interest is the literature of the American Appalachian region. She is currently writing a biography of James Still, whose book River of Earth was the subject of her dissertation in 1995. She is a member of the Appalachian Studies Association and the NC Humanities Council and lives with her family in Burnsville, NC.

J.W. Bonner has published fiction and criticism in The Quarterly, Tyuonyi, The Greensboro Review, ArtForum and Oyster Boy Review. He is publisher of French Broad Press and a former editor of The Arts Journal. A staff writer and frequent contributor to Asheville Poetry Review, he teaches literature and writing at The Asheville School.

Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and edits the journal, Poems & Plays. He has published four collections of poetry: Presently A Beast (1996), Devilfish (1999), Four Nails (2001), winner of the Snail’s Pace Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Barbaric Mercies (Red Hen Press, 2003). He has published his award-winning work in over 500 magazines and journals. His books of criticism include David Mamet and Film (McFarland, 1993) and Charles Bukowski (Twayne/Macmillan, 1997).

Sally Buckner has taught at every level from kindergarten through graduate school and recently retired after twenty-eight years on the faculty at Peace College. A former journalist, she has published poetry, plays, non-fiction and short stories in many journals and anthologies. In 1991 she was the editor of Our Words, Our Ways, an anthology of literature designed to accompany eighth grade studies of state history. Her first collection of poems, Strawberry Harvest, was published by St. Andrews Press in 1996. In 1999 she was the editor of Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, published under the auspices of the NC Poetry Society by Carolina Academic Press.

Cara Chamberlain resides in Lakeland, FL and teaches at Florida Southern College. Her poetry has appeared in several journals, including The Southern Review, Kalliope, The MacGuffin, CutBank, The Chattahoochee Review, Primavera, and The Chariton Review.

Catherine Combs is a graduate of Atlantic Christian College and Wake Forest University. Her poetry has previously appeared in Iris: The UNC Journal of Medicine, Literature and Visual Art. She lives in Rocky Mount, NC.

Mary Crow is the author of ten books, five volumes of poetry and five of translation. Her most recent collection of poems is The High Cost of Living (Pudding House, 2002) which won the Looking Glass National Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her most recent book of translations is Engravings Torn From Insomnia: Selected Poems by Olga Orozco (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002) which won a translation award from the Lannan Foundation. She is currently editing Homesickness: Selected Poems by Enrique Lihn (which she is translating with Jonathon Cohen, John Felstiner, David Unger, and Alastair Reid). She is Poet Laureate of Colorado and teaches Creative Writing at Colorado State University.

Thomas Rain Crowe is the editor of a groundbreaking anthology of Celtic language poets entitled Writing The Wind: A Celtic Resurgence (The New Celtic Poetry) and author of several collections of poetry, including The Laugharne Poems, written at the Dylan Thomas Boat House, and published in Wales (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 1997). He is the translator of Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz (Shambhala, 2001), and lives in the mountains of western NC in Tuckaseegee.

Chris Dombrowski lives in Missoula, MT where he works as a river guide and a Poet-in-the-Schools. He is a recipient of the Associated Writing Programs Intro Award and recently graduated with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana. His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, New Letters, Passages North, Southeast Review, Mid-American Review, CutBank, and others.

Deborah Doolittle teaches at Central Carolina Community College and lives on the New River Inlet in Angier, NC. She has published two chapbooks of poems, No Crazy Notions, which won the Mary Belle Campbell Book Award, and That Echo, which won the Longleaf Press Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Apalachee Review, The Comstock Review, International Poetry Review, Cottonwood, Parnassus Literary Review, and Yemassee.

Keith Ekiss has poetry forthcoming in Places-Landscapes-Cultures-Voices (University of Iowa Press), an anthology of Southwest poetry. His translations of Eunice Odio appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of The Bitter Oleander and in Perihelion. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

Ivan Elagin (1918–1987) was born in Vladivostok, Russia on December 1, 1918. His real last name was Matveev, and his father was a poet, as was his grandfather, who was also a journalist, publisher and historian. Before WWII, Elagin studied medicine in Kiev, before moving to Germany and beginning his career as a poet. Later he moved to the United States where he taught Russian literature at New York University and at the University of Pittsburgh. Between 1959 and 1982, he published seven volumes of poetry, including On the Road from There, Under the Sign of the Ax, In the Hall of the Universe, and Heavy Stars. Most of Elagin’s poetry was written in emigration, and the poet referred to himself as a “man in translation.” He said, “I think that at the heart of my work is the theme of dissolution, the division, the fragmentation of modern man in time and space.” Elagin died on February 8, 1987.

Joseph Enzweiler is a poet, carpenter, stone mason and photographer who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1950. He moved to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1975 and received a M.S. in Physics from the University of Alaska. In 1981 he built a primitive log house in the Goldstream Valley, north of Fairbanks, where he has lived ever since. Enzweiler has published four books of poetry, Home Country (1986), Stonework of the Sky (Graywolf Press, 1995), A Curb In Eden (1999), and The Man Who Ordered Perch, forthcoming from Iris Press.

Richard Fein lives in Cambridge, MA. His latest book, I Think of Our Lives: New and Selected Poems (Creative Arts Book Co.) was released in 2002. His previous collections are Kafka’s Ear, winner of the Maurice English Award, At the Turkish Bath, To Move Into the House, and Ice Like Morsels. He has also published a memoir, The Dance of Leah; a book of translations, The Selected Poems of Yankev Glatshteyn; and a critical study on the work of Robert Lowell.

Keith Flynn is the author of three collections of poems, The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), and The Lost Sea (Iris Press, 2000). He was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, Crystal Zoo, which produced two albums, Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992) and Pouch (Warhead Records, 1996). His latest album, a spoken-word and music compilation, is entitled Nervous Splendor, and will be released in September, 2003 on Animal Records. His poems have appeared in many journals around the world, most recently in The Colorado Review, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, Rattle, Poetry Wales, New Millennium Writings, and The Comstock Review. Flynn is founder and managing editor of Asheville Poetry Review.

Carol Frith lives in Sacramento, CA and is co-editor, with her husband Laverne Frith, of the poetry journal Ekphrasis, which features poetry based on individual works of art from other genres. She is the author of three award-winning chapbooks, Moving Like a Blue Flame (2001), Never Enough Zeroes, which won the 2001 Palanquin Press Chapbook Prize, and In and Out of Light (2002). Her poems have recently appeared in Midwest Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, The MacGuffin, and Visions International.

Janice Moore Fuller is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC. A Fellow at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, her poems and essays have been published in numerous American and European journals and anthologies. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Archeology Is a Destructive Science (1998) and the forthcoming Sex Education. Her plays have been produced at the Florence Busby Corriher Theater at Catawba College and the Bare Bones Theater in Charlotte, NC.

Forrest Gander is the author of Torn Awake (New Directions, 2001), from which “Facing In All Directions” was taken, Science and Steepleflower (1998), Deeds of Utmost Kindness (1994), Lynchburg (1993), and Rush to the Lake (1988). His poetry has won the Whiting Award and two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing. He is the editor of Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women, a bilingual anthology, translator of No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura Lopez-Colome, and co-translator of Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. With his wife, poet C.D. Wright, he edits Lost Roads Publishers and currently directs the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Pamela Garvey is a Professor of English at St. Louis Community College-Meramec and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Sonora Review, The South Carolina Review, Sou’wester, Pleiades, and The Santa Barbara Review, as well as the anthology Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies, edited by Terry Wolverton.

Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek are a husband and wife translation team who received their MFA degrees in Writing from Montpelier in 1998. Together they have published four books of translations, Fish’s Eye, by Adam Ziemianin, In a Flash, by Jozef Baran, Water Marks, by Boguslaw Zurakowski, and Her Miniature, by Zbigniew Czuchajowski. Their translations have also appeared in several magazines and journals, including the International Poetry Review, Forward, Shirim, Poetry Motel, Pudding House, and Poetry Miscellany. In 2003, Jerzy Gregorek was awarded an NEA Writing Fellowship.

Anne Holub was born in Charlottesville, VA and received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana where she was poetry editor of the literary journal CutBank and a Bertha Morton Scholar. She received her MA from Hollins University in Roanoke,Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Beacon Street Review and Poetry Motel, among others.

Marilyn Kallet lives in Knoxville, TN and has served as director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee since 1986. She is the author of eight books, including three volumes of poetry, as well as anthologies, essays and translations. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Sulfur, New Letters, Many Mountains Moving, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Sport Literate, and The Denver Quarterly. Her latest books are How To Get Heat Without Fire (1996), and Sleeping With One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival, co-edited with Judith Ortiz Cofer (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1999). She is poetry editor of the magazine Appalachian Life, and the literary journal New Millennium Writings.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of two collections of poetry, World As Dictionary (Carnegie-Mellon University Press), and Dog Angel, forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She has also written a memoir, Space (Algonquin/Penguin), about growing up in Florida during the moon race. Her poetry has recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The Yale Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she directs the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Nancy King lives in Jacksonville, NC and her poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Troubadour, Skylark, Pembroke Magazine, Sanskrit, Main Street Rag, and The Georgia State Review. She has won several awards from the North Carolina Poetry Society and been featured in their annual anthology.

Bill Knott was originally known as Saint Giraud, and first received recognition with The Naomi Poems, which were published in 1968. Among his many books of poetry are Auto-necrophilia, Love Poems To Myself, Rome in Rome, The Quicken Tree, Selected and Collected Poems, and Laugh At the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999 (Boa Editions, Ltd., 2000), from which the poems included in this issue were taken. Knott is an assistant professor of English at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.

Alexandra Kostina was born and raised in the medieval city of Novgorod, Russia, graduating with a masters equivalent in Linguistics and Education from Novgorod State University. She has published scholarly articles on William Faulkner and translated many Russian authors. Her interests include clothing design and ballroom dancing. She is a frequent contributor to Asheville Poetry Review and teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Vera Kroms was born in Germany to Latvian parents and now works as a systems consultant in Boston, MA. Many of her poems deal with the split between cultures and her work has appeared most recently in The Southern Poetry Review, Perihelion, Birmingham Poetry Review, Web del Sol, and The Worcester Review.

Don Kunz teaches literature, creative writing, and film courses at the University of Rhode Island. His essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in a number of journals, including Borderlands, Café Solo, Kerf, Confrontation Magazine, Verve, English Journal, Trestle Creek Review and others. His poetry has won awards from the Arizona Authors’ Association, Midwest Poetry Review, Philomel, and Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum.

Enrique Lihn (1929–1988) published novels, short stories, poems, essays, and plays, and was considered by many to be the best Chilean poet of his generation. Among his best known books of poetry are Poems of This Time and Another, The Dark Room, Occasional Poetry, Leaving Manhattan, and Pain of Banishment. Trained in the visual arts, he was also an accomplished actor. Several volumes of his poems in translation have been published in the United States, including The Dark Room and Other Poems (New Directions), which was edited by Patricio Lerzundi. Lihn’s poetry won many awards, including the Casa de las America, and several Guggenheim fellowships, which allowed him to visit the U.S. and write about New York City. He died in 1988 in Santiago.

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Berkeley, CA and the Poetry and Fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, which is published by the Los Angeles Jung Institute. Her poetry has appeared in several journals, most recently in Rattle, Many Mountains Moving, Edgz, Colere, and Paterson Literary Review. Her first collection of poems, red clay is talking, was published by Scarlet Tanager Books in 2000.

Matthew Lutt lives in Burbank, CA and teaches English to Junior High students in Los Angeles. His poems have been published in Nerve Cowboy, Passages North, Poetry Motel, and Brother Jonathon Review.

Bea Mahood was born and educated in Northern Ireland. She has been an inveterate traveler, living in places as diverse as Canada, Puerto Rico, Paris, Chicago, Brussels, and Connecticut, before retiring to North Carolina. In 2002 her work was published in the special Irish issue of Natural Bridge.

Linda Parsons Marion is co-editor of All Around Us: Poems From the Valley (Blue Ridge Publishing, 1996). Her book of poems, Home Fires, was published by Sow’s Ear Press in 1997. Marion’s poetry has appeared in many journals, including The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Helicon Nine, Calyx, Appalachian Heritage, and Louisiana Literature. She is an editor and policy coordinator for the University of Tennessee and lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion.

Joanna A. McKethan is an artist and poet who has taught at j’Originals’ Art Studio in Dunn, NC for the last 22 years. Her poems have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Earth And Soul: The Kostroma Anthology, Sanskrit, Cairn, and Crucible, which awarded her the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize in 2002.

Rob Merritt was born in Winston-Salem, NC and teaches Writing and British Literature at Bluefield College in Virginia. He has published poems most recently in Branches, The Potomac Review, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. He is also editor of the online literary journal The Nantahala Review.

Jim Murphy is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Montevallo, just south of Birmingham, Alabama. His chapbook, The Memphis Sun, was a 1998 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Award winner, and was published in 2000 by Kent State University Press. Some of his recent poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Fine Madness, and others.

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. His original name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but he used the pen name Pablo Neruda for over 20 years before adopting it legally in 1946. He is quite probably the most widely read Spanish American poet of all time. His collection, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), has never been out of print and has sold well over a million copies. Far from being merely a romantic poet, Neruda’s work from the 1940’s on reflects the constant political struggle of the left and the common man and helped to illustrate the socio-historical developments in South America. At the age of 23, he was appointed by the Chilean government as consul to Burma, which led to other diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European countries. In the 1940’s Neruda joined the Communist Party and traveled to Cuba and the Soviet Union. In 1945 he was elected to the Chilean Senate and attacked President Gonzalez Videla in print. After the government was overthrown by right-wing extremists, he was forced into exile in Mexico and Italy until 1953, when he was welcomed home and awarded the Stalin Prize. Although he continued to travel extensively, he forged a permanent home on the Isla Negra, leaving only after President Salvador Allende appointed him as ambassador to France. He died of leukemia in Santiago on September 23, 1973 as the Allende government collapsed under the coup of General Pinochet, who was aided in his efforts by the United States. During his long career, Neruda produced more than forty volumes of poetry, translations, and plays, including Residence On Earth (1933), Selected Poems (1943), Canto General (1950), The Captain’s Verses (1952), Elementary Odes (1956), Extravagario (1958), One Hundred Love Sonnets (1960), Isla Negra (5 volumes, 1966), and The Separate Rose (1974). The poem included here,“United Fruit Co.,” is from Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1971, 1993), translated by Robert Bly.

Eunice Odio (1919–1974) is considered the mother of Costa Rican poetry in the twentieth century. Born in San Jose in 1919, she traveled widely before settling for much of her life in Mexico City. The poem included here, “Possession In the Dream,” is from her first volume, Los Elementos Terrestres, which was published as the winner of the Premio Centroamericano “15 De Septiembre” prize for the year 1947. The Complete Works of Eunice Odio is available from EUNA Press.

William Ospina is a well-known contemporary Colombian journalist and poet. He is the author of seventeen books of poetry and essays and has translated Marguerite Yourcenar, Flaubert, and Shakespeare into Spanish. The poems included here, “The Geologist,” and “The Condemned Man on the Pyramid,” are from his collection, The Country of Wind, which won the 1992 Premio Nacional de Poesia del Instituto Colombiano de Cultura.

Fred Ostrander is poetry editor of the magazine, Blue Unicorn and he resides in Oakland, California. An avid hiker and mountain climber, he has conquered mountains in Nepal and Bhutan. His poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines in North America and Europe, and his book, The Hunchback and The Swan, was published by Wolmer/Brotherson in New York.

Elaine Fowler Palencia lives in Champaign, Illinois and is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, two collections of Appalachian short stories, and four novels. With her husband, Michael Palencia-Roth, she has translated the entire volume of William Ospina’s The Country of Wind, as well as other Spanish authors.

Robert Parham is head of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy at Armstrong Atlantic University in Savannah, Georgia. He is editor of The Southern Poetry Review. Parham’s poems have been widely published and recently appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Connecticut Review, Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Review, The Georgia Review, and America. He has published two collections, What Part Motion Plays in the Equation of Love, which won the Palanquin Chapbook Competition, and The Ghosts of Montparnasse, which was a finalist for the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize.

Lesley Parker was born in 1977 and raised in Dudley, North Carolina. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of NC-Wilmington and currently teaches at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville. Her first chapbook, Naked, was published in December, 2002, and her poems and photographs have appeared in Main Street Rag.

Simon Perchik was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1923 and made his living as an attorney in New York. Since 1964 he has published eighteen books of poetry, including The Gandolf Poems (White Pine Press, 1987), Letters To The Dead (St. Andrews, 1993), and Hands Collected (Pavement Saw Press, 2000), which brought together his first sixteen books in one volume. His latest collection is The Autochthon Poems (Split/Shift, 2001). His work has been praised by writers as diverse as Paul Blackburn, Charles Olson, James Tate, and David Ignatow; and has appeared in many esteemed journals, including Poetry, The Partisan Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Nation, The Colorado Review, and The New Yorker. He resides in East Hampton, New York.

Diana Pinckney lives in Charlotte, NC and has published poetry and non-fiction in many magazines, including Tar River Poetry, The Southern Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Creative Loafing, The Chattahoochee Review, and the Deep South Writers’ Chapbook. Her two collections of poetry are Fishing With Tall Women, which won the1996 Persephone Press Award and the Kinlock Rivers Memorial Award, and White Linen, which was released in 1998 by Nightshade Press.

Tara Powell is managing editor of The Carolina Quarterly; and her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Cold Mountain Review, Crucible, Hidden Oak, Pembroke Magazine, and The Southern Poetry Review. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

James Michael Robbins lives in Austin, Texas and is editor of the Sulphur River Literary Review. His poetry has been published in The Bitter Oleander, Chrysalis, Mind Purge, Lynx Eye, Word Wrights! and others. His chapbook, Graviture, was released in 2001 by Rancho Loco Press.

Steve Roberts is a poet and actor who lives in Wilmington, NC and is the author of a chapbook, Every September (1998) and a full-length collection, A Space Inside a Space (St. Andrews Press,1999). He received his MA in Creative Writing from Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia and has taught at George Mason University, the University of Richmond, UNC-Wilmington, and Cape Fear Community College. His poems have been published in several magazines and journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, Pembroke Magazine, Phoebe, and others.

David Rogers teaches writing and is the editor of Wavelength: Poems in Prose and Verse. He lives in Horse Cave, Kentucky. His poems have most recently appeared in Pegasus, Poetalk, EDGZ, Red Owl, Kentucky River, and others. His chapbook, Stranger At Home, was published in 2003 by Wavelength/Albireo Press.

Michael Palencia-Roth is a poet, translator, critic, and professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois. One of his specialties, upon which he has written extensively, is Colombian literature and culture, particularly the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He lives in Champaign, Illinois with his wife, Elaine Fowler Palencia.

Marina Rubin lives in Brooklyn, NY and has published one book of her poems, entitled Ode To Hotels. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Jewish Currents, Women’s Literary Journal, 5AM, Poetry Motel, Porcupine, The Chaffin Journal, Jeopardy Magazine, and Cranial Tempest.

M.A. Schaffner has published two books to date, a collection of poems, The Good Opinion of Squirrels, which won the Washington Writer’s Center Prize and the Columbia Book Award, and a novel, War Boys (Welcome Rain, 2002). His poems have most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Texas Review, Antietam Review, Imago (Australia), Other Poetry (UK), and Poetry Salzburg. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Pia Seagrave teaches English at Gallaudet University, and has published her poems in a variety of journals, most recently in The Comstock Review, College English, Virginia Writing, The Threepenny Review, The Laurel Review, and in the anthology, Crossing Troublesome: 25 Years of the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop.

Pat Riviere-Seel is a native of Shelby, NC, and a graduate of NC State University and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Queens College in Charlotte. She is a poet, journalist, lobbyist, and publicist whose poetry has won awards from the NC Poetry Society and have appeared in Main Street Rag. She lives in Asheville, NC.

Andrea Selch is managing editor of Carolina Wren Press and teaches Creative Writing at Duke University. She has published a chapbook, Succory, (Carolina Wren Press, 2000), and in 2001, her manuscript, Startling, was a finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, the May Swenson Award, and in the Ohio State University Press’ Journal Award competition. Her poems have been published in The Greensboro Review, Calyx, Equinox, Oyster Boy Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, and Luna.

Faith Shearin is a visiting writer at American University in Washington, DC whose first book of poems, The Owl Question, won the 2002 May Swenson Award and was published by Utah State University Press. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Chicago Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares.

Evie Shockley teaches at Wake Forest University and has published her poetry in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Blink, The Café Review, Blue Mesa Review, Callaloo, and in the anthologies, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam (ed. Tony Medina, Three Rivers), and New Sister Voices: Poetry by American Women of African Descent (Southern Illinois Press). She has been a Cave Canem Fellow and received a scholarship from the Squaw Valley Poetry Program. Her chapbook, The Gorgon Goddess, was published by Carolina Wren Press.

Michael Sickler is the chair of the Studio Arts Department at Syracuse University. His poems have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and have appeared most recently in The Salt Hill Journal, The Red Brick Review, Defined Providence, Controlled Burn, and The Comstock Review. His chapbook, Stereopticon, was published in 2001 by Threshold Press.

Peter Stillman is a writer, publisher, teacher, and author of a dozen books, most recently Write Away, Planting By the Moon, Families Writing (recipient of a Parent’s Book Choice Commendation), Reclaiming the Classroom, and Centering the Poem. For fifteen years, he has directed the Idaho Writing Institute for teachers. Stillman’s articles and poems have appeared in many journals, including Writer’s Digest, Growing Without Schooling, First Draft, California Quarterly, and On Occasion. He is a member of the editorial board of English International, is on the board of directors of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (NCTE), and is a reviewer for English Journal.

Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962 and moved to the Unites States in 1974. He is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, Palm Crows (Univ. of Arizona Press), Banyan ( LSU Press), and Guide To the Blue Tongue (Univ. of Illinois Press). He is the co-editor of the anthologies American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement, and Like Thunder: Poetry of Violence in America, both published by the University of Iowa Press. His work has been featured in a wide variety of national and international literary journals. He divides his time between Key Biscayne and Tallahassee, where he teaches at Florida State University.

Sonia P. Ticas lives in Tigard, Oregon and is Assistant Professor of Language and Latin American Literature at Linfield College.

Pete Upham lives in Asheville, NC and is an administrator and teacher at Asheville School, an independent college-prep boarding school. His work has recently appeared in several magazines, including Rivendell, Appalachian Journal, and Wild Earth.

G.C. Waldrep has published his poems in many magazines and journals, including Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Seneca Review, Tin House, American Letters & Commentary, among others. His first book of poetry, Goldbeater’s Skin, won the Colorado Prize for Poetry in 2003 and will be published by the University Press of Colorado in December 2003. He is also the author of a non-fiction book, Southern Workers and the Search For Community (Illinois, 2000), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He lives in Summerfield, NC.

Daneen Wardrop is an Associate Professor at Western Michigan University and her poetry has appeared recently in such magazines as TriQuarterly, Seneca Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Laurel Review, and Notre Dame Review. Her book, Emily Dickinson’s Gothic, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 1996, and her critical articles on American writers have been published in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Emerson Society Quarterly, and African American Review.

Judith Werner is an astrologist and tarot reader who lives in New York City and works on behalf of the Habitat For Humanity. She teaches poetry classes and has published her work in several magazines and anthologies, including Rattapallax, Sulphur River, Rattle, Comstock Review, South Dakota Review, Medicinal Purposes, and A Fierce Brightness: 25 Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books, 2002).

Robert M. West teaches English at Mississippi State University. He is editor of Blink: A Little Little Magazine of Little Poems. He received his Ph.D in English from the University of NC-Chapel Hill where he also served as managing editor of The Carolina Quarterly. His poems and criticism have appeared in a number of literary journals, including Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Pembroke Magazine, and The Connecticut Review.

Dana Wildsmith is the author of three collections of poetry, including Our Bodies Remember (Sow’s Ear Press,1999), and has just completed a fourth. She recently served as writer-in-residence for The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. She lives on a 150 year- old farm in Bethlehem, Georgia and teaches English literacy to non-English speaking adults.