Ploughshares Winter 2005-2006 Guest-Edited by David St. John

by David St. John (Editor), Ron Carlson, Alice Hoffman, Mark Doty, Jeffrey Harrison

Overview

The Winter 2005-06 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by David St. John. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Acclaimed poet and essayist David St. John (Hush, Prism) compiles this volume of poems and stories that embody the heterogeneity of contemporary literary style. "The greatest strength of American literature," says St. John in this volume's introduction, "has been, at its source, its plurality of voices, its multitude of styles, and its consistent resistance to the coercion of what we have imagined to be prevailing literary trends." Featuring works from former Ploughshares guest editors Edward Hirsch, Carl Phillips, and Alice Hoffman; Ploughshares Cohen award winners Ron Carlson and Maxine Swann; and acclaimed poets like Mark Doty and Jane Hirshfield, this volume mirrors St. John's preference for works that defy convention and, indeed, treat literary trends as "an anachronism."

Full Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
David St. John

FICTION

"Talk," by Ann Beattie
"In the Old Firehouse, by Ron Carlson
"Saint Helene," by Alice Hoffman
"The Sweetness of Her Name," by Jean McGarry
"Church Owl," by Howard Norman
"Secret," by Maxine Swann
"The Heiress from Horn Lake," by Katherine Taylor

POETRY

Ralph Angel
Marvin Bell
Charles Bennett
Elena Karina Byrne
Michael Collier
Cathy Colman
Mark Doty
Norman Dubie
Lynn Emanuel
D. W. Fenza
CB Follett
Chris Forhan
Doreen Gildoy
Kathleen Halme III
Judith Harris
Jeffrey Harrison
Edward Hirsch
Jane Hirshfield
H. L. Hix
Jeff Hoffman
John Hoppenthaler
David Kirby
David Lehman
Federico García Lorca
Gail Mazur
Leslie Adrienne Miller
Carol Muske-Dukes
Judith Pacht
Candace Pearson
Alison Pelegrin
Carl Phillips
Kevin Prufer
Liam Rector
Paisley Rekdal
Alberto Ríos
Katrina Roberts
David Romtvedt
Martha Ronk
Mira Rosenthal
Amy Newlove Schroeder
Jane Shore
Susan Terris
Richard Tillinghast
Ronald Wallace
Charles Harper Webb
C. Dale Young

EDITOR PROFILE
by Susan Terris

POSTSCRIPT
Zacharis Award Winner Richard McCann

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148661733
Publisher:	Ploughshares
Publication date:	12/15/2005
Series:	Ploughshares , #314
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Born in Fresno, California, in 1949, David St. John was educated at California State University, Fresno, where he received his B.A. In 1974, he received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

His many books of poetry include: The Face: A Novella in Verse (HarperPerennial, 2005); Prism (2002); In the Pines: Lost Poems (1999) Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems (1994), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Terraces of Rain: An Italian Sketchbook (1991); No Heaven (1985); The Shore (1980); and Hush (1976).

He is also the author of a volume essays and interviews, Where the Angels Come Toward Us (White Pine Press, 1995) and has edited numerous collections including The Pushcart Book of Poetry (2006) and American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (2009) which he co-edited with Cole Swenson.

The poet Robert Hass says of St. John's writing:

It's not just gorgeous, it is go-for-broke gorgeous. It is made out of sentences, sweeping through and across the meticulous verse stanzas, that could have been written, for their velvet and intricate suavity, by Henry James.

His awards include the Discovery The Nation prize, the James D. Phelan Prize, and the prix de Rome fellowship in literature. He has also received several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. St. John currently lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in the English Department at the University of Southern California.