THE BEST OF THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Contributors © Providence College The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions. The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ CONTRIBUTORS Kim Addonizio is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent of which is Tell Me (BOA Editions); her book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, was recently published by Fiction Collective 2. Robert Alexander is the author of a book of prose poems, White Pine Sucker River: Poems 1970-1990, and he has co-edited two anthologies, The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry and The Talking Hands: A Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration. All three books are available from New Rivers Press. He is currently working on a narrative prose poem about the Civil War battle of Five Forks. Agha Shahid Ali is Director of the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His latest collections are A Nostalgisfs Map of America and The Country Without a Post Office. Jack Anderson, a poet and dance critic, received the Marie Alexander Award for his Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems (New Rivers Press). Nin Andrews is the author of The Book of Orgasms and Spontaneous Breasts. Rane Arroyo is a Puerto Rican poet and playwright who is widely published and performed. He is the son of Jean Genet and Emily Dickinson-with Pablo Neruda as the Holy Ghost. Rose Auslander was born in what is now Romania and wrote in German. Of Jewish origin, she survived WWII and immigrated to the United States in 1946, where she worked for the next seventeen years as a secretary, correspondent and translator. She returned to Europe in 1963, and died in Diisseldorf, Germany in 1988. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1939; her second in 1965. These translations are reprinted by permission of S. Fischer Verlag and Gary Sea. Copyright © 1984 S. Fischer Verlag GmbHm Frankfurt an Main. Ruth Behar's poems are included in three new anthologies: Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy (Brandeis University Press, 1996); Little Havana Blues: A Cuban-American Literature Anthology (Arte Publico Press, 1996); and The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Jewish-American Writers, edited by Hilda Raz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). The poem included in this volume forms part of a manuscript entitled Nameless Poems/Poemas sin nombre, which explores the themes of love, loss, and regret, as well as Behar's search for bonds to Cuba, her place of birth. Michael Benedikt has published five books of poetry, including Mole Notes, Night Cries, and The Badminton at Great Barrington. He also edited the Poetry of Surrealism and The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. His new manuscript of prose poems is called Universe. Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841) has sometimes been called "The Father of the Modern Prose Poem," though he never used the term to describe his own work. The poem in this volume is from The Fantasies of Gaspard de la Nuit, a book Baudelaire cited as the precursor to his Paris Spleen. Robert Bly's latest books of poetry include Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems (Harper Collins) and The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib, Ecco Press, translated with Sunil Dutta. He also edited The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner). Michael Bowden lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona. His prose poems have appeared sporadically in various journals over the years, and have been included in two anthologies: Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry and The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry. John Bradley lives with his wife, Jana, in DeKalb, where he teaches writing at Northern Illinois University. An essay of his on the prose poem appeared in Quarter After Eight. Joel Brouwer, a 1999-2000 NEA fellow, is the author of Exactly What Happened (Purdue, 1999). "Tumor" and "Marked" are from a manuscript of 100-word prose poems, Centuries, which is currently seeking a publisher. Christopher Buckley's ninth book of poetry, Fall From Grace, was recently published by BkMk Press/University of Missouri, Kansas City. With Gary Young he has just edited The Geography of Home: California and the Poetry of Place (Hey Day Books, 1999). He is Chair of the Creative Writing Dept. at the University of California/Riverside. Lynne Burris Butler won the 1999 Blue Lynx Poetry Prize for her collection of poems Sunday Afternoons with Tolstoy. She teaches at the University of North Alabama. George Chambers, novelist and poet, teaches at Bradley University. He is the author of The Bonnyclabber (novel), Null Set (short stories), and The Last Man Standing (novel). According to Ray Federman, he and Chambers "have been writing together—sending the stuff back and forth, until we feel it's in place. I think we are on to something—a series of sorts." Maxine Chernoff has published five books of poems and five collections of fiction, most recently her novel, A Boy in Winter (Crown). Michael Chitwood is the author of three collections of poetry: Salt Works, Whet and The Weave Room. He also has a book of essays titled Hitting Below the Bible Belt. David Citino is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ohio State University. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Book of Appassionata: Collected Poems (Ohio State University Press); also Broken Symmetry (Ohio State), named a Notable Book of 1997 by the National Book Critics Circle; The Weight of the Heart (Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series, 1996); The Discipline: New and Selected Poems, 1980-1992 (Ohio State); The Appassionata Doctrines (Cleveland State University Poetry Center); and The Gift of Fire (University of Arkansas Press). Killarney Clary is the author of two collections of poetry: Who Whispered Near Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989) and By Common Salt (Oberlin College Press, 1993). She was a 1992 Lannan Foundation Fellowship recipient. Mark Cunningham received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia a few years ago. He's stayed in the area because it's close to Washington D.C., where most museums don't charge to get in. Craig Czury's most recent books are Unreconciled Faces (Foot Hills Publishing, 1999) and Parallel Rivertime (bilingual Russian/English edition Petropol Press, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1999). He lives in Reading, Pennsylvania where he conducts his ongoing Berks Poetry Project with the African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Anglo communities. Philip Dacey's latest books are The Deathbed Playboy (Eastern Washington University Press, 1999) and The Paramour of the Moving Air (Quarterly Review of Literature, 1999). Jon Davis's latest book is Scrimmage of Appetite (University of Akron Press, 1995). Aleš Debeljak's recent books in English include Reluctant Modernity: Institution of Art and its Historical Forms and The City and the Child. He lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Michel Delville teaches twentieth-century British and American literature at the University of Liege, Belgium. His published works include a study of J. G. Ballard (Northcote House, 1998) and articles on contemporary poetry and fiction. His book, The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre (University Press of Florida, 1998), won the 1998 SAMLA Studies Award. Miriam Goodman's Expense Report won the 1995 Warm Springs Press Chap-book competition and appeared in summer 1995. Her newest collection, Commercial Traveller, was published in 1996 by Garden Street Press. She teaches a class in word and image at the Radcliffe Seminars and makes her living as a digital instructional designer. David Greenslade lives in Wales where he publishes in Welsh and English. English language books include Welsh Fever, a look at Welsh immigrant life in the U.S.A. Prose poetry collections include Cambrian Country, a study of Welsh Emblems, and Creosote, an investigation of the vegetable soul. Richard Gwyn's most recent book is a collection of forty-two prose poems, Walking on Bones (Parthian Books). After several years living in Greece and Spain he now lives in Cardiff where he works as a lecturer and researcher in health communication. Leo Haber, adjunct professor of Hebrew at Union College, N.Y., and consulting editor at Midstream, has published poetry and fiction in a wide variety of journals including Commentary, Midstream, The Literary Review, River City, Southern Poetry Review, Snake Nation Review, Voices West, and The Prose Poem: An International Journal. Mr. Haber has won awards in poetry from Embers, Poetpourri, Rome Art and Community Center, and the Poetry Society of Dallas, Texas. Two of his poems appeared in an international anthology of Holocaust poetry, Beyond Lament, edited by Marguerite M. Striar and published by Northwestern University Press in 1998. S.C. Hahn lives on a farm near Falköping in southern Sweden, where he is milking cows, translating Swedish and German poetry, and writing a novel about the Nebraska Territory. Cecil Helman was born in 1944 in Cape Town, South Africa, but now resides in London. He previously published in journals and anthologies, including, The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (ed.