ALT LINDA PASTAN I AM LEARNING TO ABANDON THE WORLD I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of hills, moving to a flat, tuneless landscape. And every night I give my body up limb by limb, working upwards across bone, towards the heart. But morning comes with small reprieves of coffee and birdsong. A tree outside the window which was simply shadow moments ago takes back its branches twig by leafy twig. And as I take my body back the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap as if to make amends.

ALT Save Yourself for Better Times —Virgil, Aeneid I will not save myself for better times. I will use myself up now—and then I will use myself up again tomorrow. It’s why my eyes stay open all night and my heart throws itself to the stars. To see which ones decide to stand still and grow a constellation around me.

ALT II aborted two daughters] Diane Seuss I aborted two daughters, how do I know they were girls, a mother knows, at least one daughter, maybe one daughter and a son, will it hurt I asked the pre-abortion lady and she said, her eyes were so level, I haven't been stupid enough to need to find out, cruel but she was right, I was and am stupid, please no politics, I've never gotten over it, no I don't regret it, two girls with a stupid penniless mother and a drug-addict father, I don't think so, I shot a rabbit once for food, I am not pristine, I am not good, Iam in no way Jesus, I am in no way even the bad Mary let alone the good, though I have held my living son in the pietà pose, I didn't know at the time I was doing it but now that I look back, he'd overdosed and nearly died, my heart, he said, his lips blue, don't worry, I've paid.

ALT Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.

ALT My Dead Friends I have begun, when I'm weary and can't decide an answer to a bewildering question to ask my dead friends for their opinion and the answer is often immediate and clear. Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child in my middle age? They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling - whatever leads to joy, they always answer, to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy's ashes were-it's green in there, a green vase, and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes. Billy's already gone through the frightening door, whatever he says I'll do. -Marie Howe

ALT Trying to Pray This time, I have left my body behind me, crying In its dark thorns. Still, There are good things in this world. It is dusk. It is the good darkness Of women's hands that touch loaves. The spirit of a tree begins to move. I touch leaves. I close my eyes, and think of water.

ALT No More Blurbs No more blurbs No more letters of recommendation No more MFA programs No more low-residency degrees No more chapbook competitions No more first book prizes No more Whiting Awards No more Pushcart nominations No more NEA grants No more Guggenheim fellowships No more MacArthur geniuses No more Pulitzer winners No more National Book Awards No more NBCC finalists No more Academy of American Poets No more Poetry Society of America No more Best American Poetry No more poet-moms No more prima donnas No more self-promotion No more judged by Mark Doty No more selected by Louise Glück No more chosen by John Ashbery No "More of this sitting around like beasts!" No more "There's only room for one at the top of the steeple.” —David Trinidad

ALT JANUARY Then one day you're in traffic at the end of the frozen room. The edges of your life undressing and the actors who played you rehearsing lines that couldn't bring you to love. Imagine the thankless highway with its signs and detours opening onto what may have been yours and is not. You waited. You waited. You became the same well-made drink after six every time. If there is a shape to movement the bridge carries it. The body runs and is nothing like wind. Imagine then, on some morning when even decision feels hopeless-imagine if you open the car door and go. - Alex Dimitrov

ALT LESSENING Without even looking in the album I realized suddenly, two months later, you had stolen the picture of me. The one in color in the Greek waves. After you had hurt me so much, how could you also take the picture from me of a time before I knew you? When I was with Jack. Steal the small proof that once Ilived well, was loved and beautiful. —Linda Gregg

ALT Let there be new flowering Lucille Clifton let there be new flowering in the fields let the fields turn mellow for the men let the men keep tender through the time let the time be wrested from the war let the war be won let love be at the end

ALT RAIN LIGHT By W. S. Merwin All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning W. S. Merwin's poetry first appeared in The New Yorker in 1955, and the magazine has since published close to two hundred of his poems and short stories.

ALT WOMAN'S WORK Sylvia: I've read you tidied your kitchen before you died: scrubbed the egg crust from fork tines, sudsed and rinsed your china teacup, dried them both by hand. You knew gas was best: no mess. My mother never talked about the time she went crazy and away for a week. She knew the courage of shutting up, a shut door, exquisite click of lock. After meals, she liked to polish the kitchen counter until the white Formica gleamed her face back up at her. Seeing herself she rubbed harder. —Sarah Freligh

ALT AMERICAN POETRY NOW Edited by SYLVIA PLATH A Selection of the best poems by modern American writers CRITICAL QUARTERLY POETRY SUPPLEMENT NUMBER 2 PRICE ONE SHILLING

ALT CONTENTS Introduction page 2 An Armada of Thirty Whales: Daniel G. Hoffman 3 1 Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee: Howard Nemerov 4 The Vacuum: Howard Nemerov 5 Ab Ovo: George Starbuck 5 In The Oregon Country: William Stafford 6 The Well Rising: William Stafford 6 A Survey: William Stafford 7 The Five-Day Rain: Denise Levertov 7 The Dream Coast: Louis Simpson 8 The Brown Studio: Barbara Guest 8 Potato: Richard Wilbur 9 Fools Encountered: E. Lucas Myers 10 The Evil Eye: Adrienne Rich 11 Living in Sin: Adrienne Rich 11 Moving In Winter: Adrienne Rich 12 "More Light! More Light!": Anthony Hecht 13 Concerning the Painting "Afternoon in Infinity" By Attilio Salemme: Hyam Plutzik 14 The Native: W. S. Merwin 14 Pedigrees: W. S. Merwin 16 Another Year Come: W. S. Merwin 16 The Stoic: For Laura Von Courten: Edgar Bowers 17 The Way: Robert Creeley 18 Kind Sir: These Woods: Anne Sexton 18 Some Foreign Letters: Anne Sexton 19 The Marsh: W. D. Snodgrass 21 Operation: W. D. Snodgrass 22

ALT INTRODUCTION American Poetry Now is a selection of poems by new and/or youngish American poets for the most part unknown in Britain. I'll let the vigour and variety of these poems speak for themselves. Unfortunately it was not possible to obtain permission to print a poem by Gregory Corso. Sylvia Plath

ALT For the Dead I dreamed I called you on the telephone to say: Be kinder to yourself but you were sick and would not answer The waste of my love goes on this way trying to save you from yourself I have always wondered about the leftover energy, water rushing down a hill long after the rains have stopped or the fire you want to go to bed from but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down the red coals more extreme, more curious in their flashing and dying than you wish they were sitting there long after midnight 1972

ALT Despedida Si muero, dejad el balcón abierto. El niño come naranjas. (Desde mi balcón lo veo). El segador siega el trigo. (Desde mi balcón lo siento). ¡Si muero, dejad el balcón abierto!

ALT EDITORIAL OFFICES (212) 840-3800 July 15, 1981 Mr. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Apartado de Correos 20.736 Mexico 20 D.F. Mexico Dear Mr. Garcia Marquez: I believe Carmen Balcells has informed you that we have reluctantly decided not to publish your new story, THE TRAIL OF YOUR BLOOD ON THE SNOW. The story is characterized by the customary brilliance of your writing, but to our way of thinking its resolution does not quite sweep the reader into acceptance of your daring and beautiful concept. This was a difficult decision for us, and I send you our regrets and apologies. We look forward with undimirished expectation to the pleasure of considering more work of yours in the near future. I enclose a Xerox copy of Mr. Rabassa's trans-lation. Yours sincerely, Roger Angell ja Enclosure