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The Paris Review No. 101, Winter 1986

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“The child was in a state of panic. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, ‘I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.’ She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off. I had been trying to write the perfect absence note”: E. L. Doctorow on the Art of Fiction.

Derek Walcott on poems v. plays, the West Indies, and the theater of the sea.

A story by W. S. Merwin. Poems by Linda Gregg, Eamon Grennan, Ha Jin, and Howard Nemerov.

Table of Contents

Fiction

W. S. Merwin, Shepherds

Interview

E. L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction No. 94  Full Text

Derek Walcott, The Art of Poetry No. 37  Full Text

Poetry

John Ash, Three Poems

Christopher Benfey, Expecting

April Bernard, The Way We Live Now

Carmine Chickadel, Tangles

James Cole, A Glimpse from the Classroom

Alfred Corn, Lost and Found

Michael Finley, A Drive in the Country

Alice Rose George, Success

Jorie Graham, Two Poems

Linda Gregg, Three Poems

Eamon Grennan, Totem

Jane Hirshfield, Two Poems

John Jackson, Memento Mori

Ha Jin, The Dead Soldier's Talk

William Logan, The Duck Pond

Eugenio Montale, Two Poems

Robert Morgan, Oxbow Lakes

Howard Nemerov, Night Operations; Coastal Command RAF

Charles North, For A Cowper Paperweight

Sharon Olds, The Beetle

Claude Pelieu, Mary's Latest Paintings

Donald Platt, How Night Comes

Alberto Ríos, Horses, Which Do Not Exist

Bin Ramke, A Father Failing

James Reidel, The Prince of Dark Bodies

Jennifer Rose, Two Poems

James Schuyler, Simone Signoret

Delmore Schwartz, Six Poems

Ann Snodgrass, Portal

Gerald Stern, Five Poems

Derek Walcott, The Light of the World

Daniel Wolff, Poem

Feature

Juliette Huxley, Une Petite Fumée de Souvenirs

Art

Carroll Dunham, Contents Illustration