February 2011 
Writers' Blocks: New York City's Library Way
Jennifer Arin
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world," Henry Thoreau wrote, "and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
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Alphabet of the World: An Interview with Kirk Nesset on Translating Eugenio Montejo
Christopher Buckley
It's important, I think, that the translator know a good deal about background, especially when engaged in sustained and systematic projects. But each poem should stand on its own, without foreword or gloss-and should be adjusted in translation, if need be, to suit the language and culture in which it arrives.
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Close Reading: Windows
Jane Hirshfield
Whether large or small, what I am calling a window is recognized primarily by the experience of expansion it brings: the poem's nature is changed because its scope has become larger.
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The Quest for the World's Saddest Metaphor: The Heartrending Genius of Kevin Brockmeier
Jacob M. Appel
Losing one's wife to infidelity is like being crushed by the heavens. But the magic of the tale lies in the manner in which Brockmeier melds the two storylines...
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Between Starshine & Clay:An Interview with Lucille Clifton
Remica L. Bingham
Lucille Clifton was born Lucille Sayles in Depew, New York in 1936. She married Fred Clifton in 1958 and had six children by the time her first collection of poems was published in 1969.
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What Killed the Queen: And Other Uncertainties
Alice Mattison
Whatever else we desire from a novel, we require some sense of a direction, even if the book may seem disorganized. We think of a novel as moving from beginning to end, not end to beginning.
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Filling a Void: The American Writers Museum: A Museum Whose Time Has Come
Robert H. Jackson
...this museum would celebrate and share America’s literary achievements—past and present… this place would be shrine to literary excellence, a monument to books and their creators, and a national center of gravity for the written word.
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My Old Young Books
Nicholas Delbanco
In the late 1970s, while living in Vermont, I wrote three books about the region: Possession (1977), Sherbrookes (1978), andStillness (1980).Collectively known as The Sherbrookes Trilogy, they were rooted inthatlandscape—specifically the Park-McCullough House, a large and imposing Victorian structure in the village of North Bennington. And since I knew the owner of the property, I asked his permission to use the locale.
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