Historically, poets have generally adopted one of two main “poses,” or manners of considering their own metier. One has been the prophet, or vates, the divine madman who scrawls out his gifts from the gods in a state of inspiration and frenzy. The vates corresponds to the popular conception of the poet as long-haired eccentric.

Two of my teachers were Archibald MacLeish and Yvor Winters. From the 1930s into the 1960s, MacLeish’s poetic reputation flourished, but by the time he died in 1982, in his ninetieth year, the literary stock market had devalued him. On the other hand, Yvor Winters’s poems were never popular. His eccentric and belligerent criticism drew attention away from his poems, which were sparse, spare and sometimes beautiful. The two men were unlike in a thousand ways.

A book written so hectically one can’t help thinking that the author was trying to hide something Animated cartoon: a unicorn in a tree top, mourning his lost love. It brings tears to my eyes I evaded evil with my body, though it came from my body

Pont de la Concorde: On the river below the Chamber of Deputies floated a restored barge made into a restaurant.

Stravinsky’s ballet Les Noces premiered on 13 June 1923, along with his Pulcinella, and to celebrate the occasion Geraldand Sara Murphy hosted a grand dinner on the barge the following Sunday, the 17th. Some forty artists, musicians, and patrons gathered for the event. 

The portraits that follow are from a large number of photographs recently recovered from sealed archives in Moscow, some—rumor has it—from a cache in the bottom of an elevator shaft. Five of those that follow, Akhmatova, Chekhov (with dog), Nabokov, Pasternak (with book), and Tolstoy (on horseback) are from a volume entitled The Russian Century, published early last year by Random House. Seven photographs from that research, which were not incorporated in The Russian Century, are published here for the first time: Bulgakov, Bunin , Eisenstein (in a group with Pasternak and Mayakovski), Gorki, Mayakovski, Nabokov (with mother and sister), Tolstoy (with Chekhov), and Yesenin. The photographs of Andreyev, Babel, and Kharms were supplied by the writers who did the texts on them. The photograph of Dostoyevsky is from the Bettmann archives. Writers who were thought to have an especial affinity with particular Russian authors were asked to provide the accompanying texts. We are immensely in their debt for their cooperation.

Leaving kigali these days, one no longer sees the cloud of dust that streams of trucks and taxi-buses once raised above the doughnut stands, throngs of travelers, and gas-station shanties. This cloud over the Rwandan capital’s main avenue once marked the turnoff to a rutted dirt road heading south toward the Bugesera, a region of hills and marshes that lies to the south of the city. 

Dear Reynolds,

That day in New York, when you asked me whether I could recite any limericks of my own, I was momentarily at a total loss, and couldn’t recall a single one; though in the course of years I’ve composed quite a few. So I thought I would send you some. I record them in a pretty good book called The Lure of the Limerick, by W.S. Baring-Gould. But before I offer any works of my own, I should mention one reputedly by Kingsley Amis.

The fellow who screwed Brigid Brophy

Was awarded the Kraft-Ebbing trophy;

          He was paid eighty quid

          For the thing that he did.

Which many declared was a low fee.

And now, some modest efforts of my own.

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.

In March, 1959, Ernest Hemingway’s publisher Charles Scribner, Jr. suggested putting together a student’s edition of Hemingway short stories. He listed the twelve stories which were most in demand for anthologies, but thought that the collection could include Hemingway’s favorites, and that Hemingway could write a preface for classroom use. Hemingway responded favorably. He would write the preface in the form of a lecture on the art of the short story.

  When asked in his 1958 Paris Review interview with George Plimpton about choosing titles, Hemingway said, “I make a list of titles after I’ve finished the story or the book — sometimes as many as one hundred. Then I start eliminating them, sometimes all of them.” Three years later he struggled with the list you see below—possible titles for a book about his early Paris days, a book which he said probably should not be published because of potential libel suits.