"If there is one person who epitomizes the best of today's women's poetry, it is surely Eleanor Wilner."-- Booklist Although she has recently won the prestigious MacArthur prize, Wilner still remains relatively unknown to readers of poetry. This work anthologizes poems from four of her previous volumes and adds new poems written between 1993 and 1996. Few other poets writing now show Wilner's intellectual curiosity and range?bats, goddesses, Asian art, photography, and the politics of the body all have their turns here. Her manner is conversational and digressive; the easy categories of lyric or narrative do not describe her work effectively. She invests old stories with new meaning, as in "Leda's Handmaiden" or "Iphigenia, Setting the Record Straight"; she has a profoundly nuanced sense of the poet's mission, as in "The Messenger," "running through history...[carrying] a code/ only the heart could break." She seems at her best when her manner is half-satirical, as in "How To Get in the Best Magazines"?"Preferred:/ tired little poems, taut,/ world-weary"?or in her portrait of the poets' Muse, "the big broad...ethereal as hell." Wilner's verse is not principally musical, pleasing the mind more than the ear, but she ought to find an audience among most readers of poetry.?Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Abstraction Admonition All The Wide Grin Of Him Ambition Amelia American Painting, With Rain The American Sublime: Robert Penn Warren Ars Poetica As Far As It Goes, And Back As Soft And As Pink As A Nursery Atget's Gardens Bailing Out -- A Poem For The 1970s Bat Cave Beauty And The Beast Being As I Was, How Could I Help Beyond The Second Landing The Bird In The Laurel's Song Blessing Bridge Passage: Variations On Two Scales Candied Changing The Imperatives Classical Proportions Of The Heart Closing Ceremonies For The Bicentennial Coda, Overture A Comment On Relevance Of Modern Science On Everyday Lives Concerto Conditional Riff The Continuous Is Broken, And Resumes Conversation With A Japanese Student Desert Parable Dinner Party East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon Eleusis Emigration The End Of The Line Epitaph Ex Libris Facing Into It Filling In The Blanks The Fourth David: 1. Donatello 1430-32: 62-1/4 The Fourth David: 2. Michelangelo 1501-4: 13'5 The Fourth David: 3. Bernini 1623: Life-size The Fourth David: 4. Anonymous 1979 Freed From Another Context Generic Vision, 1991 The Green Connection Having Eaten Of The Tree Of Knowledge Her Body Is Private High Noon At Los Alamos How To Get In The Best Magazines Hunting Manual The Illuminator Instructions To Painters By Wang Wei, Eighth Century Iphigenia, Setting Rhe Record Straight It's Not Cold Here Job's Wife, A Twentieth-century Casting Script Judgment Kazuko's Vision Killing The Grubs Knowing The Enemy Labyrinth Lament The Lament Of The Valkyrie Landing The Last Man Laurels Leda's Handmaiden The Literal = The Abstract: A Demonstration The Love Of What Is Not Love Uncommanded Made By Hand Maya Meditation On The Wen Fu The Messenger Metamorphoses At A College For Women Middle-class Vantage Midway The Journey Of This Life Minor Epic Miriam's Song Moonsnails Mt. Fuji And The Martial Arts The Mulch The Muse My Mother's Portrait Nandin's Tail Natural History 'never Apologize For Poetry' Night Fishing In The Sound Ode To Innocence Of A Sun She Can Remember Off The Hook The Oldest Desire On Ethnic Definitions On The Road To Larry Robin's Bookstore Operations: Desert Shield, Desert Storm The Pillar A Poem Of Exile Postscript A Private Space Reading The Bible Backwards Recovery Renegade Renshi Round: Wilner To Toyama To Altizer The Round Fish Salute To Donald Davie Sarah's Choice The Secret Garden See-saw A Short History Of Philosophy So Quietly The World (i'm Nobody, Who Are You?) Sunflowers, Repossessed Those Who Come After Thoughts Of A Retired Diamond Cutter The Towers Of Silence Trummerfrauen (the Rubble-women) Tucson Gardens Two Pairs Of Eyes Ume: Plum Unstrung Up Against It Water Lace And White Eyes We Met Where People Like Us Meet What Was Going On What Was Left Over When Asked To Lie Down On The Altar Winged Victory Winter Garden Without Regret Women Talking Working The Block The World Is Not A Meditation You, Failed Pronoun Zero At The Bone -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® For thirty years, the late Thomas McGrath labored over his narrative epic poem, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, first publishing Part One in 1963, and finishing with Part Four in 1985. All previous editions of the individual parts contained errors which the poet intended to correct in a definitive edition. Now, working from McGrath's archival notes, his longtime friend and colleague Dale Jacobson has prepared an authoritative text of the whole poem, making available for the f