Disparate voices of contemporary short story writers, among them Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, and even Mormon author Linda Sillitoe, all use external situations to probe the inner life of characters. All…
After your letter, I hoped to translate,
if I could, apples and bread into dark open streets.
That girl in Heidelberg drew a black line,
white paper against the shed door,
Three of them are older. None
Grew bold enough in tone and manner
To carry her executive airs.
(1961) I sat waiting in the downstairs living room in the “House of Happiness” where only a correct, efficient, middle-aged nurse interrupted a grueling aura of lost wills, defeated pluck. The inmates, whose residence in…
When the arduous season conies, again,
unexpectedly, air rushes through
needled trees causing a sudden
shift of time, a shift of light:
In a couple of weeks, I’ll pack up my truck and with my roommate head for Utah. We’ll be there the week before Christmas, skiing and visiting friends and family. We both bought new skis…
“Walk,” scold your doctors, but you snort
that it will take a cold day in hell
to make you shuffle from room to room
like some old man. So here I am,
Fear, suffering, and a need for support are part of the experience of every person with cancer, but people are often uncomfortable with and shy away from these human emotions, which seem like admissions of…
It has been observed that “many who look to Sherlock Holmes as the supreme literary spokesman for rationalism feel dismay and bewilderment about his creator having become a leading champion of a doctrine that seems…
Dialogue 23.4 (Winter 1990): 83–96
This essay explores some of the strengths of deliberately choosing
to relate to our world with gender-inclusive language in three areas