Ploughshares Winter 2004-05

by Joy Harjo (Editor)

Overview

The Winter 2004-2005 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Joy Harjo. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Guest-edited by Joy Harjo, the Winter 2004-2005 issue of Ploughshares contains poems and stories from notable authors such as Xu Xi, Martin Espada, and Donald Hall. In the Introduction to the issue, Harjo says, "Maybe the ultimate purpose of literature is to humble us to our knees, to that know-nothing place. Maybe we here on this planet are a story gone awry, with the Great Storyteller frantically trying out different endings. Whatever the outcome, we need new songs, new stories, to accompany us wherever we are, wherever we go."

Full Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
Joy Harjo

EDITOR PROFILE
William Pitt Root

FICTION

"Winter, 1979," by Eddie Chuculate
"Dream of the Revolution," by Travis Holland
"Free Kick," by Alex Kuo
"The Princess of Nebraska," by Yiyun Li
"The Train to Lo Wu," by Jess Row
"Famine," by Xu Xi

POETRY

Chris Abani
Ai
Ellen Bass
Rick Bass
Bruce Bond
Melanie Cesspooch
Marilyn Chin
Sandra Cisneros
Jan Clausen
Allison Hedge Coke
Brendan Constantine
Jon Davis
Ron De Maris
Chard deNiord
Valerie Duff
Martin Espada
Monica Ferrell
Jennifer Foerster
Javier F. Gonzalez
Donald Hall
Jeff Hardin
Maxine Kumin
Patrice de La Tour du Pin
Jose F. Lacaba
Harriet Levin
Chip Livingston
Adrian C. Louis
Jeredith Merrin
Alicia osteriker
Elise Paschen
Lucia Perillo
David Romtvedt
William Pitt Root
Cathie Sandstrom
Philip Schultz
Rebecca Seiferle
Reginald Shepherd
Quentin Sherwood
Cathy Song
Gary Soto
Gerald Stern
Marc J. Straus
Robert Sullivan
Arthur Sze
Laura Tohe
Pamela Uschuk
Nance Van Winckel
G. C. Waldrep
Charles Harper Webb
Orlando White
Scott Withiam

EDITORS' SHELF

Product Details

BN ID:	2940016347769
Publisher:	Ploughshares / Emerson College
Publication date:	12/15/2004
Series:	Ploughshares , #304
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	202
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Born on May 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Joy Harjo is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Tribe. The daughter of Allen W. and Wynema Baker Foster, Harjo was not raised on the reservation. Coming from a family of painters, she originally planned on pursuing a career in the visual arts. When she turned sixteen, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts to study painting and theatre. After graduating in 1968, she decided to pursue a degree in creative writing at the University of New Mexico, where she received a bachelor's degree in 1976. Following her interests in language, literature, and writing, Harjo moved to Iowa and enrolled in the University of Iowa, graduating with an master of fine arts degree in 1978. While at the University of Iowa, she also completed a nondegree program in filmmaking at the Anthropology Film Center.

After receiving her graduate degree, Harjo returned to Santa Fe and taught as an instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1978-79 and 1983-84 and as a lecturer at Arizona State University in 1980-81. In addition to her work at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she also taught at Santa Fe Community College in 1983-84. Following this series of one-year appointments, she secured more full-time positions as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in 1985-88, an associate professor at the University of Arizona in 1988-90, and finally as a full professor of creative writing at the University of New Mexico in 1991-95.

Influenced by her family and other authors, such as Leslie Silko, Simon Ortiz, Galway Kinnell, and Leo Remero, Harjo was inspired to become a poet and has published several collections: The Last Song (1975), What Moon Drove Me to This (1979), She Had Some Horses (1983), Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). Drawing on elements from her life, including her struggles as a teenage mother and divorcee, the landscape of the Southwest, and the relationship between humans and nature, her poetry has won many prestigious awards, including the American Book Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the American Indian Distinguished Achievement Award, and the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.