Three Wildernesses: Pablo Picasso, Woody Allen, Anne Sexton (on A Life of Picasso: Volume I 1881-1906 by John Richardson and Marilyn McCully; Woody Allen: A Biography by Eric Lax; & Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook)

Edward Butscher’s poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous literary journals and publications, including the Saturday Review of Literature, Newsday, and the American Book Review. In 1976 he published the first biography of Sylvia Plath, and in 1988 his biography Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale won the Poetry Society of America’s Melville Cane Award.

Civilisation and Its Remedies (on In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations by Jerry Mander & History and Spirit: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of Liberation by Joel Kovel)

American Theater Watch, 1991–1992

Gerald Weales’s “American Theater Watch” appeared in these pages from 1978 until 2010, and we have also featured on occasion his essays and reviews on topics that have included World War II and the early-career political cartoons of one Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss). In addition to his distinguished career as an author and drama specialist, Weales was a longtime professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he retired in 1987; a senior Fulbright scholar at the University of Sri Lanka; and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.

Opening Night

Jim Peterson is the author of five poetry collections, three chapbooks, and a novel; his newest collection, Original Face, was released by Gunpowder Press in October 2015. Peterson’s poems have appeared widely in such journals as Poetry, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, and Cave Wall. He lives with his charismatic corgi, Mama Kilya, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Lear

On My Deathbed

The Fiddler

Man-Steel

Bésame, Bésame