In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day 
Rose a lady in skunk with a top heavy sway,
Raised a knobby red finger—all turned from their beer—

Though it is not our right to claim that the poets represented in the following portfolio would have remained in dark unfathomed caves of ocean had it not been for The Paris Review, surely all are among those writers whom this magazine has helped make known. 

Three hot-eyed kids hard on a fix’s heels.
Enraged that the cash he had on him was small,
Did in James Edmondson, famed vaudeville’s

 The apparition of these faces in the bough;
Crowds on a wet, black petal.

The apparition of these boughs in the face;
Crowds on a wet, black petal.

The Venetian Republic regarded the art of mirror-making as a state secret, to be conserved by any sanction necessary, including the most extreme.

                                  •

I got this from a man on the street
in Richmond, circa 1964, who
offered me an easy job in his hotel

I sit by the window all morning
watching the planes make final approaches.
Each of them gathers and steadies itself

Now the Bluejay comes in
for a landing, like a SAC bomber
after a day of patrolling the ozone,

She looks pretty. She always dresses up when she goes downtown.

How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.