Buying Time: An Anthology Celebrating 20 Years of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts

by Scott Walker (Editor)

Prisoner at a desk / May Sarton --
Some words / John Ashbery --
from The dream songs / John Berryman --
Night / Louise Bogan --
Monologue : Tangier 1975 / Paul Bowles --
from Rubyfruit jungle / Rita Mae Brown --
Gazebo / Raymond Carver --
The poet and the turning / Lucille Clifton --
Mother's voice / Robert Creeley --
Variations on two dicta by William Blake / Robert Duncan --
The conventional wisdom / Stanley Elkin --
Flesh and blood / Louise Erdrich --
The memory of Elena / Carolyn Forche --
from Fefu and her friends / Maria Irene Fornes --
Each bird walking / Tess Gallagher --
Nimram / John Gardner --
Plutonian ode / Allen Ginsberg --
Horse / Louise Gluck --
The traveler / John Hawkes --
from China men / Maxine Hong Kingston --
The Seekonk Woods / Galway Kinnell --
The bones of my father / Etheridge Knight --
The image maker / Stanley Kunitz --
New season / Philip Levine --
The sound of the light / W.S. Merwin --
Humpbacks / Mary Oliver --
from Trust / Cynthia Ozick --
Faith in a tree / Grace Paley --
If they come in the night / Marge Piercy --
On Flower Wreath Hill / Kenneth Rexroth --
Easter eve, 1945 / Muriel Rukeyser --
The silent minister / May Sarton --
from Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo / Ntozake Shange --
The slaughterer / Isaac Bashevis Singer --
The abortion / Alice Walker --
The liar / Tobias Wolff --
The other side of the river / Charles Wright

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1985