Karl Kirchwey is the author of three books of poems: A Wandering Island (1990), Those I Guard (1993), and The Engrafted Word (1998). His new collection, At the Palace of Jove: Poems (in which today's poem also appears), was published by in Putnam in November of 2002. His verse play based on Alcestis of Euripides received the Paris Review Prize for Poetic Drama in 1997. He is director of the Creative Writing Program and Senior Lecturer in the Arts at Bryn Mawr College.

About The Southwest Review:
Poets in this issue: J. D. McClatchy, Rachel Hadas, Nadia Herman Colburn, James Hoggard, Josephine Singer, Eliza Griswold, Dorothea Tanning, Albert Goldbarth, Stephen Sandy, Debora Greger, Karl Kirchwey, Michael J. Rosen, David Havird