Comment Comment, Pt.I by Adam Gopnik. Comment about postal stamps which writer regards as too cheerful. Writer told clerk that he wanted a book of 25 cents stamps. He asked us if we wanted some special-occasion stamps, and writer said o.k., so he gave him a book of the newest special occasion stamps. These stamps...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. In the budget battle Bush squandered his popularity to no good purpose, rather than use it, earlier, in a serious attempt to solve a large national problem; he demonstrated that, as many people feared, he is not only disinclined to lead but may not know how to; he eroded the...

The Talk of the Town Foxholes by Alex Shoumatoff. Talk story about the red fox population at Craig Wood golf course, outside Lake Placid. The writer and his wife first noticed a fox on the edge of the rough as they were walking down the twelfth fairway one afternoon. The writer's wife, who grew up in a village in...

Books by Helen Vendler.

Fiction Blue Spruce by David Long. When Laurel Mahugh's brother, Eddie, committed suicide, she came to stay with his widow, Eva, in the small Montana town where they grew up. Eva and Laurel are in their 50s. For 30 years, Laurel had lived in the Far East as a civil-service employee with the Air Force...

Fiction 'My Ideal" by Veronica Geng. The story is headed by a quotation from a letter in the Village Voice; the letter quotes a homoerotic paean to Ernest Hemingway's muscular physique, from Pete Hamill & Alfred Aronowitz's "Ernest Hemingway: The Life and Death of a Man"(Lancer Books, out of print). The letter writer says this...

Our Far-Flung Correspondents HEY, PRESTO! by Sue Hubbell. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about the Magic Get-Together held annually in Colon. The town is the magic capital of the world; it says so on the town limits sign... Colon is a village of 1100 people in SW Michigan, in flat, prarie farmland. It is a village of two...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Sewn In by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about the Classical Dance Company of Cambodia, which recently appeared at the Joyce Theatre, the last engagement of its American tour. The company is identified with the efforts of Cambodia as a whole to revive its cultural identity following the devastation wreaked by the Khmer Rouge between 1975...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Richard Brookhiser. Comment about the death of Leonard Bernstein. Writer first encountered the music of Leonard Bernstein in a high-school production of "West Side Story." His high school had an ambitious drama program, but the troika that ran it--the drama teacher, the director of the orchestra, and the director of...

Annals of Art DUNGEON MASTERS by Dan Hofstadter. ANNALS OF ART about London painters. In 1976 R.B. Kitaj coined the expression "School of London". The occasion was a show titled "The Human Clay". It gave rise to a number of disputes. The chief bone of contention was over the "school" that Kitaj had assembled-a personal selection of...

The Theatre GERSHWINS' RETURN by Edith Oliver.

Poetry Glint of Gold Tooth in a Poorly Lit Kitchen by Roger Fanning. My father in a broth-stained undershirt...

Poetry Staring at the Sea on the Day of the Death of Another by May Swenson. The long body of the water fills its hollow...

Poetry A Wedding Story by Melvin Wilk. It was clear, sunny, and cold in New York...