Editor's Desk

• Ted Genoways — Here Be Monsters

VQR Portfolio

• George Garrett — The Crossover Beard; or, the True Story of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (Among Other Things)
• Steve Ryfle — Godzilla's Footprint
• Edgar Wright — The Church of George

Dispatch

• Stephen Boykewich — Russia after Beslan

Essay

• Steve Almond — Pretty Authors Make Graves
• Margaret Atwood — A Soap Bubble Hovering Over the Void: A Tribute to Carol Shields
• SVEN BIRKERTS — A Weekend at Montauk
• ROBERT BLY — Robert Bly and James Wright: A Correspondence
• Antonio Skármeta — The Infinite Brunette
• WILLARD SPIEGELMAN — Rita Dove, Dancing

VQR Gallery

• GENE BELEY — Folsom Prison Blues

Fiction

• ROBERT COHEN — Aliens
• Joyce Carol Oates — So Help Me God
• CAROL SHIELDS — Segue

Poetry

• BRUCE BEASLEY — Self-Portrait in Ink
• ERIN BELIEU — After Reading That the Milky Way Is Devouring the Galaxy of Sagittarius
• Allen Braden — First Elk, 1939
• Victoria Chang — Sarah Emma Edmonds
• Chad Davidson — The Last Predicta TV
• Mark Doty — School of the Arts
• RITA DOVE — Brightening
• HENRY HART — Fishing Lesson
• BRIAN HENRY — from Quarantine
• BOB HICOK — Hunting season begins in my valley
• James Hoch — Painting of a Cart
• John Lundberg — Penitence
• Cecily Parks — Self-Portrait as Angler's Damselfly
• HENRY TAYLOR — Vision at Woods' Edge, A Straight Stretch on the Far Side of Coolbrook, and A Trace of Old Road Work

Recent Books

• David T. Gies — The King of All Spaniards
• HUGH RAGSDALE — Will the Real Mr. Putin Please Stand Up?
• LOUIS D. RUBIN, JR. — TR: On Recent Books about Theodore Roosevelt

Book Notes

• Book Notes
  

Humor

• Ross MacDonald — Dead-Eye Comic