The Pushcart prize, VIII : best of the small presses, 1983-1984 -- with an index to the first eight volumes : an annual small press reader

Introduction -- Gail Godwin A small, good thing -- Raymond Carver The end of the world -- Thomas McGrath The company we keep : self-making in imaginative art, old and new -- Wayne C. Booth Each bird walking -- Tess Gallagher The decimation before Phraata -- Alan Dugan Prayer for the dying -- Willis Johnson Those destroyed by success -- William Dickey Moles -- Mary Oliver Memories of unhousement, a memoir -- Clark Blaise How to write a poem -- Gordon Lish Persimmons -- Li-Young Lee Confederate graves in Little Rock -- Richard Hugo Quarrel -- Ellen Bryant Voight Graveyard day -- Bobbie Ann Mason The dishwasher -- Robert McBrearty The pond at dusk -- Jane Kenyon Sitting between two mirrors -- James Baker Hall from A sequence on Sidney Lanier -- Andrew Hudgins Summer, an elegy -- Ellen Gilchrist Notes on failure -- Joyce Carol Oates Sonnet -- Stanley Plumly Marcus Garvey arrested at the 125th Street station -- John Allman The weaver -- Ann Stanford Samba de los agentes -- Andrei Codrescu Crane and Carlsen : a memoir (1926-1934) -- Lincoln Kirstein Carolyn at twenty -- Patricia Dobler The house that fear built : Warsaw, 1943 -- Jane Flanders Hidden justice -- Gerald Stern Judgment -- Kate Wheeler What literature means -- Cynthia Ozick A valediction -- W.D. Snodgrass I knew I'd sing -- Heather McHugh Remembering Titian's martyrdom of St. Lawrence -- Jorie Graham Robo-wash -- Jean Davidson The stench -- Jillian Becker Procession -- Philip Booth Lining up -- Richard Howard The longing -- John Daniel The time, the place, the loved one -- Susan Welch Avant-garde mastery -- Thomas LeClair Zoë -- Diane Ackerman Hamlen Brook -- Richard Wilbur The man of many L's -- Maxine Kumin Uncle Balt and the nature of being -- William Gass The reedbeds of the Hackensack -- Amy Clampitt Dream vision -- Raymond Oliver The desire and pursuit of the part -- Henri Coulette Age -- Janet Desaulniers Being and Judaism -- Oscar Mandel That bright grey eye -- Hilda Morely Great-aunt Francesca -- Joe-Anne McLaughlin Indian boarding school : the runaways -- Louise Erdrich The eight stages of translation -- Robert Bly The woman who lives in the botanical gardens -- Alexis De Veaux Sapphics against anger -- Timothy Steele Tutka Bay, Alaska -- Anita Wilkins Contributors' notes.