In its fifth consecutive decade, New Directions in Prose and Poetry continues to be at the very core of the ND list. Drawing from writers and artists from six different nations, the thirty-sixth number in the series exhibits a broad spectrum of prose, poetry, and graphics. Featured contributions are Allen Ginsberg’s poem sequence “Don’t Grow Old”; Paul West’s horrific tale, “Another Minotaur”; new poetry and fiction by James Purdy; work by the Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach, now imprisoned in his native South Africa for his outspoken views against apartheid; selections from the private verse journals of the late Delmore Schwartz; “My Father Was a River,” a lyric narrative by Coleman Dowel!; “Four Poems” by Anne Waldman; and “The Saxifrage Flower (The Rockbreaker),” a penetrating study of William Carlos Williams by Mexico’s foremost poet and philosopher, Octavio Paz. Included as well are poems by Gábor Görgey (Hungary), Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Rüdiger Kremer (West Germany), Gerard Malanga, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca (Mexico), and Gustaf Sobin; fiction by Linsey Abrams, Peter Glassgold, Christine L. Hewitt, Sherril Jaffe, and Geoffrey Rips; eight charcoal drawings by the Estonian artist Hermann Talvik, with commentary by his fellow-exile, the poet Aleksis Rannit; and the poignant “Selections of Letters to Friends by Paula Eigenfeld, introduced by John Hawkes.