The fifty-third number of New Directions in Prose & Poetry, an annual literary magazine in book form, presents writing from England, France, Japan, West Germany, Cuba, and the United States. Featured among the poetry contributions are: George Evans’s long sequence “Eye Blade”; “Ten Poems” by the English poet Craig Raine; and the work of five German poets (Heiner Bastian, Chris Bezzel, Elke Erb, Petra von Morstein, and Friederike Roth), translated by Rosmarie Waldrop. Other poets in ND53 are Antler, Léon-Paul Fargue (France), Forrest Gander, Paul Hoover, Fred Muratori, Edouard Roditi, Barry Silesky, Charlie Smith, Carolyn Stoloff, and Jorge Valls (Cuba). Fiction includes: two stories by Judy Gahagan (England); three short-short stories by Joyce Carol Oates; and contributions by Nobuo Kojima (Japan), Laura Marello, and William Webb.