Winter 1988

David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. He is author or co-author of more than twenty books, most recently a collection of poetry, The Ha-Ha (LSU, 2003), and a volume of essays, What Is a Book? (Georgia, 2002). His work appears frequently in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and was recently awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Michael Nelson is professor of political science at Rhodes College. A former editor of The Washington Monthly, he has published twenty books on the American presidency, national elections, and higher education. In recent years he has written articles for VQR about Abraham Lincoln, C. S. Lewis, Garrison Keilloir, Frank Sinatra, Ward Just, Stephen Carter, Robert Caro, and other subjects. More than forty of his articles have been anthologized in works of political science, history, and English composition.