Volume 3

This is the third issue of the WORCESTER REVIEW. As in the past we have chosen to print poems by those honored in the annual Worcester County Poetry Association Contest. From the large number of manuscripts submitted – larger again this year than ever before – the judges selected three finalists and six honorable mentions. These poets read their works at the Worcester Art Museum on September 22, 1974. Other poets in the magazine read the following week at the open reading sponsored by the Association. Still others are writers we have published before and are delighted to have with us again.

Featured in this issue are two internationally-known artists familiar to the Worcester Community. Ken Smith spent 1972–73 as poet-in-residence at Clark and Holy Cross, has read at Assumption and Worcester State, and has worked with community groups in the city. Included here are a new series of poems set in Worcester, commentary on a workshop he ran while he was here last spring, and portraits of him by a Worcester artist-photographer.

Elsa Dorfmann lives in Cambridge. Many of us first encountered her work among the gallery of poets at the Grolier Book Store, presided over for so long by Gordon Cairnie. Since it was Gordon who began the Poetry Association by introducing Sam Bachrach to Mike True, we feel it is particularly appropriate to include Elsa’s work, as a partial tribute to the force that brought us all together. Her contributions to this issue are a series of striking self-portraits and an equally striking essay about taking them. We are pleased to present major new works by both her and Ken Smith.

— John Rosenwald