Poetry. "A number of poets have written interesting novels—one thinks immediately of Swinburne's Love's Cross Currents, Mandelstam's The Egyptian Stamp, and the Ashbery/Schuyler collaboration A Nest of Ninnies. It is less common for novelists to write interesting poems. In this, as in so many other ways, Maggie Paley is exceptional. Although she is the valued friend of many New York poets, Ms. Paley has never had any ambition to be a poet. If she had not discovered the sestina she might never have written a poem, but the peculiar exigencies of the form attracted her, and she began to write sestinas as a 'warm-up exercise' before getting down to the serious business of her latest novel"—John Ash.