Joyce Peseroff recommends Letters to Jane, correspondence by Hayden Carruth: "While researching Jane Kenyon’s papers archived at the UNH library, I came across a file of letters written to her by Hayden Carruth during the long months of her illness. Carruth didn’t expect a reply; he didn’t write to be cheery or tell her to…
Fanny Howe, On the Ground, poems: In this bold, yearning new collection, Howe responds to the contrast between American imperialist goals and the realities of life lived “on the ground.” Infused with moving clarity, these poems have unassailable urgency. (Graywolf)
Robert Pinsky recommends Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, a biography by Stephen Greenblatt: "To recommend a best-seller? Strange in a way, but Ploughshares readers should know that Greenblatt is a real writer. Unlike many a ‘noted scholar’ he writes wonderful sentences and paragraphs. Here is a book about a literary writer that…
Carl Phillips, Coin of the Realm, essays: In this generous and sensual collection, with pieces ranging in subject from Plath to race, Phillips luminously argues that the currency that most holds weight, both in art and life, includes beauty, risk, and authority—values of meaning and complexity that all too often go disregarded. (Graywolf)
Russell Banks, The Darling, a novel: Set in Liberia, Banks’s riveting new book explores the interrelated history of race problems in the U.S. and Africa. (HarperCollins)
Mother of Sorrows, stories by Richard McCann (Pantheon): The pieces in this debut book are so tightly interwoven that the whole is novelistic, and they have a ring of truth to them so profound that the effect is practically memoiristic (indeed, one story was reprinted in an anthology of memoirs). The overall effect of the…
James Carroll, Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, essays: Carroll collects his searing, passionate Boston Globe columns about the Bush administration’s "coercive unilateralism." (Holt)
Margot Livesey recommends Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, nonfiction by Peter Turchi: "I love the layering of imagery and information that Peter Turchi accomplishes as Maps of the Imagination unfolds. The illustrations throughout are wonderful—so surprising and various and interesting. My brain felt enlarged by reading this account of so many different…
Stuart Dybek, Streets in Their Own Ink, poems: In his second poetry collection, Dybek finds extraordinary vitality in the same vibrant imagery that animates his celebrated fiction. (FSG)
No products in the cart.