Review

Blue Hour by Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché, Blue Hour, poems: Forché’s lyrical fourth collection, her first since the tour de force The Angel of History, ranges from personal memories of childhood and childrearing to stark images of atrocity, with the centerpiece, the forty-seven-page “On Earth,” brilliantly modeled after “gnostic abecedarians.” (HarperCollins)

Willow Temple by Donald Hall

Donald Hall, Willow Temple, stories: There are twelve stories here—five from The Ideal Bakery and six collected for the first time, as well as one new tale—and the volume attests to Hall’s mastery as a storyteller, the prose lyrical and elegiac as he movingly unfolds each character’s frailties. (Houghton Mifflin)