Professor Laura Coltelli of the University of Pisa has devoted many years to the oral and written literature, and the varied culture, of American Indians. She now brings us a revealing volume of interviews with eleven contemporary Indian writers. Six are women: Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Wendy Rose, and Leslie…
Maxine Kumin recommends Chester Stubbs, a novel by Craig Miles Miller: “This vibrant first novel set in Pensacola is about a reformed redneck trying to reconnect with humanity. An adventure story with heart.” (Dennis McMillan)
Tom Sleigh's new book is introduced by the title poem, his translation from Dante's "Purgatorio," in which the speaker wakes from a dream of his own destruction. The brilliant long poem which follows it, "Endings," is a ranging philosophical narrative whose speaker has received a deadly medical prognosis and wills himself to penetrate and renew…
Winning the City by Theodore Weesner. Summit Books. $17.95 cloth. Winning the City is a fine novel, a crisply written story about a young boy's struggle to define himself. Dale Wheeler's position on the school basketball team is unjustly taken from him, and what Dale does in response gives the novel its drive and theme….
Jane Shore recommends Heroin, poems by Charlie Smith: “A brilliant book by a poet whose work I have recently discovered. The ease and yet surprise of the language and the passion are compelling. Where have I been for his other four books?” (Norton)
Hubbard is an assured storyteller and a complex narrative stylist. Her collection of stories is unified in theme — pent-up characters desiring changes that may prove creative or destructive, but which offer release and relief, and which vivify what has been known as "life." The title story provides a key image: "Without thinking she ran…
M. L. Rosenthal recommends Winter Channels, poems by James Schevill (Floating Island): “A rare collection of brief lyric pieces, full of gentle feeling, humane wisdom, and sharp political and social thrusts, by one of America’s most serious-and seriously neglected-poets.”
Yusef Komunyakaa, Taboo, poems: In the first book of a trilogy, Komunyakaa shows that he is our great poet of connectivity—the secret blood that links slave and master, explorer and native, stranger and brother. (FSG)
Don Lee recommends Watermark, poetry and prose edited by Barbara Tran, Monique T. D. Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi: “A fascinating and surprising collection by a new generation of Vietnamese American writers, delving into identity and displacement with energy and grace.” (Temple)
Spring 1999 - Digital