In her poem "The Homeless in America," which appeared in the Twentieth Anniversary issue of this magazine, Diann Blakely Shoaf describes a photograph — on exhibit at Parthenon Centennial Park, Nashville — of a mother grooming her son's hair: "How do I even know the child's / alive? — his mother's half-smile / so naked…
Douglas Worth is another encouraging young poet. The epigraph at the front of his book recalls Sarah Appleton's poetry — "What is essential is invisible to the eye." That this epigraph is a quote not from Teilhard or any similar source but from The Little Prince points at once to the weakness and the strength…
Lies of the Saints Stories by Erin McGraw. Chronicle Books, $11.95 paper. Reviewed by Ann Harleman. “Life puts us in each other’s way,” one of Erin McGraw’s characters tells another. That is the beauty of this first collection: the characters — so real that I hesitate, wanting to use the word “people” instead — engage…
In Hush, by David St. John, we see a conscious movement away from the lyrical voice, to a simpler, more prose-like form. This tendency in poetry is at least sixty years old now, if we trace it to the Imagist school, and much older and more universal if we consider the efforts at plain speech…
Maxine Kumin recommends Invisible Horses, poems by Patricia Goedicke: “These poems are about subjective and objective realities of the hidden impulses we live by-very powerful and innovative: ‘. . . wondering / what strings us together, self / and self-image, and the words for it . . .’ ” (Milkweed)
James Alan McPherson recommends Life in Double Time: Confessions of an American Drummer, a memoir by Mike Lankford: “A very unpretentious account of the riff-style lifestyle of dedicated musicians. This is an excellent, humorous account of rock and roll.” (Chronicle)
Fanny Howe recommends I Love Dick, a first novel by Chris Kraus: “A highly charged description of an obsession with an indifferent man named Dick, this unfolds as a brilliant intertextual document-feminist and contemporary in all its anxieties and passions. Important!” (Semiotexte)
Aside from that of Edmund Wilson, Islands in the Stream has met with little intelligent criticism. Now that the novel is out in paperback a few words might advertise the book's importance. There is no question that Hemingway's eminence has diminished in the years following A Moveable Feast. Many are now repulsed by his personality,…
Philip Levine recommends Lifelines, poems by Philip Booth: ” Lifelines is an astonishingly mature work of poetry that represents a life’s work of dedication. The poems trace an adult’s experience in the world from boyhood to old age, largely in the world of New England, and pay tribute to the toughness and decency of ordinary…
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