Elizabeth Spires, The Wave-Maker, poems: In these poems, Spires explores the seamless continuum of birth, death and transformation, meditating on creatures as unlikely as a lowly snail, a prehistoric coelacanth, or a tiny Japanese netsuke of a badger disguised as a monk. (Norton)
Rita Dove, Sonata Mulattica, poems: In this book-length lyric narrative inspired by history, Dove recreates the life of a nineteenth-century virtuoso violinist, the son of a white woman and an "African prince," whose conflict with Ludwig van Beethoven over a woman evolves a grandiose yet melancholy poetic tale. (Norton)
The New Valley, novellas by Josh Weil (Grove Press): Josh Weil drew me into The New Valley from the get-go. His language is exquisite, his sentences glorious. In fact, Weil writes the kind of sentences you want to sniff and then slosh around in your mouth for a while before heading into the next paragraph….
James Alan McPherson recommends All the Money in the World, a novel by Robert Anthony Siegel: “A heartfelt first novel by a gifted former student.” (Random)
Richard Tillinghast, The New Life, poems: In his latest collection, which takes its title from Dante’s celebration of courtly love, La Vita Nuova, Tillinghast journeys through romantic love, the deaths of old friends, the ironies of history, and the losses and epiphanies of a long life of exploration and discovery. (Copper Beech)
B. H. Fairchild, Usher, poems: This new collection of poems employs dramatic monologues and embraces a range of subject matters and modes, from the elegiac to the comic. (Norton)
Clampdown, by Jennifer Moxley (Flood Editions): A few decades ago Jennifer Moxley might have been called a “coterie poet”—her low celebrity wattage within the larger galaxy of American letters contrasts starkly with the deep respect and loyalty she inspires among a relatively small number of serious readers and fellow poets. Her work appears in hard-to-find…
Lloyd Schwartz recommends All-American Girl, poems by Robin Becker: “Unsparing and self-knowing, Robin Becker uses irony (as in her double- and triple-edged title) as if it were a form of directness. Painful, often devastating poems contend with crushing loss, the convolutions of sexuality and family politics, the struggle to accept the self. Yet they also…
Derek Walcott, Selected Poems, poems: Drawing from every stage of Walcott’s Nobel Prize-winning career, this collection brings together his famous early works, passages from Omeros , and selections from his latest major works. (FSG)
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