Plan B by Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon, Plan B, poems and photographs: In this extraordinary collaboration with Scottish photographer Norman McBeath, Muldoon’s poems reveal an uncanny relationship between word and image. (Enitharmon)
Review
rev. of 1-800-HOT-RIBS by Catherine Bowman
1-800-HOT-RIBS Poems by Catherine Bowman. Gibbs Smith, $9.95 paper. Reviewed by Diann Blakely Shoaf. “I want words meat-hooked from the living steer,” Lowell wrote, as if foreseeing 1-800-hot-ribs, the debut collection by Catherine Bowman, a skilled young poet who seems to manipulate the language with a branding iron in one hand and a bullwhip…
J.-M. G. Le Clézio and the Nobel Prize
J.-M. G. Le Clézio and the Nobel Prize: This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature selection has proven controversial, and to some, disappointing. One French critic fumed that the winner’s fiction lacked "universality," and even worse, often made it to the bestseller lists. The dean of German literary critics, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, expressed astonishment that the award…
Speak Low by Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips, Speak Low, poems: Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason—these are the lenses through which Phillips examines, in this tenth collection, what it means to be a human being in the world. (FSG)
rev. of A Brief History of Male Nudes in America by Dianne Nelson
A Brief History of Male Nudes in America Stories by Dianne Nelson. Univ. of Georgia Press, $19.95 cloth. Reviewed by Jessica Dineen. In A Brief History of Male Nudes in America, Dianne Nelson’s first story collection, the element of place — a ranch in Nevada, a tent in Kansas, or a hotel in Santa Fe…
Seven Notebooks by Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath, Seven Notebooks, poems: These seven poetic sequences examine—in forms ranging from haiku to prose, and in a voice veering from incantatory to deadpan—the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed. (Ecco)
American Smooth by Rita Dove
Rita Dove, American Smooth, poems: The poems in Dove’s gorgeous eighth collection move through history, music, war, and motherhood in an ever graceful choreography. (Norton)
As When in Season by Jim Schley
Maxine Kumin recommends As When, in Season, by Jim Schley: “This is the executive director of The Frost Place’s first collection of poems and represents years of composing and revising. The centerpiece, an inventive series of odes to the muses, displays Schley’s literary insights and his musical gift with language.” (Marick)
The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller
Sue Miller, The Senator’s Wife, a novel: In this rich, emotionally urgent novel, two women at opposite stages of life face parallel dilemmas. (Knopf)