My Noiseless Entourage by Charles Simic
Charles Simic, My Noiseless Entourage, poems: With his usual wry acuity, Simic explores love, futility, and the sense of an individual life in his fourteenth volume. (Harcourt)
Review
Rev: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It: Stories
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It: Stories, by Maile Meloy (Riverhead): The characters of Maile Meloy’s excellent new collection vary widely, from a ranch hand in Meloy’s native Montana to a construction worker at a nuclear power plant to a wealthy aristocrat in Argentina. But almost all of them cohere to the…
A Word Like Fire by Dick Barnes
Donald Hall recommends A Word Like Fire, selected poems by Dick Barnes: “Barnes, who died five years ago, was little known in the East, but he was a man of vast energy. His knowledge was superb, and his talents went everywhere. He taught literature at Pomona College, performed with his own jazz band, wrote and…
Playland: Poems 1994-2004 by Eve Packer
Donald Hall recommends Playland: Poems 1994–2004, by Eve Packer: "Eve was my student at Michigan, and much later my friend when I lived for a while in New York. It’s one of those books about which people say, ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ There is a liveliness and specificity about it, pure Manhattan, duly and…
The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall
Justin Kaplan recommends The Peabody Sisters, a biography by Megan Marshall: “A heroically researched and beautifully written biography about three women who were, in many ways, the American Brontës.” (Houghton Mifflin)
Healed by Horses by Carole Fletcher
Maxine Kumin recommends Healed by Horses, a memoir by Carole Fletcher with Lawrence Scanlon: “A remarkable story of a young woman burned over sixty-five percent of her body, who made it back through agonizing debridements and skin grafts to training and actually performing with her much-loved horses.” (Atria)
Sky by Christopher Buckley
Philip Levine recommends Sky, poems by Christopher Buckley: "Buckley is a California poet who—though he has published at least ten books—seems little known in the East. His poems are both Western and universal. It is the landscape of California that serves as the backdrop to the striving for significance that enriched his boyhood in Santa…
School of the Arts by Mark Doty
Mark Doty, School of the Arts, poems: Incisive and transcendent, Doty’s seventh collection contemplates the creative process and eternal questions of love and loss, desire and despair. (HarperCollins)
The Pattern More Complicated by Alan Williamson
Alan Williamson, The Pattern More Complicated, poems: Williamson’s verse from the last three decades are collected with new poems that beautifully draw his oeuvre together. (Chicago)