Review

Antonya Nelson, Some Fun, stories: The seven stories and novella in this witty, taut, and provocative collection prove to be a timely inventory of the state of family in America. (Scribner)

Gerald Stern, Save the Last Dance, poems: Stern’s latest is an intimate, yet always universal and surprising, book that’s rich with humor and insight. (Norton)

Joyce Peseroff, Eastern Mountain Time, poems: In her piercing fifth collection, Peseroff propels the reader from the pastoral to the tragic with bravura inventions of language. (Carnegie Mellon)

Robert Boswell, The Half-Known World, essays: In this sparkling collection of essays, Boswell brings his keen critical eye to bear on craft issues facing literary writers, while simultaneously moving beyond the classroom, candidly sharing experiences that have shaped his own writing life. (Graywolf)  

Tobias Wolff, Our Story Begins, new and selected stories: The ten spare, elegant new stories, collected with twenty-one stories from Wolff’s three previous collections, offer moments of realization, along with an expert use of irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life. (Knopf)

Alberto Ríos, The Theater of Night, poems: Set along the U.S.–Mexican border, Ríos’s poems charmingly follow the courtship and marriage of a couple as their lives sweetly weave into one. (Copper Canyon)

Donald Hall, Unpacking the Boxes, a memoir: Hall is as painstakingly honest about his low points as a poet, writer, lover, and father as he is about his successes in this self-revealing memoir-his first book since being named poet laureate in 2006. (Houghton Mifflin)  

C. D. Wright, Rising, Fall, Hovering, poems: Wright’s language is sharpened with political ferocity as she overlays voices from the borderlands between nations, to reveal the human struggle for connection and justice during times of upheaval and grief. (Copper Canyon)