leadbelly, poems by Tyehimba Jess (Verse): Tyehimba Jess, like the subject of his National Poetry Series–winning debut, coaxes an astonishingly rich world from the wood and steel scraps of the life he finds before him. He chronicles the story of Leadbelly—the killer, the lover, the victim, the son, the greatest bluesman of his time—and…
Water: Nine Stories, stories by Alyce Miller (Sarabande): By its title, Miller’s collection offers a fitting symbol for the multiple forms of desire that take shape within her characters. Filled with beautiful phrasings and descriptions of longing, the book sometimes shows desire’s fluidity as a result of age; other times, as in the story "Ice,"…
Antonya Nelson, Nothing Right, stories: Set in the American southwest, the stories of Nothing Right explore domesticity with characters who try to keep themselves intact while their personal lives explode around them. (Bloomsbury)
Edward Hirsch, Special Orders, poems: With a mixture of grief and joy, Hirsch assesses “the major triumphs, the major failures” of his life so far, revealing a new fearlessness in confronting his own internal divisions. (Knopf)
Abide with Me, a novel by Elizabeth Strout (Random House): This second novel by the author of the extraordinary Amy and Isabelle further mines the conflicts, contradictions, and complications of small town life. Tyler Caskey, an observant and vulnerable minister in West Annett, Maine, must concomitantly confront the death of his relatively young wife, the…
Above the Houses, short stories by Susan Engberg (Delphinium): In her fourth collection of stories, Susan Engberg explores the tentative, testing movements of people recently unmoored by change. Spouses die; marriages end or begin; there are new towns, new houses, new bodies to navigate. The landscape can feel hostile. A baby wanders alone down a…
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark And Termite, a novel: In this extraordinary novel of war, resolution and recognition, generational inheritance, and the power of loss and love, Phillips tells the story of two siblings struggling to understand the secrets of their family history. (Knopf)
DeWitt Henry, Safe Suicide, essays: These interconnected essays tell the story of an ordinary man—a father of two, a husband, a long-time teacher and editor—and his extraordinary struggles for happiness and truth, offering moments of powerful insights and piercing revelations. (Red Hen Press)
Natural History, poems by Dan Chiasson (Knopf): Dan Chiasson’s second book offers up a complex weave of personae—guises as various as Horace, Pliny the Elder, and Randall Jarrell. From behind these many veils, the poems meditate upon the intersections of lived and literary experience, the mythical and the day-to-day. Chiasson playfully subverts the dramatic…
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