Review

Gary Soto, A Simple Plan, poems: A new collection that returns to the themes of place, childhood, and kinship with the down-and-out in Fresno. (Chronicle)

Maxine Kumin, Still to Mow, poems: In her seventeenth book of poetry, Kumin’s signature nature poems are luminously invigorated by darker human realities. Potently, she focuses on myriad subjects, including the pleasures of horse keeping, Dick Cheney’s “canned hunting,” and the disappointments and joys of marriage. (Norton)

Mark Strand, New Selected Poems, poems: more than twenty-five years after the appearance of his first Selected Poems, Strand offers a magnificent new gathering of work, one that spans and celebrates his remarkable career to date. (Knopf)

Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger, poems: A glorious arrangement of selections from six previous volumes, culminating in a series of new poems. (Norton)

Philip Levine, Tarumba, translation of poems by Jaime Sabines, with Ernesto Trejo: Sabines is a national treasure in Mexico, and this bilingual edition presents the full power of his secretive, wild, bittersweet poems, stepping into his streets, brothels, hospitals, and cantinas. (Sarabande)

Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976?2006, poems: In this collection, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award, Voigt arranges poems from her six highly praised books alongside a group of astonishing new pieces. (Norton)

Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead, poems: A passionate pilgrimage embracing the contradictions of our “Confederate” legacy and the troubled nation where it still lingers. (Knopf)

Carl Phillips, Quiver of Arrows, selected poems: This generous selection from Phillips’s eight books showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of America’s most distinctive, original voices, meditating on desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex and human reason. (FSG)