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Rosanna Warren recommends Letters from Aldenderry, poems by Philip Nikolayev: “Fiendishly bright, world-savvy, word-savvy, large-hearted poems that tilt at lyric sentimentality (‘Autobiography no longer saves’) but keep an ancient faith: ‘miniature illuminations mostly faded but some / still quite bright amid the frozen parcels of speech / the old quill is dead now but the…
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, stories by Yiyun Li (Random House): The stories in this debut book are boldly plotted, deeply felt, and slyly humorous. The overall effect is of having read a number of powerful novels, intertwined by setting and race (all the stories involve Chinese or Chinese Americans). In "Extra," a lonely…
Jane Hirshfield recommends Restarting the World, poems by Leonard Nathan: "In this new book, along with his two previous Orchises Press volumes ( The Potato Eaters and Tears of the Old Magician), Leonard Nathan has created a late body of work of alchemical power. His brief poems observe with equal force and tact the momentary…
Martín Espada, The Republic of Poetry, poems: The republic in Espada’s eighth collection is a glorious place of odes and elegies, memory and history, miracles and justice. (Norton)
Madison Smartt Bell, Toussaint Louverture, a biography: A masterful portrait of the man who led the first—and only—successful slave revolution in history. (Pantheon)
Jane Hirshfield recommends In All Their Animal Brilliance, poems by Lance Larsen: “Lance Larsen’s second collection is a book that reaches a genuinely startling excellence. Its best poems are striking, masterful at the level of sentence and image, and also in the fierceness of both intelligence and compassion they bring to their disparate subjects. Imaginatively…
Joyce Peseroff recommends The Bad Secret, poems by Judith Harris: "Pain—the pain of illness and the pain of loss—is the background to Judith Harris’s second book of poems, but not its subject. Like Dickinson, Harris’s acute perceptions of the natural world convey feeling and insight beyond autobiography. Harris’s language is always precise, and her metaphors…
Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land, a novel: In this triumphant follow-up to Independence Day, Frank Bascombe returns, acutely in thrall, as always, to life’s endless complexities. (Knopf)
Maxine Kumin recommends The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Sue Ellen Thompson: “Ninety-four poets are represented in this collection, ranging from the usual suspects to some very bright up-and-comers. There are also photos and bio material, making this a rich, worthy addition to the general library and the poetry lover’s bookshelf.”…
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