Sea of Faith, poems by John Brehm (Wisconsin): Very few poets seem able to land all grown-up on the pages of their first books—often they are tentative, anonymous—but John Brehm arrives with a great chorus trailing, and he does so without apology, which is a delight because he’s a very interesting man, it seems, one…
Madeline DeFrees recommends Sweet Smoke, poems by Thomas Aslin: “Like the sweet smoke of leaf-burning, an elegiac undercurrent drifts through the poems in this first book with their blend of fine perception, tender feeling, and rhythmically persuasive language. Aslin captures the essence of family life and close relationships, preserves them for the record, and enriches…
Gerald Stern recommends Against Which, poems by Ross Gay: “Ross Gay’s Against Which is stunningly original, confrontational, and lovely. He reminds me of Hart Crane.” (CavanKerry)
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…
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