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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.”…
James Carroll, House of War, nonfiction: Carroll draws on rich personal experience as well as exhaustive research to produce an intimate, searing, and emotional history of “the Building” known as the Pentagon. (Houghton Mifflin)
Mary Gordon, The Stories of Mary Gordon, stories: These forty-one pieces, half of which are new or have never been collected, masterfully capture the nuances of modern life. (Pantheon)
Joyce Peseroff recommends Here and Hereafter, poems by Elton Glaser: “Glaser’s sixth collection of poems remains rooted in this life as it considers the pull of the next. His gardener’s take on the natural world, spiced with wit and a gift for the extravagantly precise image, makes for satisfying poems time and again. Most poignant…
Madeline DeFrees, Spectral Waves, poems: Feisty and haunting, the poems in DeFrees’s tenth collection range from sonnets about Elvis to lyrics about cataracts, birds, and the plants in her well-tended garden. (Copper Canyon)
Marilyn Hacker, Essays on Departure, poems: This book gathers twenty-five years of elegant, delectable work from eight books, as well as translations and new poems. (Carcanet)
Maura Stanton recommends Autumn Road, poems by Brian Swann: "Imagine D. H. Lawrence writing with a sense of humor, and you’ll have a faint idea of what Brian Swann’s rich, detail-packed, mid-twentieth-century English memoir poems are like. Swann arrives on earth about the same time as the Nazi blitz—an air raid siren announces his birth—and…
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