Book Recommendations from Our Former Guest Editors
Laura van den Berg recommends Planes Flying Over a Monster,by Daniel Saldaña París (Catapult, August 2024). “Daniel Saldaña París writes about cities as labyrinths; each essay in this marvelous collection leads readers to corridors where the intimate and the cosmic intersect.”
DeWitt Henry recommends Joy Ride, by Ron Slate (Carnegie Melon Press, 2023). “Slate’s third collection is divided between poems about family origins in pre-WWII Turkey and poems about growing up in America after his family escaped from Paris during the Occupation. The wonderful title poem, saved for last, is a syncopated memory of his 1950s youth, when he jumped into a police car stolen by ‘two young women’—‘the fall and precipice … that in the span of my life has never touched down.’ He was thrown out before the women were caught, but came to lead an adult life of ‘business flights,’ while craving ‘anything that lasts longer than a few minutes of escape.’”
DeWitt Henry recommends Wintering Over: Poems, by Susannah Lee (Finishing Line Press, 2024). “An impressive first collection, well-researched, imagined, and deeply lyrical both in voicing—‘Carmelite sisters (nine nuns, two novices and one postulant to be exact), who were relocated from Iceland to northern Norway, high above the Arctic Circle,’—and with poems reflecting the poet’s self, spirit, and relations to nature in rural western Massachusetts.”
DeWitt Henry recommends Some Things I Said, by David Ferry (Grolier Poetry Press, 2023). “Framed in tributes from family and admirers, the poet and translator’s final poem summarizes his oeuvre. Earlier poems are printed on left hand pages in black, and the poet’s ‘I was the one who said …’ excerpts appear in orange on facing, right hand pages. Grainy black and white photos by Ferry’s son appear on covers, frontispiece, midway, and at the very end. The overall effect is proud and poignant.”
Robert Pinsky recommends The Blue Mimes, by Sara Daniele Rivera (Graywolf Press, 2024). “These lucid, balletic poems engage realities, including grief and laughter, and sometimes both at once, made all the more attractive by thinking and feeling in two languages and multiple cultures.”
Robert Pinsky recommends Eggtooth, by Jesse Nathan (Unbound Edition Press, 2023). “With its innovative, tuneful way of writing lines and a fresh, compelling way to understand immigration, ethnicity, American landscape, this book leaps beyond conventions and soars above stereotypes. Truly original, and fun to read.”
Gary Soto recommends Dark Souvenirs, by John Amen (New York Quarterly Books, 2024). “In the title poem, Amen writes, ‘Little mess, a little clean-up,’ a phrase that defines this heartbreaking work. He delves into family, music, friendships, tragic losses, a crossroad or two—all things that involve human nature. He writes a different poem from most. And that’s the beauty of this mature collection.”
David St. John recommends Some Disenfranchised Evening, by Gail Wronsky (Swan Scythe Press, 2024). “This new chapbook reminds us that Gail Wronsky is writing the most electrifying and eviscerating poems in American poetry. Remember the very first time you read a Leonora Carrington story or a Bill Knott poem? Get this book.”
Maura Stanton recommends Richard Newman’s fourth collection of poems, Blues at the End of the World (Kelsay Books, 2024). “Newman’s forceful voice and his great technical skill fill these lyric poems with original visions of our planet as he searches for home in the Marshall Islands, Japan, and Vietnam. A magnetic but subtle narrative connects these lyric poems, which take us around the world, giving us vivid portraits of stray dogs, ancestral graves, Saigon toilets and the mysterious encircling sea with its ‘infinite shades of blue.’”
Rosanna Warren recommends the novel That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern (Faber and Faber, 2002). “I came late to McGahern’s quietly visionary work. This is his last novel, published in 2002, winner of the Irish Novel of the Year in 2003. McGahern creates a whole, small, rural town in Ireland, leading the reader through the turning seasons, and the labors of haying and tending sheep and gardens, and the complex friendships and enmities that enmesh the town. We experience the story through the four main characters, a younger and an older couple, farmers, but behind them broods the history of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War. In a sly touch, the local tavern keeper, Jimmy Joe McKiernan, known to be an active and murderous IRA militant, is also the driver of the community’s one hearse. Toward the end, McGahern presents the most astonishingly detailed and matter-of-fact description of the preparation of a corpse for burial that I’ve ever seen.”
