Readers of literary magazines and anthologies frequently speak of Stuart Dybek's stories with reverence, and they will certainly covet The Coast of Chicago, his second collection, which brings together several works already deemed classics: "Hot Ice," "Blight," and "Pet Milk." Seven long stories are interleaved with seven shorter ones, and they are bound so tightly…
Some Ether Poems by Nick Flynn. Graywolf Press, $12.95 paper. Reviewed by Tony Hoagland. Someday the term confessional will seem as quaint and obsolete as a fainting couch, and we will have a new terminology, one that feels more discriminating. In the meantime, we have Nick Flynn’s compelling poems, which turn some rather extreme autobiographical…
The Coast of Good Intentions Stories by Michael Byers. Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin. $12.00 paper. Reviewed by Fred Leebron. In nearly every story in The Coast of Good Intentions, a debut collection by Michael Byers, there is the beguiling and disconcerting sense that all the real action is happening offstage, that offstage people are cheating on…
Stained Glass Poems by Rosanna Warren. W.W. Norton, $17.95 cloth. Reviewed by Jonathan Aaron. In “Tide Pickers,” one of the tough-minded, beautifully crafted meditations in Rosanna Warren’s third collection of poems, the speaker sees the figures of people digging for shellfish on the Brittany coast as “Question marks at the tide line.” She wonders of…
This two-volume, bilingual set is the first complete edition of Anna Akhmatova's poems to appear in either Russian or English, and its publication is an event comparable to Thomas Johnson's definitive version of Emily Dickinson. Akhmatova has been numbered with Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, and Mandelstam as one of Russia's four great modern poets. Yet the bulk…
The Stonecutter’s Hand Poems by Richard Tillinghast. David R. Godine, $19.95 cloth. Reviewed by Diann Blakely Shoaf. Eleven years after the publication of Our Flag Was Still There, Richard Tillinghast has assembled a fourth full-length collection, The Stonecutter’s Hand, that solidifies and deepens the considerable achievements of his earlier work. Tillinghast’s new volume of poems…
The Dual Tradition An Essay on Poetry and Politics in Ireland, by Thomas Kinsella. Carcanet Press, $17.95 paper. Reviewed by M. L. Rosenthal. Irish poetry has had a long, trauma-beset journey. In his book The Dual Tradition: An Essay on Poetry and Politics in Ireland, Thomas Kinsella leads us through its successive periods of…
Stygo A novel by Laura Hendrie. MacMurray & Beck, $16.95 cloth. Reviewed by Jessica Dineen. Although Laura Hendrie’s first novel, Stygo, focuses on the tiny beet growers’ town of Stygo, Colorado, it is in no way limited by its narrow geographic boundaries. To the contrary, Hendrie’s brilliantly precise writing offers an organic view of…
In Delmore Schwartz's short story, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, the protagonist imagines a film of his parents' courtship. He watches in impotent anguish for a while as they move inexorably toward their future and his, and then he stands suddenly and shouts to them not to do it, that nothing good can ever come of…
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