Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan, Two Lives in 1950s New York, a memoir: In alternating chapters, Bernays and Kaplan charmingly recount their youth, courtship, and new careers in publishing and writing in Manhattan during the fifties. (Morrow)
Jorie Graham, Never, poems: Graham undertakes a dazzling exploration of time in the twenty-seven lyrics of her ninth collection-time as it exists in nature, history, evolution, consciousness, human interaction, and belief. (Ecco)
Alberto Ríos, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, poems: Ríos wryly carves poems from fable, parable, and family legend to examine the Nogales, Arizona, of his childhood-a literal and metaphorical border between the U.S. and Mexico. (Copper Canyon)
Elizabeth Spires, Now the Green Blade Rises, poems: Spires movingly meditates on the life-and-death matters of midlife-the separation of parent from child, the loss of family and friends, the evolving nature of our closest relationships. (Norton)
Gerald Stern, American Sonnets, poems: In a collection of fifty-nine “sonnets” of twenty or so lines each, most consisting of a single sentence about a single moment, Stern intimately gives tribute to everything from clocks to gangster cousins. (Norton)
Philip Levine, So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews: With his trademark humor and down-to-earth intelligence, Levine mixes memoir and criticism, reflecting on his working-class Detroit roots, his apprenticeship with John Berryman, his years teaching, and other stages in his formation as a poet. (Michigan)
Paul Muldoon, Moy Sand and Gravel, poems: In his ninth collection, Muldoon works a rich vein that bridges the County Armagh of his youth with suburban New Jersey, where he now lives and teaches. Both whimsical and elegiac, these poems play with form and language with winning mastery. (FSG)
Tim O’Brien, July, July, a novel: O’Brien’s new book deftly centers on a July 2000 weekend when the Darton Hall College class of 1969 gathers for a reunion. The sharply drawn ensemble includes a Vietnam vet, a Republican trophy wife recovering from a mastectomy, and a mop manufacturer. (Houghton Mifflin)
Mark Doty, Source, poems: Doty’s sixth book of poetry magnificently explores desire and the paradox of selfhood in matters of public life and private struggle, with boldly colored, lyrical scenes from New York, Provincetown, Vermont, and Latin America. (HarperCollins)
Winter 1979 - Digital