Editor's Corner

Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome, poems: A compelling twelfth collection that gathers work from the past twenty years, as well as some new and previously uncollected work. Publishers Weekly astutely predicts that readers will want this volume for its “heady mix of gothic foreboding, racial history and realpolitik, biblical and Attic allusion, and sexual longing.” (Wesleyan)

Al Young, The Sound of Dreams Remembered, poems: Containing nearly one hundred fifty poems from the past ten years, this volume serves as a playful, shrewd, hip, and occasionally shocking record of millennial America. (Creative Arts)

Elizabeth Spires, I Am Arachne: Fifteen Greek and Roman Myths, children’s fiction: In this engaging, whimsical collection, fifteen heroes and heroines give their own dramatic, first-person accounts of their tales of wonder, woe, love, and jealousy. (Frances Foster/FSG)

Maura Stanton, Glacier Wine, poems: Stanton’s fifth collection marries a delightful comic innocence with worldly skepticism as she slyly examines phobias, historical anecdotes, fables, and travelogues. (Carnegie Mellon)

Marilyn Hacker, translation of Here There Was Once a Country, poems by Vénus Khoury-Ghata: A searing translation of the poems of a prolific Lebanese writer who has always straddled two cultures, the Arabic and the French. Hacker luminously brings to life Khoury-Ghata’s intimate, mysterious, and unique voice. (Oberlin)

DeWitt Henry, editor of Sorrow’s Company: Writers on Loss and Grief, essays: Henry collects some of the finest contemporary essays about loss and the grieving process, the bridge between pain and recovery. These pieces are transcendent and ultimately celebratory, bestowing to its readers the gift of condolence. (Beacon)

Jane Hirshfield, Given Sugar, Given Salt, poems: With subjects ranging from habit to elephant seals to sleep, Hirshfield’s fifth and most expansive collection is a magnificent exploration of transience, human engagement, and the interconnection of human and natural worlds. (HarperCollins)

Fanny Howe, Indivisible, a novel: In this new avant-garde novel, Howe gives us the inimitable, fast-talking Henrietta, a filmmaker and foster mother in Boston whose ragged relationships lead her to religion and mysticism. Highly charged and poetic and profound. (Semiotext(e))

Don Lee, Yellow, stories: Eight short stories that offer a fresh, contemporary vision of what it means to be Asian in America, a post-immigrant examination of identity, race, and love. (Norton)