Editor's Corner

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)

Gary Soto, Poetry Lover, novel: In this touching sequel to the novel Nickel and Dime, Soto once again combines humor and pathos with his heartwarming portrait of Silver Mendez, a down-and-out Chicano poet trying to revive himself and his career. (New Mexico)

Ann Beattie, Perfect Recall, stories: Eleven perfect stories from the winner of the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Beattie defined the zeitgeist of the seventies and eighties, and now she deftly places her baby-boomers in the uneasy, comic confusion of middle-age. (Scribner)

James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, nonfiction: In this stunning and audacious book, Carroll charts two thousand years of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, and poignantly recalls the crisis of faith it caused in his own life as a Catholic. (Houghton Mifflin)

Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, nonfiction: A dazzling meditation on the great Dutch still-life paintings of the seventeenth century, and on objects as vessels of human feeling and as occasions of intimacy, pleasure, mortality, and time. (Beacon)

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))