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)

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)

Thomas Lux, The Street of Clocks, poems: In his first all-new volume in seven years, Lux delivers a mesmerizing series of lyrical monologues, imbued with characteristic playfulness and lucidity, in language both distilled and musical. (Houghton Mifflin)

Gail Mazur, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, poems: Mazur’s sparkling, compassionate, and illuminating fourth collection measures the passage of time-the body’s desires and frailties, illness and death, children and parents, the intimacies of marriage. (Chicago)

Paul Muldoon, Poems 1968-1998, poems: A comprehensive selection from Muldoon’s eight books of poetry, this brilliant volume presents an astonishing range of moods and subjects, showing a poet reinventing himself at every turn. (FSG)