Editor's Corner

Last Blue by Gerald Stern

   Gerald Stern, Last Blue, poems: Philip Levine writes, “This is a sparer Stern than we’re used to; for years he’s been our Whitman for the present hour. He still is, but he’s writing now with a tighter focus, as though he had to make every word count. The best news is he does. ‘Ravages’…

Half A Heart by Rosellen Brown

   Rosellen Brown, Half a Heart, a novel: Miriam Starobin is living in upper-middle-class Houston when she is reunited with her eighteen-year-old daughter-the fruit of an affair with a black professor in Mississippi when Miriam was a civil rights activist. A searing, provocative novel about race, identity, and ideals. (FSG)