Editor's Corner

Tiepolo’s Hound by Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott, Tiepolo’s Hound, poems: Published with twenty-five full-color reproductions of Walcott’s own paintings, Tiepolo’s Hound is a stunning book-length poem that is at once the spiritual biography of Camille Pissarro, a history in verse of Impressionist painting, and a memoir of Walcott’s desire to catch the visual world in more than words. (FSG)

Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999 by Bill Knott

Bill Knott, Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969- 1999: Knott’s tenth volume gathers three decades of virtuoso poems, showcasing his iconoclastic wit, his unique view of the world, and his fiercely original language, proving Marvin Bell was right when he said that Knott can “twist the neck of syntax until…

A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile by James Alan McPherson

James Alan McPherson, A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile, essays: With topics ranging from racism in the South to Disneyland, McPherson provocatively probes the geography of a morally bankrupt society, as he yearns for “spiritual civility.” Often magical and transcendent, all of these essays are heartfelt and resonant. (Simon & Schuster)

Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness by Jay Neugeboren

Jay Neugeboren, Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness, nonfiction: In 1997, novelist Neugeboren delivered a moving and important memoir, Imagining Robert, about his mentally ill brother. Now Neugeboren examines the mental health care system as a whole, giving us a comprehensive, dramatic, and richly textured survey of failures and successes. (Morrow)

Mortal Education by Joyce Peseroff

Joyce Peseroff, Mortal Education, poems: Peseroff’s third book of poems recalls the raw experience of mortality, met through the illness and death of a friend, the context of history, and the tensions and pleasures of family life. Carnegie Mellon has also reissued Peseroff’s The Hardness Scale as part of its Classic Contemporary Series. In Ploughshares,…