Editor's Corner

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,…

Robert Pinsky, Americans’ Favorite Poems: An anthology of poems that were nominated for the Favorite Poem Project, the centerpiece of Pinsky’s Poet Laureateship. Americans from all walks of life were invited to recommend their favorite poems, and thousands have responded with impassioned personal letters, some of which are excerpted here alongside the poems. This anthology…

Jane Shore, Happy Family, poems: Shore’s latest volume follows the arc of her life from childhood in a closely knit Jewish family in 1950’s New Jersey to her marriage and parenthood. In humorous, earthy verse, she bridges together experiences in the lives of women in ways both magical and profound. (Picador)

Gary Soto, A Natural Man, poems: In his new collection, Soto-who this fall was presented with the Hispanic Heritage Award-gives stirring, authentic voice to Chicano life in the San Joaquin Valley, where he was born and raised. (Chronicle)

Charles Simic, Jackstraws, poems: In his thirteenth collection, Simic sometimes experiments with form, but is characteristically lyrical, sly, irascible, undeniably funny. His poems continue to startle, the “big topics” mixing with everyday annoyances. (Harcourt)

Leonard Michaels, The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995, a memoir: This frank, resonant collection of journal excerpts reveal more than a man, but also an era, going from Greenwich Village, where Michael’s first wife, Sylvia, committed suicide at the age of twenty-four, to upstate New York and Berkeley. (Riverhead)

Alberto Ríos, The Curtain of Trees, stories: In nine moving tales, Ríos brings us small-town life along the Arizona-Mexico border. The collection presents a dark worldview, but it resounds with Ríos’s characteristic tenderness, compassion, and power. (New Mexico)

Dan Wakefield, How Do We Know When It’s God?, memoir: Ten years ago, Wakefield, then an atheist, had a religious reawakening, which resulted in Returning: A Spiritual Journey. He follows up on his spiritual progress in this heartfelt, important book. (Little, Brown)

Rita Dove, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, poems: In her seventh collection, Dove mines American mythologies and histories to brilliant effect, arriving at relevant and artful poems that stir and sing. (Norton)