Editor's Corner

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)

George Garrett, Oedipus at Colonus, play: Garrett’s scintillating translation is included in Sophocles, 2, edited by David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie, which rounds out the Penn Greek Drama Series, the first complete translations of Sophocles in fifty years. (Pennsylvania)

Philip Levine, The Mercy, poems: Levine’s eighteenth volume is at turns touching and heartbreaking, enchanting and brutal, but always compelling. This is a book of essential journeys, from birth to death, from innocence to experience, from youth to age, from here to there. (Knopf)

Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, nonfiction: Going far beyond mere prosody, Pinsky delivers a fascinating, instructive treatise on poetry, which he convincingly asserts is, above all, a “vocal” and “bodily” art. (FSG)

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)

Tim O’Brien, Tomcat in Love, a novel: In his seventh novel, O’Brien makes a brave and hilarious turn with Thomas Chippering, a professor of linguistics, Vietnam vet, spurned husband, and unrivaled womanizer. (Broadway)