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)

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)

Chase Twichell, The Snow Watcher, poems: Twichell’s fifth book presents an extraordinary sequence of poems that asks a single obsessive question: What is the self? This is a radical reenvisioning of what makes us human rather than animal. (Ontario)

Derek Walcott, What the Twilight Says, essays: In his first prose collection, Walcott brilliantly and lyrically discusses the works of Lowell, Brodsky, and other writers, and the state of West Indian literature and culture. (FSG)

Alan Williamson, Res Publica, poems: The title sequence of Williamson’s new collection serves as a stunning elegy for Vietnam-era America and the war’s aftermath of media saturation, multiculturalism, and violence. (Chicago)

Richard Ford, editor of The Essential Tales of Chekhov, stories translated by Constance Garnett: Ford selects twenty stories by the Russian master, including provocative lesser-known pieces by Chekhov in his youth, as well as widely anthologized classics. (Ecco)