Editor's Corner

Richard Ford, Women with Men, three stories: Three long stories which once again demonstrate Ford’s mastery. Two of the stories are set in contemporary Paris, the third in Montana-all about men trying to fathom the women they love. (Knopf)

Maxine Kumin, Telling the Barn Swallow, essays edited by Emily Grosholz: Lively analyses by twelve fellow poets of Kumin’s diction and prosody, her literary forebears, and characteristic thematic patterns. Also included here are provocative poems, some published here for the first time, to or about Maxine Kumin. (New England)

Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan, The Language of Names: What We’re Called and Why It Matters, nonfiction: Bernays and Kaplan present a fascinating and very readable account of names and naming in contemporary society, touching on class structure, ethnic and religious practices, manners, and everyday life. (Simon & Schuster)

Robert Boswell, American Owned Love, a novel: In his fourth novel, Boswell examines the unique border culture along the Rio Grande, unforgettably weaving together disparate people-Anglos, Mexicans, lovers, children-as they wade through this particular world’s infinite possibilities and strangeness. (Knopf)

Maxine Kumin, Selected Poems 1960-1990, poems: A rich and varied selection of poems from nine previous collections, spanning three decades of work. Kumin’s voice is full of strength and grace as she meditates on her New Hampshire farm, her family, and the natural world. (Norton)

Philip Levine, Unselected Poems, poems: This provocative, quirky volume collects the best of Levine’s work-some of his favorites-that he was unable to include in his New Selected Poems, which is now out of print, and in his previous three books. (Greenhouse Review)

Thomas Lux, New and Selected Poems, poems: The winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award for Split Horizon, Lux gathers poems from the last twenty years that demonstrate his deft humor and precise music, fastening on the rueful poignancies of our lives. (Houghton Mifflin)

Richard Tillinghast, Today in the Café Trieste, poems: Tillinghast’s first book to be published in Ireland contains new poems written, with typical mastery, since The Stonecutter’s Hand (Godine, 1995), as well as a retrospective of his earlier work. (Salmon)

Marilyn Hacker, Edge, translations of poems by Claire Malroux: Sandra Gilbert comments: “Claire Malroux’s piercing and subtly nuanced poems have been sensitively mediated for English readers in Marilyn Hacker’s poised translations. Malroux has put such American and British writers as Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë into French with style and grace; her own work has…