Editor's Corner

Maxine Kumin, Jack and Other New Poems: Kumin’s powerful fourteenth collection contains her signature pastoral poems, but also meditations on the body, war, civil liberties, and the environment. (Norton)

Jay Neugeboren, News from the New American Diaspora, stories: The twelve stories in Neugeboren’s illuminating new collection focus on Jews in various states of exile—strangers in strange lands, far from home. (Texas)

Howard Norman, In Fond Remembrance of Me, a memoir: A moving memoir of Norman’s time in Manitoba, where he and an Anglo-Japanese woman—fatally ill, but an ardent spirit—were translating Inuit tales. (North Point)

Charles Simic, My Noiseless Entourage, poems: With his usual wry acuity, Simic explores love, futility, and the sense of an individual life in his fourteenth volume. (Harcourt)

Charles Simic, Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek Under Your Skirt, poems, with drawings by Howie Michaels: A playful salute to all things sexy in erotic poems and illustrations. (Tin House/Bloomsbury)

Gary Soto, Help Wanted, stories: A witty collection of ten young-adult stories about Latino youth in trouble, or looking for trouble, in the weirdness of everyday Fresno. (Harcourt)

Gerald Stern, Everything Is Burning, poems: Ruthless and occasionally outrageous, Stern’s literary songs are sharp, surprising, and unerring in their delivery. (Norton)

Ann Beattie, Follies, stories: In nine scintillating stories and a novella, Beattie—with her keen, morbid wit—looks at baby boomers, aging parents, and the chance encounters that irrevocably alter lives. (Scribner)

Frank Bidart, Star Dust, poems: Finishing the sequence that began with his chapbook Music Like Dirt, Bidart illustrates with unforgettable passion that the dream beyond desire is rooted in the drive to create. (FSG)