Editor's Corner

Mark Doty, School of the Arts, poems: Incisive and transcendent, Doty’s seventh collection contemplates the creative process and eternal questions of love and loss, desire and despair. (HarperCollins)

Alan Williamson, The Pattern More Complicated, poems: Williamson’s verse from the last three decades are collected with new poems that beautifully draw his oeuvre together. (Chicago)

Margot Livesey, Banishing Verona, a novel: A shy housepainter and a pregnant radio show host begin an affair in Livesey’s radiant, delicious new novel, and then they’re immediately separated, setting them off in transatlantic pursuit. (Holt)

Rita Dove, American Smooth, poems: In her eighth superb collection, Dove pays homage to the grit and mother wit that inform our mongrel cultural heritage. (Norton)

Madison Smartt Bell, The Stone That the Builder Refused, a novel: Bell gives us the final, climactic novel in his glorious trilogy about Toussaint Louverture. (Pantheon)

Russell Banks, The Darling, a novel: Set in Liberia, Banks’s riveting new book explores the interrelated history of race problems in the U.S. and Africa. (HarperCollins)

James Carroll, Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, essays: Carroll collects his searing, passionate Boston Globe columns about the Bush administration’s "coercive unilateralism." (Holt)

Stuart Dybek, Streets in Their Own Ink, poems: In his second poetry collection, Dybek finds extraordinary vitality in the same vibrant imagery that animates his celebrated fiction. (FSG)

George Garrett, Double Vision, a novel: As expected from Garrett, this novel is a witty tour de force, marrying fact and fiction about a gifted generation of American writers. (Alabama)