Editor's Corner

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)  

Gish Jen, The Love Wife, a novel: Jen, in her most exuberant and accomplished book, provides a brilliant portrait of a new "half-half" American family. (Knopf)

Bill Knott, The Unsubscriber, poems: The poems in Knott’s collection, his first in a decade, are surreal yet vernacular, outrageous yet tender—absolutely unique, iconoclastic, and astonishing. (FSG)

Philip Levine, Breath, poems: Levine, in these heady, extraordinary new poems, looks back at his life to unearth rites of passage in an America of victories and betrayals. (Knopf)