Editor's Shelf

Mark Strand recommends Flame Tree, poems by Kevin Hart: “For me, Kevin Hart is the best Australian poet of the past twenty-five years. Elegant, deeply philosophical, and utterly without pomposity.” (Paper Bark)

Dan Wakefield recommends My Misspent Youth, essays by Meghan Daum: “A first book of Didion-like essays on contemporary life, with wit and insight and graceful prose.” (Open City)

George Garrett recommends The Land Between, a novel by Cathryn Hankla: “Hankla’s second novel (and her ninth title) is coming out almost simultaneously with her latest book of poems, Poems for the Pardoned, from LSU. She writes as well as anybody alive about the earth and the environment. It’s a well-plotted, strong story, alive with…

Frank Bidart recommends Notes from the Divided Country, poems by Suji Kwock Kim: "This is a brilliant, unerasable book, one of the most remarkable debuts I’ve ever read. It begins with the descent of the soul into flesh, which is also the descent into the catastrophic, tormenting history of family and nation. The poems as…

DeWitt Henry recommends Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm, by David Hamilton: “In an experimental ‘memoir’ that extends from the personal to the regional to the historic and geographical with an epic sweep comparable to Thoreau’s in Walden and William Carlos Williams’s in Paterson, New Jersey, Hamilton considers the legacies of injustice in…

Fanny Howe recommends Veil, poems by Rae Armantrout: “A selection of Armantrout’s poems from the past twenty years that were published by small presses. Irony, paranoia, passion, written with precision and glitter. A jewel.” (Wesleyan)

Joyce Peseroff recommends An Ark of Sorts, poems by Celia Gilbert: “A powerful, beautifully written book with a compelling subject. In this delicately shaped series of poems, a mother recalls the passage of a year after the death of a child. An apartment in Paris is first a place of exile, then a place of…

Philip Levine recommends Overtime, poems by Joseph Millar: “If you want the real news of how America lives, of what it’s like to be here with us, Joseph Millar is your poet. What are the folks like at Ed’s Auto Repair ‘that dim cool mine / smelling of gas and iron’ or what’s it like…

David Daniel recommends World’s Tallest Disaster, poems by Cate Marvin: “With World’s Tallest Disaster, Cate Marvin makes the most spectacular debut in recent memory. Brimming with vitality, wit, and imagination, it will likely stand as a benchmark for and inspiration to a generation of younger poets. This is a wonderful book.” (Sarabande)