Marilyn Hacker recommends The Woman Behind You, poems by Julie Fay: “Julie Fay’s The Woman Behind You is at once a superb manifestation of the contemporary possibilities of lyric poetry and a sustained and gripping narrative of a late-twentieth-century woman’s life, exemplary in its specificities, picaresque in the geographic and erotic vicissitudes of its quest….
Philip Levine recommends Things that Happen Once, poems by Rodney Jones: “Rodney Jones is a new and long overdue discovery of mine. With wit, charm, and great resourcefulness, he writes wonderfully uncluttered poems that pay tribute to a rich cast of characters, from Aunt Madge to Melody, ‘the teenage welfare mother down the hall.’ His…
Gail Mazur recommends Two Cities, essays by Adam Zagajewski (Farrar, Straus & Giroux): “Zagajewski’s a fine poet, one of the best, and this second collection of prose pieces-memoir/essays/prose poems-is the mature work of an ecstatic ironist: cosmopolitan, sweet, philosophical, and revealing. Born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945, Zagajewski is the voice of his generation, everywhere…
Rosellen Brown recommends Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy, a memoir by Frances Mayes: “Frances Mayes’s beautifully written account of her love affair with a house she and her husband renovated in Tuscany, and with a place that retains ancient standards for all things sensual, contains an essay that appeared in my personal…
Fanny Howe recommends The Letters of Mina Harker, a novel by Dodie Bellamy: “A contemporary epistolary novel that carries the ecstatic and personal extravagance of New York School poetry into a new realm. San Francisco but also novelistic observation. Sexually explicit but far from pornographic. See the difference.” (Hard Press)
Maxine Kumin recommends Vietnamerica, a memoir by Thomas A. Bass: “A disturbing and totally compelling account of the lives of Amerasian children left behind in Vietnam; transported to the U.S., dumped in detention centers; used in factory jobs; fated to wander rootless from place to place. Bass, like John Balaban before him, forces us to…
Maxine Kumin recommends The Making of a Poem, an anthology edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland: “An eminently sensible book to work from, this anthology of poetic forms is delightfully varied, with succinct commentary.” (Norton)
Christopher Tilghman recommends The Mirror, a novel by Lynn Freed: “Lynn Freed pulls off a stunning tour de force in this flawless life story of a woman in South Africa after World War I. Please, read this book.” (Crown)
Maxine Kumin and Joyce Peseroff recommend The Moon Reflected Fire, poems by Doug Anderson (Alice James). Kumin: “These are war poems-war poems and beyond. Vivid, compelling, controlled, and often wildly lyrical.” Peseroff: “Not just about Vietnam but resonant with the history of warriors from the backyard to The Iliad to the Bible, Doug Anderson’s first…
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