Editor's Shelf

George Garrett recommends The Hatbox Baby, a novel by Carrie Brown: “Carrie Brown’s third novel is set in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933 and concerns the ‘Infantorium’-an exhibit of live premature babies.” (Algonquin)

George Garrettrecommends Someone to Watch Over Me, stories by Richard Bausch: “Twelve new stories by one of the most gifted short fiction writers alive and writing.” (HarperCollins)

Thomas Lux recommends Spare Change, poems by Kevin Pilkington: “Tough, quirky, lucid poems by a poet unafraid of being understood.” (La Jolla Poets)

Thomas Lux recommends Squandering, poems by George Mills: “Gorgeous, utterly original poems by a poet now in his mid-seventies. Exceptionally beautiful production-a limited letterpress edition. His first book was The House Sails Out of Sight of Home, winner of the 1991 Morse Poetry Prize, from Northeastern University Press.” (Indian Hill)

Madison Smartt Bell recommends Stop Breaking Down, debut stories by John McManus: “Would I be happy to have written these stories myself? I wish I could have written them.” (Picador)

Maura Stanton recommends Swamp Candles, poems by Ralph Burns: “In his new book, Ralph Burns fuses the two major strands in American poetry. His spare images dazzle us with their precision, while his colloquial voice moves us with its vital rhythms and deep emotions.” (Univ. of Iowa)

Maxine Kumin recommends Sympathetic Systems, poems by Carole Simmons Oles: “These are vivid narrative poems, many of them family-centered, written in a sparkling, spare diction. When Oles is elliptical, the reader leaps with her, the unsaid so deftly placed that the whole poem takes you by the nape of the neck.” (Lynx House)

Don Lee recommends Take Three, poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Joe Osterhaus, and Larissa Szporluk: “An innovative and worthy new annual series from Graywolf, edited by Agni’s Askold Melnyczuk. Designed to launch the work of new poets, this first volume presents about twenty-five poems by each of these young writers — three very different, vibrant…

Maxine Kumin recommends The Black Notebooks, a memoir by Toi Derricotte: “Searing. Read it.” (Norton)