Editor's Shelf

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)

George Garrett recommends The Buddha in Malibu, stories by William Harrison: “A collection of seventeen short stories set in Hollywood, Africa, and the future.” (Missouri)

Dan Wakefield recommends The Collected Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, stories by Bruce Jay Friedman: “One of the funniest writers of our time, the first American master of black humor fiction, he’s collected his best stories in one volume. ‘Brazzaville Teenager’ is the best thing since Ring Lardner.” (Donald I. Fine)

Anne Bernays recommends The Consolations of Philosophy, essays by Alain de Botton: “Makes the abstruse fascinating.” (Pantheon)

Philip Levine recommends The Dear Past & Other Poems, a collection by Janet Lewis (Robert L. Barth): “These poems were written over a period of seventy-five years, from 1919 to 1994, and though they demonstrate a variety of strategies and structures, they are brought together by the extraordinary precision and clarity of Lewis’s artistry, as…