Editor's Shelf

Mary Gordon recommends Defiance, a novel by Carole Maso: “A wholly original, darkly brilliant, and poetic novel about a mathematician who murders her students.” (Dutton)

George Garrett recommends Hockey Sur Glace, stories by Peter LaSalle: “It may sound crazy, but seven stories and four poems, all involving ice hockey, really work. Why? Because LaSalle is a wonderful writer and knows more about hockey than anyone.” (Breakaway)

George Garrett recommends Dogfight and Other Stories, a first collection by Michael Knight: “An outstanding collection of ten stories, various in form and content, which have already won this young and gifted writer several awards.” (Plume)

   Maxine Kumin recommends Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, essays by Christopher Cokinos: “The vividly researched story of six extinct birds of the U.S.A. written by a Kansas State professor and ardent birder/environmentalist. This book deserves a wide readership and distribution. Is it possible for an author to exalt and depress his audience at…

George Garrett recommends Dogfight and Other Stories, a first collection by Michael Knight: “A strikingly original and various young writer.” (Dutton)

   James Alan McPherson recommends Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome, a first novel by Stanley Crouch: “This is an extraordinary effort by Stanley Crouch to employ the improvisational resources to the blues idiom to explore, in the novel form, the nuances of contemporary reality. In attempting to use ‘riffs’ to examine the emotional and psychological…

Dan Wakefield recommends Dreamtime Alice, a memoir by Mandy Sayer: “A compelling memoir of a young woman tap-dancer who works with her musician father on streets corners of New York and New Orleans. A fine work of the memoir genre.” (Ballantine)

Robert Pinsky recommends Each in a Place Apart, poems by James McMichael (Univ. of Chicago): “An extraordinary book-length poem or sequence about love and failed love; absolutely original formally, yet clear and plain.”

Mark Dotyrecommends Ejo, poems by Derick Burleson: “This remarkable book chronicles two years in Rwanda, just before that nation’s social and moral collapse. Formally adept, attentive to the dangerous edges of language, Burelson’s first book is astonishingly coherent, fierce, and smart.” (Wisconsin)