Editor's Shelf

Joyce Peseroff recommends Girl Hurt, a first book of poems by E. J. Miller-Laino: ” Girl Hurt records a woman’s journey from the underworld of shame and hurt, where Mother cries ‘like Frankenstein in the movie, / those deep, guttural half-words . . . / of monsters created with human hearts,’ to the light of…

   George Garrett recommends Graveyard of the Atlantic, stories by Alyson Hagy: “Alyson Hagy’s third collection of stories and her best so far. Praised by Charles Baxter and Jill McCorkle, among others, these seven stories all concern life on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.” (Graywolf)

Russell Banksrecommends Harbor Lights, a novel by Theodore Weesner: “Ted Weesner, over the years since his powerful first novel, The Car Thief, has come numerous times to the rescue of American realism in fiction, and he’s done it again with Harbor Lights, a tough-minded and compassionate portrait of a good man struggling against odds not…

Maxine Kuminrecommends Dead Men’s Praise, poems by Jacqueline Osherow: “A stunning collection. Many of these poems come out of Hebrew Psalms, improbable as that sounds, and are often wonderfully humorous and down to earth.” (Grove/Atlantic)

Marilyn Hacker recommends Harping On, poems by Carolyn Kizer: “Carolyn Kizer’s magisterial new book is a world citizen’s witty and lyrical meditations on many of the major events of this century, from the intimate perspective of someone who was there. As she re/members herself in sentences and stanzas-the seventeen-year-old observing Einstein; the twenty-year-old hearing of…

Jane Hirshfield recommends Below Cold Mountain, poems by Joseph Stroud: “One of the finest collections of poems I’ve read in years-intelligent, sensuous, moving, full of human insight.” (Copper Canyon)

James Alan McPherson recommends Billy Verité, a novel by Rick Harsch: “A portrait of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the human condition, in late twentieth-century America, from an absolutely original point of view.” (Steerforth)

David Gullette recommends Bite Every Sorrow, poems by Barbara Ras: “Barbara Ras has written a dazzling first book of poems-C. K. Williams’s choice for this year’s Walt Whitman Award. She favors long, opulent, clever lines, as when she falls for a man in Central America: ‘I loved the gesture for wait, two hands pumping the…

Maxine Kumin recommends Black Drum, poems by Enid Shomer: “Dazzling work by a Florida poet now living in Manhattan; Shomer weaves her net so skillfully that the reader is caught up in the story long before realizing the formal element that holds the squares in place. This book deserves serious attention.” (Arkansas)