Don Leerecommends A Gesture Life, a novel by Chang-rae Lee: “This novel — a magnificent follow-up to Lee’s first book, Native Speaker — has received a fair amount of media attention already, but enough cannot be said about it. Lyrical, powerful, truly remarkable.” (Riverhead)
Robert Boswell recommends A Gram of Mars, a first collection by Becky Hagenston: “Becky Hagenston writes with grace, conviction, and wit. The complex stories in this collection circle about the central question in our lives-coming to terms with our past, coming to terms with the present. The stories have the stuff of real life and…
Gary Soto recommends A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen, poems by Martín Espada: “Martín Espada is a courageous poet who champions with grace the working class, the disheveled, the outcast, the ignored, and the imprisoned-all without sentiment. He gets better with every collection.” (Norton)
Madeline DeFrees recommends Adam Chooses, poems by Michael Spence: “These spare, understated poems have the elegant design and the formal ease we’ve come to expect of Michael Spence’s work. The stance is reminiscent of James Wright’s Green Wall poems in their escape from ‘that vacant Paradise’ to the celebration of the here and now.” (Rose…
James Alan McPherson recommends All the Money in the World, a novel by Robert Anthony Siegel: “A heartfelt first novel by a gifted former student.” (Random)
Lloyd Schwartz recommends All-American Girl, poems by Robin Becker: “Unsparing and self-knowing, Robin Becker uses irony (as in her double- and triple-edged title) as if it were a form of directness. Painful, often devastating poems contend with crushing loss, the convolutions of sexuality and family politics, the struggle to accept the self. Yet they also…
Maxine Kumin recommends Morning in Serra Mattu, an ode by Arif Gamal: ” Morning in Serra Mattu: A Nubian Ode is actually an oral recitation of life in the Sudan from the 1940’s to the building of the Aswan Dam, as told to E. G. Dubovsky, who recorded it in meter. It is rich with…
Philip Levine recommends Astoria, poems by Malena Mörling: “In a poem by Malena Mörling the reader is taken on trips never bargained for: time may be compressed, action go in reverse; in the blink of a line you can move from Grand Central Station to a design on wallpaper, and yet when you finish the…
Maxine Kumin recommends As When, in Season, by Jim Schley: “This is the executive director of The Frost Place’s first collection of poems and represents years of composing and revising. The centerpiece, an inventive series of odes to the muses, displays Schley’s literary insights and his musical gift with language.” (Marick)
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