Editor's Shelf

Ultra-Talk by David Kirby

Maxine Kumin recommends Ultra-Talk, essays by David Kirby: “Kirby’s essays leapfrog from remembering Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ while touring Sicily to a piece called ‘Give Me Life Coarse and Rank,’ a disquisition on dithyrambs and more in Whitman. My favorite essay, ‘Shrouded in a Fiery Mist,’ examines the eroticism of Saint Teresa of Avila…

Space Walk by Tom Sleigh

Philip Levine recommends Space Walk, poems by Tom Sleigh: “Sleigh’s reviewers use words such as ‘adept,’ ‘elegant,’ and ‘classical.’ Reading his new book, I find all those terms beside the point, even though not one is inaccurate. I am struck by the human dramas that are enacted in these poems, the deep encounters that often…

White Guys by Anthony Giardina

Rosellen Brown recommends White Guys, a novel by Anthony Giardina: "White Guys is an extraordinarily potent novel. It engages us, passionately, in questions that matter-what it means to be a man, to be a son, a husband and father; to watch, with hope and despair, the changing of small towns into copycat suburbs. It works…

Sweet Smoke by Thomas Aslin

Madeline DeFrees recommends Sweet Smoke, poems by Thomas Aslin: “Like the sweet smoke of leaf-burning, an elegiac undercurrent drifts through the poems in this first book with their blend of fine perception, tender feeling, and rhythmically persuasive language. Aslin captures the essence of family life and close relationships, preserves them for the record, and enriches…

The Bad Secret by Judith Harris

Joyce Peseroff recommends The Bad Secret, poems by Judith Harris: "Pain—the pain of illness and the pain of loss—is the background to Judith Harris’s second book of poems, but not its subject. Like Dickinson, Harris’s acute perceptions of the natural world convey feeling and insight beyond autobiography. Harris’s language is always precise, and her metaphors…

Dark Alphabet by Jennifer Maier

Madeline DeFrees recommends Dark Alphabet, poems by Jennifer Maier: "Jennifer Maier’s colloquial language settles you comfortably into the passenger seat for a journey full of surprising turns. The poems are triggered by ordinary events: a friend’s asking why she doesn’t write novels; the sight of ducks in mating season. This first collection is a sophisticated…