Rosanna Warren recommends Letters from Aldenderry, poems by Philip Nikolayev: “Fiendishly bright, world-savvy, word-savvy, large-hearted poems that tilt at lyric sentimentality (‘Autobiography no longer saves’) but keep an ancient faith: ‘miniature illuminations mostly faded but some / still quite bright amid the frozen parcels of speech / the old quill is dead now but the…
Maura Stanton recommends Autumn Road, poems by Brian Swann: "Imagine D. H. Lawrence writing with a sense of humor, and you’ll have a faint idea of what Brian Swann’s rich, detail-packed, mid-twentieth-century English memoir poems are like. Swann arrives on earth about the same time as the Nazi blitz—an air raid siren announces his birth—and…
Gerald Stern recommends Gloryland, poems by Anne Marie Macari: "Gloryland is a beautiful second book by Anne Marie Macari which explores the issue of womanhood in its literal, figurative, mythical, and theological forms. The poems are absolutely original." (Alice James)
Chase Twichell recommends Ladder of Hours, poems by Keith Althaus: “This book contains forty years of poems from a poet whose work has been seriously overlooked. Althaus’s lyrics are spare, without ornamentation, passionate, and intimate. He’s interested in the numinous underlying the ordinary, and gives us frequent surprising and memorable glimpses of it.”(Ausable)
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…
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…
Jane Hirshfield recommends Restarting the World, poems by Leonard Nathan: "In this new book, along with his two previous Orchises Press volumes ( The Potato Eaters and Tears of the Old Magician), Leonard Nathan has created a late body of work of alchemical power. His brief poems observe with equal force and tact the momentary…
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…
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…
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