Editor's Shelf

Joyce Peseroff recommends Letters to Jane, correspondence by Hayden Carruth: "While researching Jane Kenyon’s papers archived at the UNH library, I came across a file of letters written to her by Hayden Carruth during the long months of her illness. Carruth didn’t expect a reply; he didn’t write to be cheery or tell her to…

George Garrett recommends The Stories of Richard Bausch, a collection by Richard Bausch: “The sixth collection (and fourteenth book) by one of the finest living masters of the short story. Forty-one stories, old and new, to relish and rejoice in, to learn from.” (HarperCollins)

DeWitt Henry recommends Man vs. Nature, a novel by Doug Crandell: “In his debut novel, Crandell tells a lyrical, preposterous tale of Midwestern farm life, interweaving the coming of age of a farm boy with a lunatic father who raises pigs and a subplot about the invasion of TV news and the media’s distortions of…

Margot Livesey recommends Broken Ground, a novel by Kai Maristed: “Maristed brilliantly depicts a woman’s search for her daughter and her past in Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The novel moves gracefully between past and present, personal and political, and is intelligent, absorbing, and suspenseful at every level.” (Shoemaker &…

Gerald Stern recommends Search Party, collected poems of William Matthews: “For my money, the new selected of Bill Matthews is a bit too thin considering his extraordinary vision and voice, but it is a magnificent book that the editors Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly have brought out. I think Matthews will take his place as…

Philip Levine recommends Poets of the Non-Existent City, an anthology edited by Estelle Gershgoren Novak: "First and foremost this is an homage to an era and a place, Los Angeles, and to the dedicated few who worked to create a free society during the shameful decade of McCarthy. At the center was a group of…

Madeline DeFrees recommends The Volunteer, poems by Candace Black: "The poems in this first book by Candace Black are, like the volunteer of the title, pure gift. They spring, as if spontaneously, from the common clay of everyday experience—love, marriage, family, birth and death. In fresh, precise, evocative language, these poems prove the examined life…

Al Young recommends The Devil’s Garden, poems by Adrian Matejka: "Adrian Matejka’s first collection simply sizzles." (Alice James)

Philip Levine recommends What I Can’t Bear Losing, a memoir by Gerald Stern: “This book would have been more accurately titled What I Can’t Lose, since it is made up of a series of essays that deal with the images and events that have haunted Stern all his life. As in his poems, Stern is…