J.-M. G. Le Clézio and the Nobel Prize: This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature selection has proven controversial, and to some, disappointing. One French critic fumed that the winner’s fiction lacked "universality," and even worse, often made it to the bestseller lists. The dean of German literary critics, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, expressed astonishment that the award…
A Muriel Rukeyser Reader Poems and prose by Muriel Rukeyser, edited by Jan Heller Levi. W.W. Norton & Co., $25.00 cloth. Reviewed by M. L. Rosenthal. It is a delight to see Muriel Rukeyser in print again. Her intimately self-searching lyricism and her identification with the world’s insulted and injured have a special place in…
Philip Levine, Tarumba, translation of poems by Jaime Sabines, with Ernesto Trejo: Sabines is a national treasure in Mexico, and this bilingual edition presents the full power of his secretive, wild, bittersweet poems, stepping into his streets, brothels, hospitals, and cantinas. (Sarabande)
Marilyn Hacker, Essays on Departure, poems: This book gathers twenty-five years of elegant, delectable work from eight books, as well as translations and new poems. (Carcanet)
As you head south and east, with your back to the sea, the city of Alvito draws you uphill along ever-smaller roads, tightening spirals and switchbacks that soon have you confused over what’s the approach and what the close-clustered town itself. Around just which curb-hugging rise and turn did you finally arrive? Nothing so defines…
The Look2 essay series, which replaces our print book reviews, takes a closer look at the careers of accomplished authors who have yet to receive the full appreciation that their work deserves. Reviews of new books can still be found on our blog at http://pshares.org. Devastating partings—man from woman, person from place—haunt the…
I was in Florence, Italy, when my father died. It was Easter Sunday and I was staying with old friends, the Marchettis, in their apartment near Piazza delle Cure, a quiet neighborhood on the north edge of town that you entered from via Faentina. We hadn’t gone into the center for the big Easter celebration,…
an excerpt from In a Foreign Country The map haunts you. You spotted it the day you arrived, hanging on the back of an office door. The words “Land Mine Areas, Bosnia-Herzegovina” are printed in large letters across the top, and each land mine area is labeled on it with a tiny, pale red dot….
[Editor’s Note: Clicking on the number for each footnote in the main body of the text will take you to the relevant note. After reading the footnote, please click on the number to the left of the footnote text to return to the section of the story you were reading.] Winston Hall-Miles Worked as…
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