Michael Copperman University Press of Mississippi ($25) by T. K. Dalton A reader could come to Michael Copperman’s memoir, Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta with any number of trepidations: a weariness with narratives about the teacher-who-changed-my-life, maybe, or a preconceived notion about Teach for America (TFA), which takes fresh graduates from elite colleges […]
Emilia Phillips University of Akron Press ($14.95) by Krystal Languell In an early episode of Mad Men, Betty Draper jumps a curb with her kids, a boy and a girl, in the car. In the aftermath, she expresses regret thusly: “If it happened to Bobby it would have been okay because a boy with a […]
Khadijah Queen YesYes Books ($18) by Jeremiah Moriarty Was it Dorothy Parker who once asked “Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?” I don’t know if Parker found something comparable in the toothy grin of Alan Parker, her on-again, off-again husband, but her question is a timeless, mostly unanswered one. […]
Jed Rasula Opo Books & Objects ($15) by James Cook Known primarily for his scholarly criticism of European Modernism and the New American poets, Jed Rasula has also quietly published two previous books of his own poetry. His third, Hectic Pigment, is a short (54 pages), pocket-sized, sharply sculpted volume of six poems that shows […]
Niña Weijers translated by Hester Velmans DoppelHouse Press ($29.95) by Garry Craig Powell This debut novel includes themes such as whether we exist and how we know we exist; the role of art in documenting existence; predestination and the nature of freedom; Taoism and the Mayan view of Time. Moreover, it’s a novel with many […]
Sandra Hochman Turner Publishing ($16.95) by Brooke Horvath Sandra Hochman was an aspiring writer escaping a failed marriage when she met poet Robert Lowell in 1961. She was talented, attractive, and twenty-five; he was forty-three, famous, and charming as all get-out. What it took Hochman months to realize was that Lowell was also slowly slipping […]
Megan Marshall Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ($30) by Edward A. Dougherty The subtitle for Megan Marshall’s Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast could have been “A Creature Divided,” from Bishop’s final published poem, “Sonnet.” Elizabeth Bishop is known as a poet of small but precise output, who pairs remarkable personal reflection with emotional restraint. While her […]
David Brazil City Lights Books ($15.95) by David Nilsen David Brazil’s new poetry collection Holy Ghost expresses the ideological cacophony of our times and juxtaposes it against the simplicity of human need. Brazil drops Christian spirituality, progressive politics, and a yearning for human connection into a poetic blender and leaves the output a bit jumbled […]
Fast Jorie Graham Ecco ($25.99) Debths Susan Howe New Directions ($15.95) by Kevin Carollo There must come a time when established poets are no longer edited by others, when they become their own muse and judge, when it is only they who shepherd the differentiated flock of a collection of poems from start to finish. […]
Interviewed by Bob Holman The New Jersey surrealist, trance poet, and rock ’n’ roller Janet Hamill is a true American original, an amalgam of disparate parts. She is the author of several books of poetry and short fiction, including Troublante (Oliphant Press, 1975), The Temple (Telephone Books, 1980), Nostalgia of the Infinite (Ocean View Books, […]