Lewis Trondheim NBM ($13.95) by Karen Donovan Joy. Dismay. Pique. Quotidian aimlessness. Sociopathic resolve. Albert Camus meets Wile E. Coyote. Paul Tillich inhales a little helium. Job wakes up in the movie Groundhog Day. Mister O takes it on the chin and keeps coming back. Ludicrous escapes. Karmic ruins. Multiple orgasmic eurekas. Resourceful but ultimately doomed […]

Posy Simmonds Pantheon ($19.95) by Eric Lorberer In Gemma Bovery, British author Posy Simmonds offers not only a contemporary send-up of an age-old theme, but a fresh take on the graphic novel as well. Her title character's name obviously recalls Flaubert's Emma Bovary, a coincidence not lost on our narrator Joubert, a small-town baker in Normandy. […]

Francisco Aragón Bilingual Press ($12) by Alexandra van de Kamp Puerta del Sol, Francisco Aragón's first full-length book, is an intimate look at life in contemporary Spain as well as a convincing depiction of one person's attempts to navigate the overwhelming effects of loss and violence. Named after one of the main plazas in Madrid, […]

Pierre Alferi Translated by Cole Swensen with seven photographs by Suzanne Doppelt Burning Deck ($10) by Jefferson Hansen The book is divided into seven sections. Each section is divided into seven poems. And each poem describes some aspect of modern Paris in seven short lines (plus an italicized coda which announces the noun or phrase that […]

Ben Lerner Copper Canyon Press ($14) by Cindra Halm Let's say the poetic mind is a storm chamber. Because of erratic winds, stuff blows in from beyond the usual waking sensibility; as in disturbed sleep, neighbors and friends end up next to famous historical figures; parts of speech collide with images of herbs and snow, […]

Sam Hamill Shambhala Publications ($15.95) by Christopher Luna Sam Hamill's Almost Paradise: New and Selected Poems and Translations is an inspiring collection that boldly insists poetry matters. Hamill possesses the tender voice of a compassionate soul, and the vivid imagery that he presents reveals a refreshing generosity of spirit. Here is a poet who believes that “a […]

Kathleen Fraser Apogee Press ($12.95) by Laynie Browne If (woman) is a whole, it's a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly changing ensemble…an immense astral space not organized around any one sun that's anymore of a star than others. —Helene Cixous, The Laugh of Medusa Kathleen Fraser's […]

RUDDY GORE AWAY WITH THE FAIRIES THE CASTLEMAINE MURDERS Kerry Greenwood Poisoned Pen Press ($24.95 each) by Kris Lawson What do you do when you're a gorgeous flapper with tons of money and heaps of taste, set loose in 1920s Australia with a band of loyal comrades, cute wards who require little in the way […]

Robert Mayer St. Martin's Griffin ($12.95) by Rudi Dornemann The concept of the revisionist superhero carried a significant amount of shock value when Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns appeared in the mid-'80s. These days, however, the idea of puncturing the superhero mystique by placing a flawed, multidimensional person behind the […]

Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Strauss and Giroux ($23) by Ted Pelton Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is very much a Midwestern book, a wonderful evocation of a regional temperament that Easterners, urbanites, and agnostics might see in others but never feel first-hand. True Midwesterners are capable of scheduling day-long outings to walk around in what seem to those used to […]