“Haven’t we all chewed / through something tough and survived?” asks poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli in their collection Water I Won’t Touch, an intimate exploration of... Read More

That there’s such a stratospherically high level of difficulty in writing great poetry doesn’t get discussed much, probably out of superstition and a belief among poets... Read More

Oh, you make it look so easy—everyday language, simple truths, no head-scratching allusions or hidden meaning—can you do this in your sleep, Mr. Hedin? Standing on your... Read More

The fix is in: we are hopeless Jim Harrison fans, and his recent death moved our reverence beyond reason—he alone spoke our Mother Tongue. In a forty-plus year career,... Read More

A poet for whom face value represents life at its most treacherous, Richard Siken’s 2004 first collection, Crush, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and... Read More

Ellen Bass’s poems might best be described as transcendental incidentalism. In "Like a Beggar", her prose moseys along, skillfully detailing tightly framed shots, one right... Read More

Heather McHugh’s reviews are swarmed by words like “clever,” “play,” and “language games.” She puns, she’s wry, and she foregrounds seriousness in the title of... Read More

"In Search of Small Gods" is filled with what is most loved about Harrison’s work….nods to pure attentiveness. When he rises Harrison bows to the cardinal directions and to... Read More

In an early poem David Huerta describes his own work and the context in which he writes: “Under a leaden sky words and syllables / were dancing in my throat.” Huerta one of... Read More

Gustafsson’s "A Time in Xanadu", his third translated collection of poems, manages to be personal and quirky while also deeply philosophical. Previous poems and novels—he... Read More

Dan Gerber’s poems are something like the fox that graces the cover of this book: quick, graceful, alert to their surroundings, and rarely wasting a motion. The seventh book... Read More

In the author’s long and distinguished career, he has published more than two dozen books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His best-known work may be the Western novella... Read More