For the contemporary reader, this book will perhaps be redolent of the film Il Postino (The Postman), which was set on the Isle of Capri, where the poet lived in exile with his lover, Matilde Urrutia, later his wife. The poems were... Read More

In 1975, Pol Pot gained control of Cambodia, “a country of sugar palms, whispering grasses, and bright sunshine.” Arn Chorn-Pond, whose biography this is, was eight years old. He lived in a prosperous village in northern Cambodia... Read More

“You may think vegetables lead a dull life. But here we find the garden vegetables having a wild party under a late night moon,” goes the introduction (in both Spanish and English) to “El Baile Vegetal” (“The Barnyard... Read More

“Clustered on the bay, fifty pelicans / rise, fly circles, dive-each angular / as origami, newspaper-colored-/ and demonstrate the lazy elegance / of predation.“ This combination of metaphysical thought and exacting images, with its... Read More

“The South is a special place. Even now, after the turn of a new century and the dawn of a new millennium, the South is ever present in matters of American politics, American culture, and American life,” writes the editor in his... Read More

Elston Howard had much better timing on the baseball diamond than off it. The first black New York Yankee—a solid catcher with a lifetime fielding average of .993 who was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player in... Read More

Wicked good is a bit of an oxymoron. However, that’s probably the best description for some of the sinfully rich recipes in this fine cookbook. Mashed potatoes blended with butter, sour cream, and heavy cream, for example, are wicked... Read More

Two roads diverged in a wood and I— I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference. *—*Robert Frost The Road Less Taken (1915) Once each generation an adolescent member of the isolated community of Hope is... Read More