"Men in the Off Hours" ($24, Knopf) is the latest from Anne Carson, a writer very likely to leave her reader awe-struck. Ms. Carson's mind is as exact as a scalpel's blade, and her poems are incisive. Her writing is witty, thoughtful, sad, and highly intelligent. Here she writes achingly well about her father and mother, has lyric poems as slivers of biographies of famous people, weaves Virginia Woolf and Thucydides on the subject of war, and much, much more, all without parallel. There's little sense arguing with Michael Ondaatje's often cited quotation regarding Ms. Carson, "[She is] the most exciting poet writing in English today."

"By A Thread" ($14, Van West) is the first full-length from Molly Tenenbaum. We praised her poetry in the calendar of events, and in the interest of full disclosure we acknowledge our friendship with Ms. Tenenbaum. Still, it must be said that there is a charming other-worldliness to her poems. We knew we would like this book a great deal even without the friendship and proximity.

"The Anchored Angel" ($14.95, Kaya) offers selected writings by Jos Garcia Villa. Mr. Villa was an experimental and visionary poet who was born in the Philippines in 1908 and died in New York in 1997. His poems are exciting, lovely, and odd. He had a metaphysical vision and worked toward writing it. Here's an example from "A Composition": "If I attain out of my life two perfect flowers, two eternities-/ The main thing always is that I lived/The First Eternity./My name is Jos, my name is Villa./My true name is Doveglion./Doveglion is the author of Jos Garcia Villa." This book is 230+ pages long, including 80 pages of essays and very entertaining reminiscences by contemporary writers. Mr. Villa as a wonderfully eccentric character. Though he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, and associated with W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore, his work is largely unknown today. We, like the publishers, hope this book helps to correct that.

"Beowulf" ($25, FSG), in a bilingual edition translated by Seamus Heaney, won Britain's Whitbread Award and has received so much media attention we feel we barely need mention it. This book is probably destined for best-sellerdom. Pretty amazing for a classic in hardcover, eh? Having the original on facing pages is a great feature.

"A Map to the Next World" ($22.95, Norton) is a collection of new poems and tales from Joy Harjo that read like dark, insistent dreams. The strength in her earlier books continues here and is rightly prized.

"The Book of Forms, Third Edition" ($17.95, New England) is an updating of the classic guide to forms and poetics by Lewis Turco. The book now exceeds 300 pages, including notes and index, with considerable attention paid to the structural elements of poetry,

"It Is If I Speak" ($12.95, Wesleyan), Joe Wenderoth's second collection, is filled with very nervy work. His poems vary from very short lyrics to longer (though only a few pages) fabulist narratives. The language is always fresh and his imagery new.

"The Weather of Words" ($22, Knopf) is a collection of short essays on poetry and related topics by Mark Strand. The materials covered here include a satiric piece on translation and an essay on the relationship of poetry to photography, particularly family photographs and their "sadness."

"Teducation" ($15.95, Coffee House) is the selected poems of part-time Seattle resident Ted Joans. A poet from the Beat generation, Mr. Joans incorporates surrealism and a break-neck improvisational style into his clever, musical, intelligent poems. With much of his work out of print, this collection is very welcome.

"Devil's Lunch" ($13, Faber and Faber) is a selection of poems from the Serbian poet Aleksandar Ristovic, translated by Charles Simic. In his introduction, Mr. Simic refers to Mr. Ristovic as being "absolutely original," likening him to Robert Frost. Eastern Europeaness prevails here, with a brittle sensuality and scads of gallows humor.