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New Books - 10/05
New and Selected Poems: Volume Two ($24.95, Beacon) by Mary Oliver, a follow-up to her popular New and Collected Volume One. This collection
includes 42 new poems and 69 poems chosen by Ms. Oliver from prior books
dating back to 1994.
Perhaps as a counterweight to Ms. Oliver's poems of spirituality drawn
from the natural world is Here, Bullet ($14.95, Alice James), by Brian
Turner, an Iraqi War (the current edition) veteran. The often grim poems in
this book bear witness to his experience in that war, as combatant and
cultural outsider. Often reportorial, occasionally poetic, Mr. Turner writes
with a direct intensity.
The Niagara River ($13, Grove) is Kay Ryan's newest, carrying on her
delightfully tricky voice. Ms. Ryan, a hit at last winter's Seattle Arts &
Lectures Poetry Series, manages to create (metaphorically speaking)
architectural wonders of thought and music in her crisp, short poems.
Good Poems for Hard Times ($25.95, Viking) is the latest anthology
edited by Garrison Keillor. The title may be a bit much but, happily, the
collection runs the gamut from Burma Shave signs (are you old enough to know
what that means?) to a selection from Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons." How
about Various Poems for Various Times?
Present Company ($22, Copper Canyon) is W.S. Merwin's new collection of
poems in the form of addresses, in that way not unlike Kenneth Koch's last
book, New Addresses. Like an elder making peace with the world, Mr. Merwin
addresses the concrete, "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle," and the conceptual,
"To The Way Back," with wit, reverence, and facility. He also has a new
memoir, Summer Doorways ($22, Shoemaker & Hoard), which covers his oh so
formative years in the late 1940's and early 1950's.
The Best American Poetry 2005 ($16, Scribner) is here now. The guest
editor this year, joining series editor David Lehman, is Paul Muldoon. Their
collection is made up predominantly of accessible poems, several in
traditional and not-so-traditional forms, and has a less experimental cast
than some recent editions of this annual anthology. As in past editions the
poems are followed by brief essays from the poets wherein they describe
something about the writing and/or meaning of their poems.
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