Verse chronicle

  • Seeing the elephant

    Reviews of Westerly by Will Schutt, The Boss by Victoria Chang, 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri, Nefertiti in the Flak Tower by Clive James & Marvelous Things Overheard by Ange Mlinko

  • Collateral damage

    On The Word on the Street by Paul Muldoon, Mayakovsky’s Revolver by Matthew Dickman, Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield, Quick Question by John Ashbery, The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald, and Red Doc> by Anne Carson.

  • Song & dance

    On Antigonick (Sophokles), by Anne Carson, Nice Weather, by Frederick Seidel, PLACE, by Jorie Graham, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, by D. A. Powell, Thrall, by Natasha Trethewey, and Song & Error, by Averill Curdy.

  • Guys & Dove

    On Almost Invisible by Mark Strand, Odi Barbare by Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Thomas Karshan, and The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove.

  • Civil wars

    On Flies by Michael Dickman; Touch by Henri Cole; Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson; Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins; A Hundred Doors by Michael Longley & Clavics by Geoffrey Hill.

  • Weird science

    On I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston; Walking Papers: Poems 1999-2009, by Thomas Lynch; The Sun-Fish, by Eliéan Ní Chuilleanáin; Toxic Flora by Kimiko Hahn; Maggot by Paul Muldoon; and Heavenly Questions by Gjertrud Shcnackenberg.

  • Trampling out the new vintage

    On Wait by C. K. Williams, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland, Simplify Me When I’m Dead by Keith Douglas, Rain by Don Paterson, White Egrets by Derek Walcott & Nox by Anne Carson

  • From “stinko” to Devo

    On The Continual Condition, by Charles Bukowski, edited by John Martin; Wheeling Motel, by Franz Wright; Unmentionables, by Beth Ann Fennelly; Easy, by Marie Ponsot; Unrest, by Joanna Rawson; and Planisphere, by John Ashbery.

  • You betcha!

    On Ballistics by Billy Collins; Selected Poems by Thom Gunn, edited by August Kleinzahler; Substrate by Jim A. Powell; The Mind-Body Problem by Katha Pollitt; Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove; and It Is Daylight by Arda Collins.

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