Paris. P.O.L. 2013. ISBN 9782818019733Jacques Jouet’s latest book of poetry responds in key ways to a work that appeared fifteen years ago, Navet, linge, œil-de-vieux (1998). The dimensions o…
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Bucharest. Contemporary Literature Press. 2013. ISBN 9786068366647 The story of Ariadne’s thread leading Theseus out of the labyrinth is a useful metaphor for the strands that bring this book to…- Philadelphia. Calypso Editions. 2013. ISBN 9780988790308We are being buried alive under the huge number of poetry titles published not only each year but each month. Most of the books are by younger p…
Rochester, New York. BOA Editions. 2013. ISBN 9781938160189 The title of Fleda Brown’s new verse collection comes from Robert Creeley’s statement (included in the book as an epigraph) that “poetr…
Aleš Debeljak, intro. Michael Biggins et al., tr. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2012. ISBN 9781564787835One key to Boris A. Novak’s poetic development over four decades can be found in the clos…- Novi Sad. Umetničko društvo Vujica Rešin Tucić. 2012 (rel. 2013). ISBN 9788689457001In his seventh collection of poems, Vode i Vetrovi (Waters and the winds), Serbian poet Nenad…
- Michael Bishop, tr. Bedford, Nova Scotia. VVV / William Blake & Co. 2013. ISBN 9782841032051Set in free form, Jean-Paul Michel’s idealistic and analytical poetry shows him struggling wit…
Michael Eskin, tr. New York. Upper West Side Philosophers. 2013. ISBN 9781935830078Durs Grünbein’s philosophical poetics in Mortal Diamond come to us in English from Upper West Side Phil…
Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2013. ISBN 9780819572691 When opening a book of poetry by Annie Finch, the first thing a reader will notice is that the poems are dense—dense i…
Ilmar Lehtpere, tr. Fayetteville, New York. Bitter Oleander. 2012. ISBN 9780978633585 Kristiina Ehin’s voluminous bilingual (the original Estonian and English translation) collection of one hundr…
Nacogdoches, Texas. Stephen F. Austin State University Press. 2013. ISBN 9781622880171 Like Wordsworth revisiting the Banks of the Wye, Christopher Buckley returns here to the California coast of…- London. Eyewear Publishing. 2013. ISBN 9781908998071David Shook is quite right that, on the days when you can see them through the pollution, the volcanoes that surround Mexico City are a perfect meta…
- Szczecin, Poland. Forma. 2013. ISBN 9788363316365In July 2001 Anna Frajlich wrote in her poem “New York”: “This city is mine / and I belong to it / in the crystalline air / we sail along the shores /…
- Laura Healy, tr. New York. New Directions. 2013. ISBN 9780811219280 In the most recent posthumous publication of Robert Bolaño’s work in English, The Unknown University, fantastically…
- Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2013. ISBN 9780819572998The contemporary tagline “Just saying” adds cheerful sarcasm to any observation, disavowing the authority or urgency o…
- Eirik Lodén, tr. Stavanger, Norway. Wigestrand. 2012. ISBN 9788281401150Partly a poetic biography of Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802–87), partly the portrait of an epoch, An Elastic State of Mind…
- New York. New York Quarterly Books. 2013. ISBN 9781935520719In reading Benjamin Myers’s second collection of poetry, one is struck with how frequently “neighbors” and “neighborhood” occur, sometimes s…
- Han Dong. A Phone Call from Dalian. Nicky Harman et al., ed. Brookline, Massachusetts / Hong Kong. Zephyr / Chinese University Press of Hong Kong. 2012. ISBN 9780983297017Ouyang Ji…
- George Economou with Stavros Deligiorgis, tr. Bristol, United Kingdom. Shearsman. 2013. ISBN 9781848612662When Plato compared Greeks to frogs around a pond, he probably could not have envisioned…
- Megan Volpert, ed. Alexander, Arkansas. Sibling Rivalry. 2013. ISBN 9781937420420 Had Plato been privy to This Assignment Is So Gay, he might have changed his proclamation that would ban…
- George McWhirter, tr. Francisco Toledo, ill. San Francisco. City Lights. 2012. ISBN 9780872865648 With its side-by-side bilingual presentation, accompanied by Francisco Toledo’s bold, whimsical,…
- Jeffrey Yang, ed. New York. New Directions. 2013. ISBN 9780811220323It is not without reason that Hemingway symbolized death in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as a hyena who “slipped lightly alo…
- Karen Emmerich & Edmund Keeley, tr. Brooklyn, New York. Archipelago. 2013. ISBN 9781935744580Yannis Ritsos (1909–1990) was one of the most respected twentieth-century Greek poets, “whose writing l…
- Tessa Ransford. Don’t Mention This to Anyone: Poems and Prose Fragments of Life in the Punjab. Jila Peacock, ill. Edinburgh. Luath. 2012. ISBN 9781908373182Tessa Ransford & Iyad Hayatleh.…
- William Pitt Root, tr. San Antonio, Texas. Wings Press. 2013. ISBN 9780916727871The powerful Odas elementales (1954; Eng. Elemental Odes, 1990) by Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (1904–1…