Book Recommendations from Our Former Guest Editors
Peter Ho Davies recommends Dixon, Descending, by Karen Outen (Dutton, February 2024). “A gripping debut novel about the aftermath of an Everest expedition, distinguished by its searching, sympathetic portrayal of middle-aged masculinity.”
Tess Gallagher recommends I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State, edited by Rena Priest (Empty Bowl, 2023). “This book is mostly poetry celebrating the spawning of and various encounters with salmon throughout Washington State, edited by a recent state Poet Laureate. The strength of the poetry is to connect the reader to the miracle and tenacity and life-engendering force that salmon are for us and for our ecology, our place and people.”
DeWitt Henry recommends Ornithology, by M. G. Stephens (Finishing Line Press, 2023), “where the delicacy of haiku meets W. C. Williams’s ‘Red Wheelbarrow,’ such as in ‘Hopeless’: ‘Hum-/Ming-//Bird//In inner/Court-//Yard this/Morning.᾽”
DeWitt Henry recommends Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, by Lawrence Kessenich (Big Table Publishing, 2023). “My favorites are family-centric poems, especially ‘9/11 + 5,’ where the poet wishes his drummer son a future free of global violence and prays that ‘the only / explosions in his future / will be applause, as his talent / tempered by adversity / matures, and his music adds / to the strange equation of this world.’ Or ‘Autumn Morning on Cape Cod,’ where, on a family outing, the poet savors: ‘sweet air, / Cape light, caressing breeze, / the primal order of saltwater, / the people I love most.’”
DeWitt Henry recommends Remote Cities, by George Franklin (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). “The major fifth collection of ninety-eight poems by a widely published and award-winning lawyer-poet, whose deepest concerns are spiritual, and who has mastered a variety of forms. One of his best is ‘Poem Written to Win a Contest,’ which ends, ‘This poem will not be among the winners.’”
DeWitt Henry recommends Digital Satori, by Caitlin Krause (Independently published, 2023). “The first collection by a notable advocate of mindfulness and tech, as voiced in the title poem: ‘The whispering algorithms, once tools of knowledge, / became creators of dreams…’ My favorites are more personal, about the birth of a niece (‘On the day you were born’) or a father’s death (‘The Nature of Awe in Loreto,’ ‘Arrival’).”
Joyce Peseroff recommends Ghost Variations: Poems, by Elton Glaser (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023). “Glaser’s ninth book of poems is haunted by the loss of his wife and the struggle to find a language for his grief. Poems set in the South of their youth, the Midwest of their marriage, and their travels in Italy resonate with life remembered and life lost. Full of music, wit, and the particular joys of family and the natural world, Glaser’s meditations never forget that, as Wallace Stevens said, ‘Memory without passion would be better lost.’”
Rosanna Warren recommends Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street, by Jackson Lears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). “I’m enthralled by this narrative of ideas. Tracking beliefs about life energy, élan vital, ‘animal spirits’ from seventeenth-century science through Defoe’s giddy accounts of credit to the waves of spiritualist ‘awakenings’ and economic booms and busts in the United States, Lears presents a wildly imaginative history of America’s youthful but rapidly aging culture. In this parade of scams, enthusiasms, and visions, what stands out to me most is the idea that the economy largely runs on fantasy: a useful reminder.”