This is a beautiful collection of poems: half-cryptic, half-open; half based on ancient myths, half on actual life. —Adam Zagajewski, author of Unseen Hand

NER would like to congratulate Christopher Bakken on the publication of his newest poetry collection, Eternity & Oranges (University of Pittsburgh Press).

From the publisher: The voices we encounter in this book speak from a place marked by disintegration and loss, and they speak on the verge of disappearance, out of desperation and terror. Bakken’s poems are acts of conjuring. They move from the real political landscapes of Greece, Italy, and Romania, into more surreal spaces where history comes alive and the summoned dead speak.

Eternity & Oranges is Bakken’s third collection of poems. Two of Bakken’s poems, “Elegy” and “Myth,” appeared in NER 36.2. He also co-translated The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios (Truman State University Press, 2016), and wrote Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table (University of California Press 2013).

Eternity & Oranges is available from University of Pittsburgh Press and independent booksellers.

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In tones that shift effortlessly from journalistic to atmospheric to deeply, darkly funny, Berlinski evokes a very detailed sense of place. —Publishers Weekly

Mischa Berlinski will release his second novel, Peacekeeping, this month. Set in a small Haitian town, it tells the story of a American sent by the UN to help train the Haitian police. Soon, however, he becomes embroiled in the town’s politics and falls in love with a corrupt judge’s wife.

Berlinski’s first novel Fieldwork was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. His short story “In the Dark” appeared in NER 28.1.

Peacekeeping is available from Macmillan Publishers and other booksellers.

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Hernandez is a poet writing to us from poetry’s epicenter—where music invents itself, and the psyche and the sensory world are one. —Laura Kasischke, author of Space, in Chains, and The Raising

Dear, Sincerely (University of Pittsburgh Press), a new poetry collection by David Hernandez, has arrived.

From the publisher: an exploration into the relationship between the Self, the collective We, and the cosmos, as well as the murky division that separates one from the other.

Hernandez’s most recent book of poetry, Hoodwinked (Sarabande, 2011), won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. He has also published Always Danger (Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), and A House Waiting for Music (Tupelo Press, 2003), as well as two young adult novels. His poetry has appeared in NER 32.3 and 35.1.

Dear, Sincerely is available from University of Pittsburgh Press and independent booksellers.

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Jay Parini is one of those writers who can do anything. —Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review

A warm congratulations to NER founding editor Jay Parini on the release of his new poetry collection, New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015 (Beacon Press). His work appeared in NER 14.1. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur writes of Parini’s work: “Jay Parini’s poetry in keen-eyed, thoughtful, artful, yet unaffected.”

Parini is the author of over twenty books, including five books of poetry, eight novels, and several biographies. His recent work includes Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (Doubleday Books, 2015), Jesus: The Face of God (New Harvest, 2013), and The Passages of H.M. (Anchor, 2011). He is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College. 

New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015 is available from Beacon Press and independent booksellers.  

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In her powerful new collection, Emilia Phillips gives us a world that refuses to be stilled. Exploring the blurred boundaries of a cartographer’s spinning globe, Groundspeed offers a dynamic exploration of the liminal physical and psychological landscapes in which our tentative and transient identities flicker. —Kathleen Graber, author of The Eternal City

Emilia Phillips‘s second poetry collection, Groundspeed, arrives this month from University of Akron Press.

Phillips’s poem, “Supine Body in Full-Length Mirror, Hotel Room, Upper West Side,” appeared in NER 36.1. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, US poets in Mexico, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the author of another poetry collection, Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013), as well as three chapbooks.

Groundspeed is available from University of Akron Press and independent booksellers.

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As the narrator sets out “To see myself the size I really am,” we accompany her on this quest back and forth through time and the lives of her family as she uses all instruments available to learn what she must know. —Carole Simmons Oles, author of A Selected History of Her Heart: Poems

Carrie Shipers also has a new collection of poetry coming out, entitled Family Resemblances (University of New Mexico Press).

From the publisher: Throughout this beautiful volume, the multiple meanings of family—whether formed by biology or choice—are questioned through careful attention to the often conflicting notions of connection, inheritance, absence, and escape. The truths these poems find are much like life itself: complex, provisional, and rich.

Shipers published her “Anti-Anxiety Poem” in NER 32.4, as well as an essay in NER Digital. She is also the author of Ordinary Mourning and Cause for Concern. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals.

Family Resemblances is available from the University of New Mexico Press and independent booksellers.

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Young is a doctor as well as a poet, and [his poetry] demonstrates a skilled physician’s combination of empathy and formal precision. —David Orr, NPR

Congratulations to former NER poetry editor C. Dale Young on the publication of The Halo, a new collection of poetry that tells the story of a man born with wings who wants nothing more than to be simply human.

Young teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, while practicing medicine full-time. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as NER‘s poetry editor for 19 years.

Young has published three other collections: Torn (Four Way Books, 2011), The Second Person (Four Way Books, 2007), and The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern University Press, 2001).

The Halo is available from Four Way Books and independent booksellers.