New England Review

New Books from NER Authors: July 2017

Hinton is a rare example of a literary sinologist—that is, a classical scholar thoroughly conversant with, and connected to, contemporary poetry in English. —Eliot Weinberger, New York Review of Books

From the publisher: Henry David Thoreau, in The Maine Woods, describes a moment on Mount Katahdin when all explanations and assumptions fell away for him and he was confronted with the wonderful, inexplicable thusness of things. David Hinton takes that moment as the starting point for his account of a rewilding of consciousness in the West: a dawning awareness of our essential oneness with the world around us. Because there was no Western vocabulary for this perception, it fell to poets to make the first efforts at articulation, and those efforts were largely driven by Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist ideas imported from ancient China. Hinton chronicles this rewilding through the lineage of avant-garde poetry in twentieth-century America—from Ezra Pound and Robinson Jeffers to Gary Snyder, W. S. Merwin, and beyond—including generous selections of poems that together form a compelling anthology of ecopoetry. In his much-admired translations, Hinton has recreated ancient Chinese rivers-and-mountains poetry as modern American poetry; here, he reenvisions modern American poetry as an extension of that ancient Chinese tradition: an ecopoetry that weaves consciousness into the Cosmos in radical and fundamental ways.

David Hinton is the author of Hunger Mountain, Existence, and many translations of classical Chinese poetry and philosophy. His work appeared in NER 13.2 and he is a former acting editor for NER. His books have earned wide acclaim and many awards, including a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Wilds of Poetry can be purchased directly from Shambhala Publications or from independent booksellers.

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With four well-reviewed novels already on the shelves, Charles Holdefer returns to bookstores once more with a collection of riotous short stories that speculate about the early life and times of a future Vice President.

From the publisher: This darkly humorous collection of short fiction by Charles Holdefer, author of The Contractor and Back in the Game, revolves gracefully around an esoteric and, it goes without saying, entirely fictional account of the imaginary formative years of someone who at times resembles America’s most notorious—so far!—Vice President. This center provides a jumping-off point for free-wheeling, fanciful explorations, both poetic and satirical, into the archaeology of the banality of evil, that reveal, with a light touch and forgiving good humor, the soul-distorting burdens of duty, repression and narcissism in our daily life.

Author of four novels, Charles Holdefer grew up in Iowa and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Sorbonne. He currently teaches at the University of Poitiers, France. He most recently appeared in the pages of New England Review with his short story “Big and Nasty” (NER 37.1).

Dick Cheney in Shorts can be purchased online or from independent booksellers.

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Every poem is exquisitely crafted, with crisp, clean lines and imagery that dazzles. —The Washington Post

From the publisher: Laura Kasischke’s long-awaited selected poems presents the breadth of her probing vision that subverts the so-called “normal.” A lover of fairy tales, Kasischke showcases her command of the symbolic, with a keen attention to sound in her exploration of the everyday—whether reflections on loss or the complicated realities of childhood and family. As literary critic Stephen Burt wrote in Boston Review, “The future will not see us by one poet alone. . . . If there is any justice in that future, Kasischke is one of the poets it will choose.” This incandescent volume makes the case that Laura Kasischke is one of America’s great poets, and her presence is secure.

Laura Kasischke is a poet and novelist whose fiction has been made into several feature-length films. Her poetry has been featured in number of NER issues over the years. Her book of poems, Space, in Chains, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches at the University of Michigan and most recently appeared in the pages of New England Review with her poem “Executioner as Muse” (NER 35.3).

Where Now: New and Selected Poems can be purchased from Copper Canyon Press or from independent booksellers.

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Pulitzer Prize Winning poet Paul Muldoon, deemed by many to be the most influential poet writing in English today, brings the world a collection of 19 witty song lyrics in the vein of great bards such as Bob Dylan.

From the publisher: Paul Muldoon is widely considered the greatest living poet of his generation. A former professor of poetry at Oxford, and once poetry editor of the New Yorker, Muldoon’s influence on poetry is incalculable. At once playful, profoundly literate, pop savvy and allusive to the max, his poetry has tens of thousands of readers and fans worldwide. Sadie and the Sadists features punk-rock-style song lyrics—zany, witty, brilliant, sometimes startling—by the master poet, songs played by the spoken word music group, Rogue Oliphant.

Born in Northern Ireland, Paul Muldoon moved to the United States to begin his enduring career as poet, professor, and critic. Among numerous awards and titles which he holds, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the United Kingdom, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Muldoon is a longtime contributor of poetry and criticism to New England Review,  having appeared most recently in NER 34.2 with a comment on Seamus Heaney’s “Du Bellay in Rome.”

Sadie and the Sadists can be purchased directly from Eyewear Publishing, or from independent booksellers.

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Nutting deftly exploits the comic potential of perverse attachments . . . The novel charms in its witty portrait of a woman desperate to reconnect with her humanity. —Publishers Weekly, Best Summer Books of 2017

From the publisher: In her second full-length novel, Alissa Nutting demonstrates just how far some will go for love—and how far some will go to escape it. At once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a profound meditation on marriage, monogamy, and family, Made for Love is both perceptive and compulsively readable.

Alissa Nutting is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College. She is the author of the story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, as well as the novel Tampa. Nutting contributed most recently to New England Review with her piece “Practice Falling Asleep,” part of the NER Digital series Secret Americas.

Made for Love can be purchased directly from publisher Harper Collins or from independent booksellers.

New Books from NER Authors

PlacetoRead” . . . a collection of personal retrospectives that deserve a place in the finest tradition of the American essay.”

We are pleased to announce the publication of NER contributor Michael Cohen‘s essay collection, A Place to Read: Life and Books (Interactive Press). The book includes an investigative essay published in NER 31.4 as well as The King in Winter, which appeared as an NER digital.

From Christina Thompson, Editor, Harvard Review: “Michael Cohen’s essays on the reading life are a treat to read. Relaxed, personal, wide-ranging, they contain fascinating nuggets of information and lively assessments of hundreds of books, as well as a whole life’s worth of thoughtful rumination on time, love, travel, and family, as well as what it means to be, almost existentially, a reader.”

“Each [piece] is in its own way a comment on the human situation, filtered through a personal optic that is both refined and erudite. Amusing, highly personal, insightful, they’ll make you smile, smirk, frown, and gasp . . .” —E. A. Allen, author of the Montclaire Mysteries

Since retiring from university teaching, Michael Cohen’s essays have appeared in Harvard Review, Birding, the Humanist, Missouri Review, and the Kenyon Review in addition to NER. He is also the author of five books, including a poetry text, The Poem in Question (Harcourt Brace, 1983) and an award winning book on Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Georgia, 1989).

 

“The poetic sensibility itself is characterized by restlessness–a ‘daring’ aspiration toward fuller meaning, feeling, and vision.”

9781555976811Congratulations to NER contributor Carl Phillips on the publication of his collection of essays, The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination (Graywolf). An excerpt of this book appears in NER 35.2. His reflection, “On Restlessness,” can be read in full online.

From Publishers Weekly: “Abundant autobiographical glimpses lend substance and specificity to Phillips’s tenet that ‘art and life are forever part of the same thing.’ Phillips analyzes individual poems by Shakespeare, Herbert, Shelley, Frost, Gunn, and others, along with his own work. The result is a slim volume memorable for delicate
insights . . . and for its grounding of theory in the life and personality of the poet.”

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Silverchest (2013), Double Shadow (2011), and Rest of Love (2004). He is the recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Academy of American Poets. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

 

” . . . his poems, more than anyone else’s, take the shape of fire, all its ambiguity and wind-shreddedness, all its likeness to poppies in the wheat.” —H. K. Hix

Gpankey100Eric Pankey has published his tenth poetry collection, Dismantling the Angel (Parlor Press, 2014). Pankey has been appeared in several issues of NER, most recently in 34.1.

“In these precise, dream-like poems, Eric Pankey peers through the clarifying lens of metaphor and parable to meditate on mystery, human sympathy and the divine. Here, the shifting image of fire both articulates and consumes our sense of the vastness of history and the ineffable nature of divinity.”—Kevin Prufer

Pankey’s other publications include The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984-2008 and Trace. He is Professor of English and the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University.

 

9781556594663_p0_v1_s600“Kasischke astonishes with her lyricism and metaphorical power as she considers illness and mortality through exacting, imaginative poems.”

Laura Kasischke’s newest collection of poetry, The Infinitesimals (Copper Canyon, 2014) is now out with strong reviews. Her work appears most recently in NER 34.2.

From Publisher’s Weekly: The brevity of Kasischke’s lines movingly captures the absence of death and the limitations on memory, and her mastery of meticulous, though seemingly effortless, description shines throughout, as when she dubs a cake once baked for her father as “Soggy church bell on a plate,” or describes a tumor as a “terrible frog/ Of moonlight and dampness on a log.”

Laura Kasischke has published nine novels and eight previous collections of poetry. For her collection, Space, in Chains, she received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches at the University of Michigan.

 

9780822963127_p0_v2_s260x420“It’s the music, the beauty, after all, that’s balm to all this sorrow. The American reminds me of this.” —Ross Gay

Longtime NER contributor David Roderick has published his poetry collection, The Americans with the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has previously appeared in NER issues 24.2 and 32.1.

“The Americans is a compelling meditation on the ways we go about our lives at this cultural moment, often unmoored from the facts of history though we drift along its shores. Part complicated love letter to suburbia, these poems demand that we consider not only what we are drawn to but also what we fail to see, how the apocryphal feeds our cultural amnesia. The poet asks: ‘Must nostalgia / walk like a prince through all our rooms?’ This lovely collection shows us a way to confront that question within ourselves.” —Natasha Tretheway, U.S. Poet Laureate

David Roderick’s first book, Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize. He is a recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and he currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

 

Lisettes-List-A-NovelNew York Times bestselling novelist Susan Vreeland is back with the publication of Lisette’s List. Her short story, “Love Burning,” was featured in NER 20.2.

Susan Vreeland is the author of four New York Times bestselling novels—The Passion of Artemisia, Luncheon of the Boating Party, Clara and Mr. Tiffany, and Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which was adapted into a Hallmark Hall of Fame television drama. Her books have been translated into 26 languages.

“Vreeland’s ability to make this complex historical novel as luminous as a Tiffany lamp is nothing less than remarkable.”—The Washington Post

“Vreeland’s writing is so graceful, her research so exhaustive, that a reader is enfolded in the world of Tiffany and Driscoll.”—Los Angeles Times

New Books for May from NER Authors

413IG2ug3HL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Hypnotic as it is profound

We are pleased to announce that NER contributor Norman Lock‘s new novel, The Boy in His Winter, is out from Bellevue Literary Press. His most recent story for NER, “A Theory of the Self,” appears in 34.2.

Pulitzer-Prize winning author, Gilbert King: In this surreal and otherworldly river journey through time, Norman Lock transports Huck Finn down the Mississippi and deep into America’s history—and future. Elegant and imaginative, The Boy in His Winter is a tale that’s as hypnotic as it is profound.”

Norman Lock is a recipient of a fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, saw his play The House of Correction revived in Istanbul, and published a new collection of stories, Love Among the Particles, featuring three pieces of fiction originally published in New England Review.

 

9781556594663_p0_v1_s260x420Mythical sea beasts, loads of laundry, and high school athletics 

Congratulations to NER contributor Laura Kasischke on the publication of her newest collection of poems, The Infinitesimals (Copper Canyon Press). Laura Kasischke’s poetry first appeared in NER 16.1 in 1994, and most recently in NER 32.4.

Publisher’s Weekly describes Kasischke’s latest work: “Mythical sea beasts, loads of laundry, and high school athletics all populate Kasischke’s rich imagination.”

Laura Kasischke is currently the Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. She is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon) and has recently been honored by the Michigan Library Association with the 2013 Michigan Author Award.

 

9780544074811_p0_v2_s260x420A story of second chances

We are pleased to announce Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s publication of Wonderland, the newest novel from NER contributor Stacey D’Erasmo. Her essay “Influence: A Practice in Three Wanders” appears in issue 31.4.

Publisher’s Weekly calls this “A story of second chances . . . meticulously crafted. . . .”

Stacey D’Erasmo is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Fiction. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine,  New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, Bookforum, and Ploughshares, among other publications.

 

As much prayer as it is poetrySamaras

NER is pleased to congratulate Nicholas Samaras on the recent publication of his newest collection of poetry American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press). His poetry has been published in NER several times since 1994, and his most recent contributions (“Approach” / “At Night”) appear in 28.3.

From The Daily Beat News Blog: “Samaras … has reinvented modern poetry with this groundbreaking book … The poet combines a sense of morality that is virtually unmatched with a concrete abstraction reminiscent of the likes of a Pablo Neruda.”

Nicholas Samaras’s first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1992. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, New Republic, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. In 1997, he was a recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Poetry Fellowship.

Laura Kasischke receives 2013 Michigan Author Award

Laura-KNER contributor Laura Kasischke will be honored by the Michigan Library Association with the 2013 Michigan Author Award next month. Kasischke has been a long time resident of Michigan and is currently the Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan.

Kasischke has previously contributed to NER and her poetry will appear in the upcoming issue of NER (34.2). Kasischke’s poems “Space, between humans & gods”, “Time,” “View from glass door,” and “Cigarettes” have been featured on the NER website.

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