Poetry Notes
by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 3/19/2007
APRIL PUBLICATION
Clear, earnest and politically engaged, Jaime Sabines (1926–1999) won admiration in his native Mexico for his fourth book, Tarumba (1956). This expanded reissue, translated by Philip Levine and Ernesto Trejo, adds later poems. These moving, straightforward writings show the poet face-to-face with mortality: "Death is not important," Sabines says. "What matters is this rain, this afternoon that couldn't care less, this life saying good-bye to no avail." (Sarabande [Consortium, dist.], $14.95 134p ISBN 978-1-932511-48-2)
MARCH PUBLICATIONS
Published as part of the excellent Facing Pages series of translations, major Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz's death-obsessed masterwork, The Night, is now available in English for the first time. Veteran translators Forest Gander and Kent Johnson of Saenz (1921–1986) seem to understand the haunting beauty of these lines as though they had written them: "there is absolutely nothing on the other side of the night." (Princeton Univ., $19.95 160p ISBN 978-0-691-12483-4)
Ed Ochester celebrates 40 years of the Pitt Poetry Series (and his 30th year as editor) with American Poetry Now, a landmark anthology featuring selections from collections published in the series, including poems by well-known names like Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds and Dean Young, as well as up-and-comers like Paisley Rekdal and Quan Barry. (Univ. of Pittsburgh, $27.95 416p ISBN 978-0-8229-5964-9)
My Father Says Grace, Donald Platt's mournful third collection, centers on a sequence of poems about the impact of a father's stroke on his family. Solemn, plainspoken lines recount a painful deterioration and the little there is to redeem it: "When he spoke the holy words, nothing/ but the jangled// syllables of aphasia came from his God-struck tongue." (Univ. of Arkansas, $16 96p ISBN 978-1-55728-837-0)
Former Yale Younger Poet Pamel Alexander breaks into fragmentary lines, short sentences, apothegms and pebble-sized observations in Slow Fire, her fourth outing, pursuing her sense of how we fit, or do not fit, into the nonhuman nature we see: "We found a nest with eggs once/ in the pocket of a scarecrow. Shall I/ look for you there?" (Ausable [Consortium, dist.], $16 120p ISBN 978-1-931337-33-5)
Correction: The distributor for Tarnish and Masquerade by Roger Bonair-Agard was listed incorrectly in our Feb. 26 issue. The distributor is Biblios.
