Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America

Columbine and Oklahoma City are among the subjects in Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America, but so are smaller-scale encounters with violence. In ""Lithium,"" Marcus Carfagna's narrator describes visiting his bank-robbing brother in jail: ""I ask him how he could do something that stupid He confesses through the food slot that he wanted some fast cash to fix the crushed white door of his Dodge Dart so his date wouldn't have to squeeze behind the wheel and scootch herself across the seat."" Editors Virgil Suarez and Ryan G. Van Cleave, who also co-edited American Diaspora, have gathered works by 120 writers including Maxine Chernoff, Sherman Alexie and Campbell McGrath. (Mar.)