Mother's Day is Sunday, May 12. We thought we'd share this lovely letter on the subject from Roger Page, owner of Island Books on Mercer Island. Our editoral board met at Miriam’s house for breakfast last week to hash out the May newsletter. Amidst coffee, croissants, and six month old twins, I was assigned Mother’s …
“Awards can be helpful nudges, moving an overlooked writer’s book to the top of a reader’s bedside stack. So it was for us with David Ferry, whose collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations received this year’s National Book Award. We understand why the judges chose it. This is a powerful, haunting collection, but subtly so (that’s part of its …
In the great Preston Sturges movie, The Lady Eve, a dowager turns to the late-arriving dinner guest as he slips in next to her and proclaims “The fish was a poem!” in perfect high-haughty English. Sometimes it does seem that anything called a poem is a poem. My happy task here is to offer three …
