From Publishers Weekly
The 56 short stories, poems and essays collected in this annual winnowing from small presses, literary magazines and university reviews provide, as usual, access to a splendid range of current writers who offer nourishment for the spirit. "Where the Sea Used to Be" by Rick Bass is a powerful rendering of an oil driller's communion with the earth. Wallis, a spotter of drilling sites, imagines that an ancient basin in the Appalachian foothills was once filled with "the sound of old waves, miles and miles of empty beach." The New York fast-tracker in "What Is It Then Between Us?" by Eliud Havazelet speaks from his drug infusion: "The Chrysler is an elaborate spear to snag careless angels," as he careens to oblivion. In Tess Gallagher's "Girls," a simple woman learns her past is not memorable, and the dazzling metaphysics of a "mantic" coach enliven "The Era of Great Numbers" by Lee K. Abbott. The poems, under the editorship of Philip Booth and Jay Meek, include "Henry James and Hester Street" by Carl Dennis, an imaginative confrontation between the patrician expatriate and "ubiquitous aliens"; and "May, 1968," Sharon Olds's evocation of an urban campus strike. Seamus Heaney's masterful essay illuminates the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert and ranges over Western culture.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This latest annual prints 16 short stories, about 30 poems, and several essays, selected by a most impressive list of editors. Anyone who associates the small press with counterculture experiments will be surprised to see how "mainstream" many of these pieces are. Most keep a sense of direction without steering by agendas and ideologies. There is still great variety, especially in the fiction, and the contributors range from well known to virtually unknown. Even if this volume doesn't offer all the controversy and abundance of the first edition (1976-77), libraries that have neglected most of the volumes since then should try to add this onean exceptional sampling of new writing in America. Donald Ray, Manhattanville Coll. Lib., Purchase, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
