It is Djanikian's sense of precision about distances, his awareness, his awareness of the riskiness of engaging nostalgia, his willingness to step beyond cleverness, which makes his new book so valuable.

The raw experience of mortality, met through the illness and death of a close friend, the tensions of history, and the texture of family life, distinguishes Joyce Perseroff's third book of poems. She writes about women pierced by sickness, abandonment, and lost innocence -- war survivor and mill worker, immigrant's daughter and wry lover. With scrupulous precision, Mortal Education maps a cherished and perishing world.

What endures the encroachments of time, history nature and mortality? Peseroff speculates with a
clear-headed, wry look at the world's catalogues and almanacs of largesse--lilies, Jerry Garcia, men
in fog, animal joy--as well as its sorrow. In startling original poems full of leaps and digressions that
reveal the mind in action, readers will encounter life through a person made raw by observation, a mind
processing loss and mortality in a petal, a poet alert to how syntax and language can reconfigure the
experience of grief.

Sarah Rosenblatt's One Season Behind is an insightful look at the way life sneaks up on us, and time moves so gently, that we awaken one morning, and find the leaves have turned. She savors the innocence of our children's questions, reflects on our feelings as we watch their lives unfold, and ponders the contrast between our parents and ourselves. She tenderly observes, the everyday details, like the play of sunlight on a sleeping cat's back, and asks the questions we all ask as we move through our days, trying to catch up with time's changes, and yearning for things to stay as they are. An...