In his foreword to STONE LYRE, Nancy Naomi Carlson's previous collection of RenE Char translations, Ilya Kaminsky praised "the intensity, the dreamlike language, the gravity of tone, and the constant impression that one is reading not words in the language, but sparks of flames." STONE LYRE was a selection of poems from Char's numerous volumes; Carlson's new HAMMER WITH A NEW MASTER is a discrete and continuous work, the first English translation of Char's Le Marteau sans maItre, first published in 1934 -- a time of rumbling menace that our era resembles.

The Dancing Other takes readers to France and Martinique to reveal the struggles of people who belong both places, but never quite feel at home in either. Suzanne Drasius tells the story of Rehvana, a woman who feels she is too black to fit in when living in mainland France, yet at the same time not dark-skinned enough to feel truly accepted in the Caribbean. Her sense of dislocation manifests itself at first in a turn to a mythical idea of Mother Africa; later, she moves to Martinique with a new boyfriend and thinks she may have finally found her place--but instead she is soon...