W. W. Norton
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Reading Whitman While White
It is only by holding Whitman accountable for all of his language that we can also love other parts of his language and poetics.
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Both Reckoning and Embrace: Dorianne Laux’s Only As The Day Is Long
As the book continues, [Laux] traces a growing understanding of loss.
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Between Bodies: The Undressing by Li-Young Lee
Yet the backyard cannot exist without the intimacy of the bedroom.
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Playing with Genre: Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling
Whether you read it as poetry or memoir, this collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent.
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Imagination Is Like Grace: Meghan O’Rourke’s Sun in Days
A poem doesn’t bring the dead back to life, but a memory has a touch of immortality: it’s a sort of recompense—forever isn’t exactly a lie, even if it’s not completely true.
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Navigating Empathy: Camille T. Dungy’s Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History
Luckily for us, Dungy’s increase in empathy and experience coincides with her embrace of the braided essay: her thinking crashes people, places, and ideas against each other in unexpected and adventurous ways.
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Marie Howe Is Magic: Reading Magdalene
Howe’s Magdalene is ambitious in its reach and strangely timely, as American society has swung to the right and, in the process, against the tide of equality for women.



