“Nothing O’Connor wrote was ever lukewarm. Not a tepid sentence of hers exists…. If I were to be consigned to that mythical desert island with only a bottle of some brand of aspirin and one book, I suspect the Collected…
A century and a half of the best writing about America’s quintessential writer.
“In his brilliant introduction, Edward Hirsch calls the Selected Poems a ‘spiritual autobiography,’ and as we chart Roethke’s development, we share in those moments of sublime ecstasy when boundaries between the self and the…
“Jed Perl has compiled an invigorating panorama of art writing from a crucial quarter century, adding vital context with his incisive commentaries. As today’s art writers suffer diminishing visibility, the pleasure to be had exploring this…
“This is a historic achievement. Kevin Young has given us the most expansive anthology of African American poetry to date, magnificent in its breadth and scholarly in its depth. Including the well-known and the forgotten, this astonishing…
“McClatchy has done yeoman’s work with both selection and editing, and Library of America was right to inaugurate its American Poets Project with Edna St. Vincent Millay. Fashions in literature, like those in couture, keep coming back, as she…
“To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, The Library of America has compiled an impressive collection of antislavery writings from the late 17th century through to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. It’s…
“A treasury of riches, containing much that has been difficult to find.” — Chicago Tribune
“Chopin is not, and never has been, a writer who is easily summed up. Here we get everything—the complete stories and the novels—in one tidy, well-presented package… Chopin’s richness is best swallowed in great quantities,…