Johns Hopkins poetry and fiction

The work of Wyatt Prunty has been acclaimed by critics and poets alike. In this latest book of poetry, Prunty finds beauty and violence, mystery and humor, in a variety of private and public worlds.

John Hollander's "Blue Wine and Other Poems," his first collection of verse since the appearance of his new and selected poems, "Spectral Emanations," shows one of our best poetic craftsmen in America moving into a new phase in his distinguished career. Poems on painting and sculpture, in which Hollander examines the static/dynamic interaction of life and art, are balanced against a graceful lyric cycle, which is itself a commentary on the meaning of art songs. The longer poems in this volume--"Blue Wine," "Monuments," "The Train," and "Just for the Ride"--Move beyond Hollander's unique blend of meditative elegance, closely observed detail, and learned wit. They explore even further the realms of mythological vision beyond the boundaries of easy irony. Of the title poem, "Blue Wine," Hollander writes, "I visited Saul Steinberg one afternoon and found that he had pasted some mock- (or rather, visionary) wine labels on bottles, which were then filled with a substance I could not identify. This poem is an attempt to make sense out of what was apparently in them."

Merritt Wenner has been sent to an equine therapy program where she meets Red--a failed racehorse and a terror in the barn--and begins competitive hunter/jumper riding, finding herself drawn to the groom, Beatrice, and a rival rider, Carvin.

Fear of Blue Skies, Richard Burgin's third collection of stories, explores the mysteries of love and memory, sex, revenge and redemption, family abuse, and forgiveness through an extraordinarily variegated cast of characters. In these pages one finds vivid renderings of prostitutes, artists, businessmen, the famous and the wealthy, the homeless and the tormented, as well as those who seek and find enlightenment.

William Jay Smith melds an array of influences - from the French Symbolists to W. H. Auden and Wallace Stevens - into his own unmistakable voice, moving powerfully from the compressed, dark lyrics of his pre-World War II poetry ("Quail in Antumn") to experiments with a long, free-verse line in the 1960's ("The Tin Can"). Here are memorable lyrics that capture the horror of World War II ("Dark Valentine: War Poems") and hilarious light verse ("The Tall Poets") that exhibits the wit that has enlivened even Smith's darkest works. Previously uncollected recent poems reveal the poet's tremendous range, as he moves from discussing the ironies of age in "The Shipwreck" to forging the dramatic and moving intensity of "The Cherokee Lottery," which deals with the forced removal of American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi.

In this collection of short fiction Richard Burgin's characters are everyday people at emotional and psychological crossroads. In the title story, a man who takes pleasure out of frightening strangers is forced to deal with his own fears.

"Wyatt Prunty's eighth collection, The Lover's Guide to Trapping, opens with a Homeric mole who tunnels the yard then disappears, a nervous alpha dog convinced she gets less food than her sister because she eats faster, and a house wren whose loud expectation is that she be let in"--