Stephanie Burt

Forrest Gander’s​ first collection of poems appeared in 1988. He grew up in Virginia and his early work seemed like that of an elegant regionalist. With cut-glass concision, he often took a long look at earth, rocks, landscapes. ‘If not a writer, then I would probably be a geologist,’ he said in 2005. He planned to study palaeontology, but was diagnosed with melanoma in...

Williamstown, MA

Barely and barely ableto be seen through, theseflat wind-skimming seeds

like little microphonescan amplify the windin any direction. Having

persuaded one anotherin casual confidencethat they will go far, they have chosen

a bad trade: what’s leftof summer for winter; osmoticsatisfaction for sporadic rain;a life in the sun for unpredictable shade,like the one the hurricane...

Monica Youn’s​ fourth book of poems, From From (Carcanet, £14.99), is her first to dwell at length on her Korean American background, and on the history of Asian America more generally. It’s also her first to rely primarily on long prose poems, or lyric essays, advancing sparely perspicuous, caustically disillusioned arguments about myth and history, cravings and reactions,...

Because each year of your life amounts         to less of your lifethan the year before, the things in it change you less.

Horse chestnuts, for example,         beside you in the almost-ready-for-morning frosted grass

as you walk to your car, or         one horse chestnut in particular,its dry spiked ball on a flail