“The eye has become a human eye only when its object has become a social, human object, made by man for man,” wrote Marx in 1844. Rich’s latest collection of essays derives its title from this critical observation, offering us her honest, lucid, contextual insights on socio-political transformations or controversies through poetics. Although often inclined towards ideology and Marxist influences, she neither aestheticizes nor imposes polemics upon poetry as a “social practice,” writing without pretense or intellectual jargon. She interrogates and investigates subjects such as translations of Iraqi poetry, three classic socialist manifestoes, James Baldwin, Muriel Rukeyser, correspondence between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, and LeRoi Jones… which are subjects that have also rightfully claimed Rich’s social and artistic convictions over the past forty years.

“Writers know that if you want to portray a person succinctly, tellingly, you describe the way he eats. Food is the royal road to the unconscious,” declares Amanda Hesser in her delicious introduction. Voilà: a collection of the 26 best essays from The New York Times Magazine‘s food column — all about food, but not only about food. Memories evoked by food matter more than the food consumed, as every writing demonstrates wittingly, each in itself an authentic story, and an original taste: sweet, sour, bitter, enduring.

Didn’t Edmondo De Amicis once claim, “One never sees Paris for the first time; one always sees it again?” Burke’s dynamic mapping of this special city illustrates how countless inspired and disillusioned writers from all over the world write Paris in life and in art. Sly, eclectic, yet packed with an utmost humor, this book traces these writers’ footsteps, street by street and across all times, mingling the fictional memories they have penned with colorful historical or biographical facts. An enthralling read.

A comprehensive guide to writing poetry, packed with fresh, useful exercises (e.g., write an “American Sentence,” invented by Allen Ginsberg and consisting of seventeen syllables). Each chapter weaves together poetry and creativity through the focus of a particular topic, and includes many examples of bringing a poem into being. Addonizio’s list of qualities of what she responds to as a reader and tries to achieve as a poet is a handy summation of what every poet should know. Numerous salient quotes from a variety of artists, from Leonard Cohen to Agnes De Mille, offer encouragement from different perspectives. This is a book of wide experience and good counsel, for those already writing poetry as well as for the beginner.

Winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize, Sandra Beasley’s Theories of Falling is a beautifully clear-headed collection of poems. Every page offers an elegant yet steely twine of revelation and humor. The “Allergy Girl” sequence is a stand-out, laced with large and small intimacies, from toxic to romantic, and both combined. A wonderful debut.

Published in 1986 and reprinted in 2003, this timeless exploration of family history, the heart “ghostly with losses,” cityscapes, and art combines luscious imagery with carefully delineated narratives to sweep the reader from an American summer to Leningrad in the early 1940s. One of the outstanding collections from the past few decades.

Sin puertas visibles (No Visible Doors) features for the first time a surprising mixture of dense and exhilarating poetry and prose from emerging Mexican women writers, both from and outside Mexico City, all in their 30s till late 40s: Angélica Tornero, Ofelia Pérez Sepúlveda, Cristina Rivera-Garza, Ana Belén López… The fact that Mexican women writers find it hard to have their public place renders — all the more — this book as an insightful tool towards understanding their hidden voices and little known poetic practice.