Bøger i Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction serien

This unique geographic location, with its unpredictable waters, its sinking swamps, its bayous and sloughs, provides a haunting landscape for Glenn Blake's characters.

It is a book that can be in turn frightening and funny, touching and tough-and one that is, on occasion, all these things at once.

They may be sad too, but it is a dry-eyed melancholy that is no relation-or perhaps just a poor relation-to the air of "Danny Boy."

They blend imaginistic detail and reflection and bring to contemporary subjects what Steele calls "the preservative virtues of formal care".

From the author of "Frog", these short stories are about loss: culture, allurement, reliability, continuity, potency, companions, skill, child, parent, footing, prize, collection; as well as the flip-side of loss: imaginative recreation, creative refutation and self-destructive creation.

The author of "Eelgrassand "The Kentucky Storiesnow offers a collection of "mysterious and beautiful(Lee Smith) stories, "as subtle, syntactically graceful, and beautiful as any I've seen(Toby Olson).

Along the way, master poet John Bricuth treats readers to a sly, sarcastic-and sometimes deeply moving-look at storytelling, old-time religion, and the American way.

As much as they ponder, they celebrate in exact, careful, and loving terms the haunting and bracing stimuli from which they originate.

Family pleasures, marriage, the essential moments and mysteries of a seemingly ordinary world that break into magical territory before we can brace ourselves-Jean McGarry puts us in life's rough seas with what the New York Times has called a "deft, comic, and devastatingly precise" hand.

His sharp, bright imagery affirms the unique beauty of our world and explores its invisible mysteries.

Emotionally taut and infused with poetic imagery, Cake is a bold debut and a portrait of the crisis of the modern relationship.

They attain an assurance and stability rare in contemporary poetry, while their careful balance of sadness and joy reminds the reader of the difficult negotiations we make in life.

Renowned for his translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the poems of Catullus, Martin brings the perspective of history to bear on the stuff of contemporary life.