(New to) Great Regulars: Works of art--film, music, poetry--

can invoke, and sometimes define, an entire era of one's life. Maureen N. McLane's "My Poets" is part memoir, part literary appreciation; it's a meditation on the poems that have intrigued, instructed, fascinated, troubled and sustained her. A poet and critic who teaches at New York University, she has written a book about "what most marked me"--works of poetry that she and many other readers love, by Chaucer, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Emily Dickinson, Shelley and Louise Gluck, among others.

from Troy Jollimore: The Washington Post: 'My Poets,' by Maureen N. McLane

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In a similar way, "The Best Years of Our Lives" weaves together [Stanley] Plumly's recollections of his parents with the plot of that 1946 filmand memories of first seeing it with his grandmother. The poem is a masterpiece about a masterpiece. Indeed, every poem in "Orphan Hours" is masterful, and I hope this collection helps bring Plumly, one of our best poets, the wider attention he has deserved for a long time.

from Troy Jollimore: The Washington Post: Michael Collier, Stanley Plumly, Jane Shore, Lucille Clifton: Great poets of D.C. area

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