One of the central poems of Wilkerson’s attractive first book, Threading Stone, unravels the title’s mystery, as the Greek hero Theseus is challenged to follow the thread (the gift of Ariadne) through the great stone labyrinth at Knossos. Even for Theseus, this is much harder than it first appears; not only is there the monstrous Minotaur, but the very act of “threading the stone”—through using language, through creating narrative—is called into question by this book’s “rhizomic world” where every thread appears to lead in multiple directions.

In a time when perhaps too few poets are willing to explore the ontological rift between language and meaning, discovering Alan May’s book Dead Letters is an occasion both for a new mode of celebration and some old-fashioned investigation of the poetic project itself. This daring collection—by turns experimental and surreal, meditative and poignant—is indeed a powerfully imagined and, finally, astonishing achievement.

Strewn with frequent sonnets and the occasional villanelle—as well as historical, literary, and personal reflections—Mary Carol Moran’s Equivocal Blessings delves into the penance we all must pay to the loved, the lost, the dead, and the remembered. Divided into three sections—“Clearing,” “Breathe With Me,” and “Strong Bones”—Equivocal Blessings features diverse approaches and narrative themes....

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

At once the recognizable inscription marking the entrance gate of hell in the Inferno, Dante’s warning is equally appropriate for the apocalyptic vision of America depicted in James Braziel’s haunting new novel Snakeskin Road. Set in 2044, Braziel’s dystopian world is plagued by government corruption, and the southern United States—or more appropriately, what’s left of it—is ravaged by harsh, inhospitable deserts created by gaping holes in the earth’s ozone layer.

The poems in Dennis Sampson’s Within the Shadow of a Man often address big questions such as evil and injustice, as a few random titles might suggest: "Mysteries," "Naming the World," "Brotherly Love," and "Concerning the Suffering of Others.” These poems are more often interested in ideas than in things. And fittingly, the poems are structurally capacious, usually having long lines and sometimes running to four or five pages.