Lit from Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books

by Anne Marie Macari (Editor), Carey Salerno (Editor)

"Forty years old and flourishing—a remarkable record for a small nonprofit press—Alice James Books deserves praise and admiration."—Maxine Kumin

A compilation of archival materials accompanies this collection of forty years of Alice James Books poetry. Nearly 150 authors are represented in chronological order. Maxine Kumin states, "the list of authors is remarkable for its breadth, variety, and passion. The assortment is idiosyncratic, the range of voices and styles embraces the familiar personal narrative voice and the innovative." Contributors include Jane Kenyon, Fanny Howe, Forrest Gander, Jean Valentine, B.H. Fairchild, Matthea Harvey, Brian Turner, and Cole Swensen.

Anne Marie Macari's most recent book She Heads into the Wilderness was published in 2008 by Autumn House Press. She is also the author of Gloryland (Alice James Books, 2005), and Ivory Cradle, which won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize in 2000. Macari founded and teaches in the low-residency MFA program in poetry and poetry in translation at Drew University.

Carey Salerno is the executive director of Alice James Books. She earned an MFA in poetry from New England College and teaches in the BFA program at the University of Maine at Farmington. Her first poetry collection, Shelter, won a 2007 Kinereth Gensler Award and was published in 2009.

Former US Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin, winner of the Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly prizes, is the author of Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990–2010 (W. W. Norton & Company), her seventeenth volume, which won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2013

About the author

Anne Marie Macari is an American poet. Her most recent book is She Heads Into the Wilderness. Her first book won The APR/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry.

Reviews

[Aseem Kaul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fond as I am of Alice James Books, who have published some wonderful poets over the years - Jean Valentine, Fanny Howe, Donald Revell - I found this anthology disappointing. In trying to cover 40 years of publishing without (apparently) leaving anyone out, the editors have put together a book that is less an anthology and more an expanded catalog with excerpts. Most poets included here get a single poem, generally about a page in length, which even by the low standards of anthologies more generally is much too superficial a sampling to allow the reader to form any impression of the poet's work. That a handful of poets manage to grab your attention with that one page, leaving you with a desire to read more of their work is a testament to their talent, and the reason this would have been a much better anthology if the editors had exercised more judgment.

[Tracie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspiring collection of voices.