The Atlantic Tunnel by Paul Farley (Faber and Faber, $25). A selection of poems by one of the most exciting of the early-career (i.e. younger) English poets. A writer who brings danger to what he describes in the title of one piece as “Big Safe Themes,” Farley ranges effortlessly from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (the 1980s synth-pop hit makers) to Google Earth.
Evening’s Empire by Bill Flanagan (Simon and Schuster, $15). “I dreamed I was flying all over the planet, like an angel on Google Earth,” rhapsodizes the protagonist of Bill Flanagan’s hilarious novel. Given his career as an MTV executive, Flanagan is perfectly positioned to bring the whiff of reality to this saga of Emerson Cutler and his dutifully dysfunctional band, the Ravons, told from the point of view of their legal manager.
When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus (PublicAffairs, $23). In his analysis of a series of songs by the Belfast-born troubadour, Greil Marcus describes Morrison as “a bad-tempered, self-contradictory individual whose work is about freedom. How do you get it? What do you do with it?” Enthralling.
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—Paul Muldoon's new poetry collection, Maggot, has just been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author also wrote Moy Sand and Gravel.
