Notable

By Colette Bancroft
Published April 6, 2008

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Wonderful words

April is National Poetry Month, and here are three fresh new books of poems.

Fidelity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) by Grace Paley, who died last year after a career as a brilliant writer of fiction, offers well-wrought poems that read like micro short stories.

God Particles (Houghton Mifflin) by Thomas Lux is a collection of the Georgia poet's engaging, beautifully crafted works about the mysteries of the quotidian: mice, surgery, Jesus' baby teeth.

Old War (Houghton Mifflin) by Alan Shapiro gathers poems in many forms and styles, their speakers ranging from a little girl on a swing to a standup comic in heaven, their subjects from night-blooming flowers to Abu Ghraib photos.

Colette Bancroft, Times book editor