Poetry. Now back in print after more than 20 years, Michael Blumenthal's DAYS WE WOULD RATHER KNOW, originally published by Viking-Penguin and sold out in both of its original printings, was one of the most admired, and most influential, books of American poetry of the 1980's, and marked the auspicious continuation of one of the decade's most promising debuts. While different in scope, subject, and style, these seventy poems all body forth a central theme: that - as reality is dissatisfying and satisfaction elusive - hope is in itself an antidote, and possibility is always invigorating. Love is rarely as exciting as the wish for love, writes Blumenthal; DAYS WE WOULD RATHER KNOW suggests that we are as fulfilled, as animated, by our longings as by the resolution of those wishes.

Another wonderful poetry anthology from Garrison Keillor-rooted in the American landscape. Greatness comes in many forms, and as Garrison Keillor demonstrates daily on The Writer's Almanac, the most affecting poems in the canon are in plain English. Third in Keillor's series of anthologies, Good Poems, American Places brings together poems that celebrate the geography and culture that bind us together as a nation. Think of these poems as postcards from the road, by poets who've gotten carried away by a particular place-a town in Kansas, a kitchen window in Nantucket, a Manhattan street, a farm in western Minnesota. Featuring famous poets and brash unknowns alike, the verses in this exhilarating collection prove that the heart can be exalted anywhere in America.