Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

Once there was a city where everyone had the gift of song.” The View From the Seventh Layer (Pantheon Books, March 2008) by Kevin Brockmeier. Fourth book, second story collection. Agent: Jennifer Carlson. Editor: Edward Kastenmeier. Publicist: Katie Freeman.

“Entertainment has a bad name.” Maps and Legends: Essays on Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands (McSweeney’s Books, April 2008) by Michael Chabon. Ninth book, first essay collection. Agent: Mary Evans. Editors: Eli Horowitz, Jordan Bass. Publicist: Angela Petrella.

“After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” The Well and the Mine (Hawthorne Books, March 2008) by Gin Phillips. First book, novel. Agent: None. Editor: Kate Sage. Publicist: Adam O’Connor Rodriguez.

“In New York, they saved.” All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking, April 2008) by Keith Gessen. First book, novel. Agent: David Gernert. Editor: Joshua Kendall. Publicist: Sonya Cheuse.

“I get lost in their story.” Envelope of Night: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1966–1990 (Nightboat Books, April 2008) by Michael Burkard. Ninth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editors: Kazim Ali, Christina Davis. Publicist: Stephen Motika.

“Consider certain emotions such as falling asleep, I said, // (especially when one is standing on one’s feet), as being similar / to fear, or anger, or fainting.” It’s Go in Horizontal: Selected Poems, 1974–2006 (University of California Press, April 2008) by Leslie Scalapino. Twenty-eighth book, fifteenth poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Rachel Berchten. Publicist: Lorraine Weston.

“Ah, waking!—my soul filled with hope! on this, my first on the fabled Light-House at Viña de Mar—I am thrilled to make my first entry into my Diary as agreed upon with my patron Dr. Betram Shaw.” Wild Nights! Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway (Ecco, April 2008) by Joyce Carol Oates. One hundred and twelfth book, thirty-first story collection. Agent: Warren Frazier. Editor: Daniel Halpern. Publicist: Michael McKenzie.

“Liffey, tawny and asleep in the browsing dusk, / Clings to the dark, enchanted ovals / Of the bridge.” New Collected Poems (Norton, March 2008) by Eavan Boland. Tenth book, ninth poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Jill Bialosky. Publicist: Vanessa Hope Schneider.

“As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day.” I Was Told There’d Be Cake (Riverhead Books, April 2008) by Sloane Crosley. First book, essay collection. Agent: Denise Shannon. Editor: Sean McDonald. Publicist: Melissa Broder.

“Because the pact beneath ordinary life (If you / give me enough money, you can continue to fuck me—) // induces in each person you have ever known / panic and envy before the abyss, // what you come from is craziness, what your / mother and her mother come from is // craziness, panic of the animal / smelling what you have in store for it.” Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2008) by Frank Bidart. Eighth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Jonathan Galassi. Publicist: Stephen Weil.

“I returned to you years later, / gray and lovely city, / unchanging city / buried in the waters of the past.” Eternal Enemies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2008) by Adam Zagajewski. Seventeenth book, fourteenth poetry collection. Translator: Clare Cavanagh. Agent: None. Editor: Jonathan Galassi. Publicist: Alyson Sinclair.

“‘The old man won’t be placated.’” Fall of Frost (Viking, March 2008) by Brian Hall. Seventh book, fourth novel. Agent: Sarah Chalfant. Editor: Paul Slovak. Publicist: Holly Watson.