Can you imagine reading a book in which the hero is a minister who, at the outset of the story, is delivering his final sermon before leaving to commence a prison sentence for having raped one of his teenage parishioners? (He is only able to appear in his church this last time because he has accepted a plea bargain with jail time; thus he is guilty only of a misdemeanor.) Giving the author of Plain Heathen Mischief the benefit of the doubt, I thought I would try a few chapters. After all, the author, Martin Clark, is a Virginia circuit court judge who ought to know something about crime and whose previous novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, not only won several awards but was also selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Thank goodness I did continue for I found this book delightful. Its hero, Joel King, did make a terrible mistake for which he pays by losing not only his church but his family as well. But he struggles back, making further errors as he does—no more rapes, however—eventually working his way into the reader’s heart. Clark is equally good at portraying good and bad characters and both types are very well represented in this story. If you like the novels of Richard Russo and Anne Tyler or the short stories of Alice Munro or Annie Proulx, you’ll enjoy Clark’s writing just as well. I have already ordered his earlier novel.

The California Poem is Eleni Sikelianos’ sprawling, ambitious, artfully messy, multi–media (writing, drawing, photography, collage) attempt to render California—the entire state—in a nearly 200-page poem. So the question stands: Did Sikelianos succeed? As I returned to the book over a two–month period I kept hearing the same voice repeating, “I didn’t think anyone was doing this anymore!” The sheer bravado of undertaking such a daunting artistic project at a time when most poets are content to cobble together 60 pages of publishable poetry is to be applauded. The most immediate reference (what is a poetry review without a reference?) is to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass with his inclusion of each and every person, star, beast, pebble, dream, and passionate flashes of the poet himself, walking the dusty streets of his beloved country. Sikelianos does love her California: I can’t help but imagine her chanting her songs to Whitman across 3,000 miles and 100-plus years of American history. And, as Whitman was often a touchstone in his own poems, it was a pleasure running into the young Eleni throughout The California Poem: the quintessential adolescent poet stealing radios and silver quarters and hanging out with surfer kids at night by the bonfire. Did she succeed? The Book of California comes from a poet of greater breath (and breadth) than you’ll find in a whole New York-full of poetry magazines, creative writing departments and literary receptions. The Book of California is a triumph. The ball is in your court, New York.