Reader's Digest

Talking into the Ear of Donkey: Poems (W.W. Norton), by Robert Bly

“Bly’s poems explore all the usual stuff of poems—grief, wonder, longing, age, love—but these read with the crisp, lean, no-muss-no-fuss wisdom of someone who has been awake and paying attention for a long time. The slim volume is speckled with deadpan lines, and an entire poem that reads “Don’t be afraid/The great lettuce of the world/ Is all around us.’ ”—Bill Clegg