Contemporary best-sellers this week

By Harriet Staff

If we experienced a dearth of first-time appearances on last week’s contemporary best-seller list, we make up for it with eight titles making their debut this week. francine j. harris’s first full-length collection allegiance rises to the top of the list. According to her publisher, “allegiance is about Detroit, sort of. Although many of the poems are inspired by and dwell in the spaces of the city, this collection does not revel in any of the cliché cultural tropes normally associated with Detroit. Instead, these poems artfully explore life in a city where order coexists with chaos and much is lost in social and physical breakdown.” Of note is Rebecca Lindenberg’s Love, an Index, which has the distinction of racking up the most “firsts” for the week. It is Lindenberg’s debut collection, making its first appearance on the contemporary best-seller list at #19, and the first collection from the much-anticipated McSweeney’s Poetry Series. Finally, Alice Notley, the veteran poet whose books always seem to be a “first,” comes in at #20 with Songs and Stories of the Ghouls.

Posted in Uncategorized on Friday, March 16th, 2012 by Harriet Staff.