Brown discusses his literary touchstones, the best advice he's ever received, and the importance of discipline.

The list of the ten best titles of 2018 includes How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee, Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, and The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson.

In the New Yorker, Chiasson writes of Plath's letter to her former psychiatrist. He notes that "as her letters, more than any other documents, reveal, Plath monitored life from behind a façade of chipper enthusiasm. Her genius took shape hidden by this screen." 

"He has a good memory, but a better imagination," the reviewer writes of Hayes, "and that allows him to imagine a better future, despite what he remembers of the past." The piece praises the strength of the language used in the collection.

Hayes and Smith are the two Americans on the shortlist, whose collections Chair Sinéad Morrissey said "offer an invigorated language, confident mastery of form, and fresh, sophisticated perspectives on our uncertain times." 

"I think the mind is more flexible and responsive to a word’s textures and potential when you can step away from monolingualism," muses Kane in an interview about the Inupiaq community, myth, and what makes a poem seem personal.

The New York Times calls Wray's new novel, about a Californian teen girl who becomes embroiled in the frontlines of war in Afghanistan, " a significant literary performance."

In the Kenyon Review, Sherwin Bitsui shares two poems from his new collection. "Bluing under a dimming North Star,/ the Reservation’s ghost/ paws cartilage pincered from a digital cloud," he writes.

"If you ask me, I’ll say no, Thank you, I don’t need to watch what goes/ Only imagining itself seen," writes Jericho Brown, in a poem published by The New Republic. 

On Poets.org, Major Jackson writes about poet Ai's "dedication to both her aesthetic and ethical vision," and how she inspired a generation of poets.