An examination of kinship and uprootedness, Gathering the Tribes is the first volume of poetry by Carolyn Forche and the 71st volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets The poems in Gathering the Tribes recount experiences from the author's adolescence and young-adult life, closely bound to the natural cycles of the seasons, of generations, of the body's functioning. Many deal with uprootedness-hasty emigrations from Czechoslovakia and Kiev, the loss of grandparents and other elders, people leaving and being sent away. But this poetry is not a sentimental celebration of the goodness of nature and harmony with the world is never something assumed. The harmony Forche seeks goes deeper than simple submission to natural processes or identification with an ethnic group, and it must be fought for with a tenuous faith. The balance that must be found between the ugliness, the harshness of her history-both natural and social-and its intense beauty, is what distinguishes Forche's poetry and gives it its depth and dimension.

Winner of the 1995 National Book Award, Passing Through confirms that the venerable doyen of American poetry is still a poet in his prime."—Atlantic Monthly

Stanley Kunitz, one of the masters of contemporary poetry, presents his ninth collection, gathering a rich selection of his work, including new poems that remind us of his prefatory statement: "Art is the chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence." Nearly all the poems of Kunitz's later years, beginning with The Testing-Tree (1971), are included, and most of the poems in Passing Through are unavailable in any other edition.

In "Touch Me," the last poem in the collection, Kunitz propounds a question, "What makes the engine go?" and gives us his answer: "Desire, desire, desire." These poems fairly hum with the energy, the excitement, the ardor, that make Kunitz one of our most enduring and highly honored poets. In the words of Carolyn Forché, "he is a living treasure."

"One of America's great poets. Most poets dry up at 50. For him to be writing poems at 90 is just incredible."—Mark Strand