BackTalk

In assembling American Poetry Observed: Poets on TheirWorks (Illinois), Joe David Bellamy has done yeoman's labor rescuing 26 interviews with such poets as John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Stanley Kunitz, Adrienne Rich, W.D. Snodgrass and Diane Wakoski from the pages of such small-circulation periodicals as Crazy Horse, Grilled Flowers, Parnassus, The Falcon, Niagara, Puckerbrush Review, Ironwood, etc. The editors of Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary Novelists (Illinois), Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, and Alive and Writing: Interviews With American Authors of the 1980s (Illinois), Tom McCaffery and Sinda Gregory, have done a brilliant job selecting 31 writers, including Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, William Kennedy, Don Delillo, Stanley Elkin and Tim O'Brien, to explore the state of contemporary American writing... The Complete Guide to Writing Nonfiction (Perennial Library), edited by Glen Evans for the American Society of Journalists and Authors, brings together 108 pieces by society members on the hows of successfully creating and selling nonfiction, with an emphasis on the 15 hottest markets...Cooking for a Baby (Penguin) is a welcome addition to the small shelf of books recommending palatable food for infants. Some of Sylvia Hull's recipes sound good enough to appeal to a grown-up...156 activities meant to stimulate, educate and exercise your infant are proposed in You and Your Small Wonder (American Guidance Service, Circle Pines, Minn. 55 014) by Merle B. Karnes...Similarly, Playful Parenting (Avon) by Rose N. Grasselli and Priscilla A. Hegner is a program of physical and mental games for infants and toddlers...Dear Elizabeth Bing, We've Had Our Baby: The Adventure of Birth (Pocket) is an album of parents' accounts of the birth experience...James and Joyce Robertson's A Baby in the Family: Loving and Being Loved (Penguin) is a brief survey, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, of the highlights of an infant's first year...In The Urge to Die: Suicide and Modern Youth (Penguin), Dr. Peter Giovacchini explains how to recognize and cope with suicidal tendencies in teenagers...Clear Understandings: A Guide to Legal Writing (Random House) by Ronald L. Goldfarb and James C. Raymond is a much-needed guide for lawyers to the mysteries of simple English...Write to the Top: Writing for Corporate Success (Random House) is Deborah Dumaine's guide to every kind of business writing, from minutes of meetings and organizational memos to sales reports...Foreign correspondent Gerard Chaliand has gathered together his favorite recipes from around the world, including Africa, the Balkans, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, in Food Without Frontiers (Pluto Press)...Another international cookbook, featuring over 300 meatless recipes, is the handsome Tao of Cooking by Sally Pasley (Ten Speed Press)...Recipes and color photos (including how-tos) are presented in Rose Dosti's Middle Eastern Cooking (HP Books)...Kathy Hoshijo, host of Kathy's Kitchen on PBS, shows how it's done in Kathy Cooks Naturally (Bantam)...Susan Osborn's TheGreat American Guide to Diet and Health (McGraw-Hill) has advice on diet and fitness based on U.S. guidelines...Vegetable Cookery by Lou Seibert Pappas (HP Books) is illustrated with color pictures…The fantasy novel is nearly as old as the novel itself. Pocketbooks has rediscovered an early but accomplished example in John Uri Lloyd's Etidorpha, or The End of the Earth. First published in 1895, it is written with good old-fashioned 19th century gracefulness, but modern readers of fantasy fiction will find it intriguing, especially for its trippy landscapes...Dominic Sicilia's Instant Photo/Instant Art (Price/Stern/Sloan) offers instruction in the of unlikely art of turning SX-70 Polaroid prints into expressionist paintings... Book publishers have been coming up with some interesting challenges to game manufacturers. Cross-Up! (Bantam) by Lydia and Sherman Saiger is the latest, an engaging -- and complicated -- word game for the Scrabble-Boggle set...Despite its sensational title, The Poisons Around Us: Toxic Metals in Food, Air, and Water (Indiana University Press), by Dr. Henry A. Schroeder, is a reasonable look at the effects of minerals on health and disease. The author raises some disturbing questions about the effects of pollution on health...Make-a-Mix Cookery (Bantam) by Karina Eliason, Nevada Harward and Madelein Westover contains recipes for healthful, inexpensive and time-saving homemade mixes...The Chef's Dessert Cookbook (Atheneum) by Dominique D'Ermo is an authoritative guide to 350 classic French sweets...The World of Cheese (Knopf) by Evan Jones contains recipes, lore, shopping tips and an international lexicon...Jeannette Seaver's Soups (Bantam) has recipes from consomme to thick and hardy chowders...Paul Dickson's The Great American Ice Cream Book (Atheneum) is an illustrated commercial history...The least reassuring titles among recent self-impprovement books may be Ain't I a Wonder, And Ain't You a Wonder, Too! (Fawcett) by Jess Lair. Reminds us of the bumpersticker: "I'm Okay, But You're Awful"...The Equal Rights Handbook (Avon) by Riane Tennenhaus Eisler is a brief in support of the constitutional amendment and a handbook for those seeking its passage...Fabric Games (Houghton Mifflin) by Lynn Mayne shows you how to make patchwork parchesi and things like that...Don't forget Improve Your Memory by Francis S. Bellezza, a workbook, and the more academic Absent-Minded: The Psychology of Mental Lapses, Little Slips, and Everyday Errors by James Reason and Klara Mycielska...Dr. Michael Colgan explains how to chart Your Personal Vitamin Profile...Alternative Medicine by Dr. Maesimund B. Panos and Jane Heimlich is a catalogue of natural remedies for every-day ailments and minor injuries...In Goodbye blues: Breaking the tranquilizer habit the natural way, Dr. Bernard Green combines vitamin therapy, exercise and simple meditations to break a tranquilizer dependancy "the natural way"...The Fertility Question is answered by Margaret Nofziger, especially for older women trying to get pregant for the first time...The occasional bellyache, chronic indigestion, constipation, hiccups, halitosis, cirrhosis and Crohn's disease -- all and more are examined in The Great American Stomach Book by Maureen Mylander...Dr. Robert C. Cantu explores the potentially therapeutic relationship between Diabetes and Exercise...

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