Halpern, who founded Ecco Press and co-founded the literary magazine Atreus with Paul Bowles in Morocco, finds meaning in memory and detail of the past, such as a long-gone game of catch in the San ...

Forbes’ strongest collection is The Stunned Mullet (1988). The book was funded by the Australian bicentennial authority. The celebrations marking 200 years of European “settlement” were controversial.

While ancient Greek bards were revered, melodic keepers of memory, Benjamin West’s The Bard (1778) gives us something far fiercer: the last Welsh poet hurling a mountain-top curse at an invading king.