Lucie Brock-Broido, who borrows her title from the black bluesters of the 1920s, and from the title of Alice Childress' history-making black drama of 1955 (the first Broadway play written by an African-American woman) shares with these black men and women the optimism of feeling that "the sun is gonna shine on my back door someday," even as dozens of gloomy things are called into being by the gorgeous language of her poetry. She is the mistress of Gothic suspense, which comes entangled in her enjambments like Rapunzel the thorns in her hair.

There are many fine poems in this volume, itself a convincing sequel to an earlier book "The Master Letters" which borrowed from Emily Dickinson in much the same way as the present book uses troppes of blackness, suffering and negritude. One of the best is "Morgue Near Heaven," a clever kind of literary form one could call a "pre-elegy." In "Morgue Near Heaven," the elderly poet Stanley Kunitz is given his proper due while he is still with us--though very old of course, and infirm. "I've never really seen/ A death mask of his face,/ /Because, techincally, he's never been/ That way, not yet." The small chill of those final words, "not yet" is worth waiting for, and there are promises to come. "Maybe I'll inherit all the Teutonic sentences/ He knows by heart, or all the same,/ The grammar of the night, the factory/ Of slandering and fame." It's a nice tribute to a distinguished mentor. (Kunitz, of course, wrote "Father and Son" and many other poems of note.)

Like Joe Eszterhas, the author of SHOWGIRLS and FLASHDANCE, the parents of Karsh Kiraly emigrated to the US from Hungary, where a repressive regime had limited their rights to work and practice free thought. Kiraly shares with Joe Eszterhas some of the same beliefs in the goodness of America, a land where you can make as much money and accure as much cultural capital as you possibly can. And Kiraly has had it all. In CHAMPIONSHIP VOLLEYBALL it is like having a coach over your shoulder at all times, a coach who is going to teach you to block, bump, pass and spike step by step, with careful diagrams and a consistent "you can do it" attitude.

Funny to think that a childhood cartwheel, in which he injured his hand badly by thrusting it into a gopher hole, led to a general lengthening of one arm and corresponding flexibility, which saw him in good stead when he became a teen. Kiraly proves over and over that when life hands you (or your parents) a lemon, you can turn around and make the finest lemonade from it.

One handy chart included in both editions of KK's CV is the list of VOLLEYBALL MILESTONES at the end.

Edith Deen packs in a whole passel of learning and yet makes it fun in a scholarly way. The women she cites are drawn from her history-making book ALL THE WOMEN IN THE BIBLE, which pinned down approximately 310 women named and un-named in the Bible. In the WISDOM book, Miss Deen picked about 50 of them, usually the wiser ones but not entirely. Deborah, who is one of my favorites as well as being the inspiration for film star Deborah Kerr's first name, comes off the best.

Speaking of films, I wonder if Miss Deen had any acquaintance with the late Margaret Mitchell, because many of Deen's pithier recaps of Bible heroines might have come right from the pages of GONE WITH THE WIND. The two authors have a lot in common, and I'm sure the people at HarperCollins are happy about that fact. Prospective mothers also might find this book a source of some interesting and neglected names for their blessed events to be.

If you like a Texas twang served up with your theological speculations, this is the book for you. It's a classic in the way that Ann Landers gives good advice--by the ladle-full.

When I was a boy I loved Cornell Woolrich and I'm old enough to remember Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine publishing "For the Rest of her Life" and "New York Blues." I was shocked when he died, straight off the twin triumphs of "The Dark Side of Love" and "Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich." Now as I read the stories Mr. Nevins has collected for "Night and Fear," I'm a little puzzled as to why I loved him so much as a youngster, but out of respect to my memories I give this book five stars. I think frankly the collections CW published while he was alive have a bit more authenticity, even if the biography explains how different editors and publishers chose the arrangement of those books even more than did Woolrich himself. And then again Nevins really wants to sell the "Noir" angle on Woolrich, and thus downplaying the gay pastoral fabulist of something like "Stranglers Serenade" or "The Black Path of Fear." Indeed no one but a gay man could have written the famous "Black Curtain," nor the fragment of a novel that Lawrence Block later completed, "Into the Night." However that's just my two cents and reflects probably my own dark vision as much as anything of Woolrich's.

"Night and Fear" collects a whole bunch of pulp fiction that truly has some serious ups and downs, but when Woolrich is hot (as in "Cigarette" or the aforementioned "New York Blues", he is smoking! Good work to all concerned. I hope there are further collections, for the barrel has been bottomed out yet.

I must add my chorus of praise for Matthew Kennedy, who has given us not only the life of a director with amazing talent, but also a new way of looking at both silent and sound films. Maybe you've heard of Goulding, and certainly you've seen a number of his films, but never before has anyone been abel to put together all the facts, do all the right research, and conduct an amazing number of pertinent interviews to produce such a stunning result.

If Goulding had only directed "Dark Victory" and "Grand Hotel" his place in film history would be assured--and even higher. It's his lesser efforts and indeed misses that have complicated his stature.

Goulding's work in music could be a book all of its own. I had no idea he wrote the music for so many films, including such notable songs as "Love Your Magic Spell is Everywhere" (from The Trespasser), "Mam'selle" (from The Razor's Edge) and "Dodie" (from "Teenage Rebel"). Given all that you'd think he'd be a natural filming a musical, but Kennedy's account of "Friendly Island" a/k/a "Down Among the Sheltering Palms" gives one pause.

Now I'm dying to see "We are Not Alone" and "The Constant Nymph." I've read both novels but are these films on DVD? Sounds like not. Oh well, something to look forward to. Thanks, Matthew Kennedy. You do San Francisco proud!

I saw Bill Clinton once, a driver was taking him down Folsom Street here in San Francisco where he was to dine at a restaurant on our block (Restaurant Lulu). The motorcade was proceeding slowly enough that I could see his face and I knew he was waving right at me. It was extraordinary because up until then, I didn't believe the type about Clinton's "charisma." But after that, I was a believer.

I believe that charisma works both ways and it could turn people off, and certainly there are many Americans who despise Clinton and everything he stands for, to a degree unprecedented in history. I think that even Hitler had fewer haters. Reading "My Life" isn't the same dynamic experience as laying eyes on Clinton, but for some it will arouse the same vociferous passion, and they will find the lie on every page. For me, I wish the book was a little livelier, and that the hand of the "editors" wasn't all over the place, puffing and fluffing down the prose style into mealy-mouthed Southern platitudes, but that is what makes political memoirs in our day. Bill Clinton was run out of office by a mob and by his own unruly member, but those of us who were proud to have him as our President will enjoy this book and will yearn for the days when he ruled the world.

That New York's Akashic Books has had the wisdom to publish these stories by Derek McCormack is a happy gift to US readers. He has been a national treasure of Canada for some years, and now he can be ours as well. The stories are sharply told, fables crafted to within an inch of their lives by a stylist so obsessive he reminds me of one of those crotchety perfectionists who builds the London Bridge out of toothpicks over sixty years. At least it's a bridge.

At any rate, McCormack's writing is so precise it burns a hole right through you. These little sentences, pared down to stilettos that pierce the heart.

When I compile a short list of the writers whose work means most to me, he's usually on the list someplace. The stories in "Wish Book" are uniformly nasty but varied otherwise in tone, intention, mood. The older stories, from "Dark Rides," have I think a bit more melancholy and a different conception of formal experiment. Which you will prefer depends on your mood. As the French say, especially in Canada, "c'est bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet" (half a dozen of one, six of the other). I wish Amazon gave out more stars than 5. Let's see.

Why is Ann Patchett being criticized for wanting to make money out of her friendship with the late Lucy Grealy? It isn't hard to believe that Lucy had a lot of secrets, she hinted as much in her own autobiography, and if after her death Ann Patchett chooses to spill all of them, Lucy can no longer be hurt. It isn't as if Ann had published this book while Lucy was still alive. As for her decision to keep all the money herself, well, most writers get to keep whatever money they make. They are not guilt tripped into having to donate large sums to cancer organizations. Ann should not have to forfeit all respect or credibility just because she is keeping the money she earned with her book. And who knows, maybe she is making a private donation, the way Frank Sinatra is said to have kept all his charitable donations a secret. Let us assume that Ann's own conscience is clear about her moral position in writing and publishing (and profiting from) this memoir, and then we can start at ground zero to begin assessing if "Truth & Beauty: A Friednship" is or is not a good book.

Erik Braun's book is a labor of love, and he has actually spent some time with the retired screen goddess. He gives us priceless glimpses of the films that never got made, as well as a knowing eye at the ones that did. For an Englishman, his takes on US pop culture are well-researched and never get in the way of his critical insights.

His comments on Marty Melcher, the bete noire of the Day story, are remarkably even-tempered, and his take on Day's practice of Christian Science ditto. He's got an opinion on everything, but he's agreeable enough to make you wish the book was twice as long as it is.

The comical thing is that in every paragraph, Braun somehow makes a British connection whenever possible; sometimes it seems like he's pulling them out of his arse as he goes along. Who would have guessed that Doris, the all-American girl, had less than six degrees of separation to so many UK institutions? She starred with British born Cary Grant in THAT TOUCH OF MINK, Rex Harrison in MIDNIGHT LACE and with Richard Harris in CAPRICE. (Harris, mysteriously, refused to speak to Braun without a signed release from Doris Day.) The sequences of the Hitchcock film, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, that were filmed in London, get special attention here. Erix Braun compares Doris Day to the British musical comedy stars Jessie Matthews, Gracie Fields and Gertrude Lawrence. And a host of character actors from England made appearances in Doris' films, from Terry-Thomas to Reginald Gardiner.

Who was the co-star with whom Doris later fell in love and had an affair during her TV years? In her own memoir Doris refused to identify him, for he was a married man then. Braun preserves his anonymity, though a fancy bit of writing suggests, then denies, that he is thinking of Kirk Douglas for the part. I wonder!

Geoffrey Block knows everything there is to know about Rodgers, but frustratingly this book is arranged on the lines of a patchwork quilt; if you're looking for something on a particular show (say FLOWER DRUM SONG) you're wasting your time here. Perhaps to see Rodgers through fresh eyes, Block narrows down his focus and his individual chapters pick up on very rarefied aspects of Rodgers' career. If there is just about nothing on FLOWER DRUM SONG or THE SOUND OF MUSIC, you'll find a learned monograph on the three versions of the TV project CINDERELLA. The learning's worn lightly and the writing is everywhere vivid and provocative.

As in his previous book THE RICHARD RODGERS READER, Block attempts a giant salvage operation, making a serious case for the worthwhileness, indeed the greatness, of Rodgers' final five musicals. I don't know if anyone will be convinced that TWO BY TWO or REX are great works of musical theater, but it's entertaining, just as a dip into the Bacon-wrote-Shakespeare camp might be. This is a book that will start a hundred arguments among lovers of Richard Rodgers, and there's nothing wrong with that.