A roundup of recent updates from the world of poetry, including the election of Philip Levine as American Poet Laureate and the response of Syrian poet Adonis to recent unrest in his native country.

Prague Palimpsest is filled with ghostly juxtapositions of memory and place. For its author, Alfred Thomas, Prague is a surface upon which those who pass through have left their trace “without completely effacing the presence of their predecessors.” These may as often be politicians as writers, and the book’s compactly-written chapters do a good job of setting the literature of the city firmly in its historical and political context.