During the 1980s, the piers buildings below 14th Street along the Hudson were demolished, one by one. With this destruction, a fertile ground for creativity vanished, not to mention wall paintings by the likes of Wojnarowicz and Tava, preserved now only in photographs. Pier Groups itself is a marvelous work of preservation, revealing this world and the artists who found those spaces so crucial to their artistic expression.

The novel’s title comes from the title of one of Vuong’s poems. In that poem, he writes: “Say yes. Say yes/ anyway.” Likewise here, in his astonishing love letter to life, Vuong affirms again and again that “the heart’s task of saying yes yes yes.” Anyway. No matter what.

IN WORLD CITIZEN, author David S. Wills conservatively estimates that Ginsberg visited as many as 66 countries in his lifetime. Using the poets letters, poems, travel diaries, and journals, Wills concludes that travel played a crucial role in Ginsberg’s discovery of his creativity and poetic voice.

Joanna Russ, by Gwyneth Jones, is the most recent entry in the University of Illinois Press’s “Modern Masters of Science Fiction” series.