Traveling from her pastoral America to Neruda’s Chile and the Ireland of St. Kevin, Elizabeth Breese sings the lonely-wild lyric of ditch flowers and raw honey, tornados and radios, broken birds and sailors lost at sea. Her ars poetica: “little bee hand in pocket editions, the rough- / cut paper combs, dancing for the things it loves.‘ -Harryette Mullen As with Dickinson and Stevens, to understand an Elizabeth Breese poem is beside the point; one apprehends it, the way one does a scent or strain of music. Roving, impure, funny, brainy, and passionate, hers is work I want to keep beside me for the good company and generous pleasures it offers line by gorgeous line. -Kathy Fagan