Realm of the Possible

At one level, these poems provide the rich, patient narrative of a tapestry: Here is a woman weeping on the subway. Here are jeans hanging in the light and air of a foreign city. Here are chairs, coffee-cups, fountains, and roasted almonds. But the strength of this book is that, in poem after poem, the tapestry changes to a living, hurtful theatre: the poems keep breaking their won elegant surface to reveal the shadows of loss and memory and fear. These fine poems pull the reader in–enchanting disturbing, and consoling, all at the same time. (Eavan Boland)