Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick’s second major poetry collection is a cat’s cradle of startling imagistic leaps and quiet meditations. Burdick sets her lateral gaze on small-town news stories, banal occurrences, and the tiny things of a semi-rural life. In the tradition of John Ashbery or Lorine Niedecker, her cubist portraits and landscapes are imbued with a joyous wordplay, even when the poems are heartbreaking. Each Burdick poem N whether it’s five lines or five pages N is a journey of surprise, bewilderment, and perhaps even revelation.