The poems of Bain-Marie counter diffusion with distillation, and loss with creation, insisting that any domestic alchemy humans have invented to preserve our vision and experience is a form of art. Subtly, magically, Jordan’s poems make us aware of poetry as the most beguiling domestic alchemy of all, an uncanny medium impregnable with what is otherwise ephemeral: our histories and desires. There’s a wonderful iridescence to the voices Jordan creates. Though longing beats within her speakers like a pulse, they are also alert, analytical, skeptical, and self-aware. For these artists, success is less important than the striving to create, and so they show a fierce, protective tenderness toward the follies of making. Poems that ingather and interweave many planes of time, forms of wisdom, and spiritual practices are ones I most admire; in this book, permeated through and through with lore, ancient and modern alchemies, humor-and humours-I find immense nourishment and delight. - Karen Holmberg