Swimming to Alaska

Lynch's fine poems suggest we're closest to life when also closest to death--a thoughtful message for these times. There is no safety for any of us, the speaker cautions. Yet when the red fox nods to a falling star exploding to dust in the night, we can't help but lift our faces, too, hungry, mouths open like those / of baby starlings. Through these poems we feel our own urgent desire for beauty that surrounds us still. Paula J. Lambert, author of The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing