With this new poetry collection, the reader steps into an illustrated emporium filled with interesting finds: along this aisle or that, an assortment of narrative poems and chance insights... over here, beside this bolt of gingham or calico, a potpourri of notions, devotions, curios, and cameos... and there at the back, flanking the vintage stove in the corner, a portrait gallery of unusual characters. It offers intriguing perspective views of everything from small moments in the natural world to the calibration of human identity. Its verses come in a variety of forms, from highly structured traditional ones--like sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, and sestinas--to others on a very loose leash.