Here, in Elizabeth Macklin's second collection, an only child's responses to the fait accompli of childhood--decisions already made, accidents of history and family, patterns preset--come to the adult mind in the presence of change and grief. The mind regroups as it can: "later light on the hills of houses / before us / just as they are, as versus none." "[P]oems of abrupt perception and rigorous lyricism."--New York Times Book Review "I love Elizabeth Macklin's poems."--Thomas Lux "The joy and intelligence in these poems is simply tremendous."--Tomaz Salamun, author of The Four Questions of Melancholy "Mastery as well as mystery, and we are grateful for what we've just been told."--Richard Howard "Macklin the Magician does it again!....dazzling evocations."--Marie Ponsot, author of The Bird Catcher  "[A]n exceedingly wise book--and joyful, too, though the joy is never glib or easy-won..."--Bill McKibben "Elizabeth Macklin talks to me, woman to woman, poet to poet. In listening to her, I am rewarded."--Nina Cassian. Elizabeth Macklin, whose poems have been described by The New Yorker as "graceful and halting, quartzlike in precision," contemplates the grammar of loss.