Linda Gregerson's book of poetry is by far the best book of poetry I've read all year. The passion and delicacy in which she writes is one that I have never seen before. Every word she chooses is harrowing and necessary. I've never read a book of poetry faster and have never finished a book of poetry wanting more poems as I did with Linda's book. A must read.

This poetry is harrowingly beautiful. It is painful to contemplate. It is relentless in its message.

Do not turn away from this book though-you will grow within its boundaries, and you will be sadly wiser. And most of all, you will have lived within a world of finely wrought language. In Gregerson's terms, she has sutured these poems together to yield a whole.

One need only to examine the title of the collection and the titles of the individual poems to know very quickly that the reader had better be prepared to encounter fear and pain and disillusionment: The Bad Physician, Bad Blood, Mother Ruin, Target, Bleedthrough, and on. Even those titles that appear harmless on the surface are tinged with a terrible irony. "Safe" for example, is far from it.

Let's look at this poem more closely to give the flavor of the book-it is unwavering. It is a poem that recounts the murder of a friend by a burglar. It is about the young daughter left behind and in the narrator's care. It is about the inexplicable-death without reason-and our utter lack of safety within this world-the world of man and the world of nature (the world of God is in here as well, but I'm not sure where to place it-but it is present on nearly every page).

The poem has three parts and yields to three lasting images: the repair of the woman's flesh on the operating table (useless, as the poem's dedication makes clear-there is no salvation in these poems); the child who is left, a baby, juxtaposed to the "child" that commits the murder ("And the nineteen-year-old burglar...he must have been harmless once"); and the house that should be mother and daughter's protection from the world (from another poem dealing with political ideology-"This isn't the shelter we thought we'd/bought"). Gregerson's surgeon stitches in part I and in part II the young girl's "miraculous breath//moves into her lungs and, stitch/by mortal/stitch, moves out." And that is beautifully composed, but so heavy with mortality, so heavy with poignancy (the phrase begins with "Friend, her cheek is fresh as hope/of paradise"). That is what you get in all of Gregerson's poems. The ignorance of youth (paradise) that will be quickly displaced by "real" life.

"What is this human desire//for children? They just make a bigger/target/for the anger of the gods." Gregerson's gods are very angry indeed, and vengeful.

And, what must be the poet's nearest truth of the writing self: referring to a child who loves to swing high and dare the devil in every giddy, joyous action, "Some children are like that,/I have one/ myself, no wonder we never leave them alone,//we who have no talent for pleasure/nor use/for the body but after the fact." The even deeper truth we're forced to see here is that that very child, any child, every child will suffer sexual abuse, chemical death, the murder of a parent, the indifference and abuse by "loved ones", and birth defects ("God's wounds").

"The fault's in nature, who will//without system or explanation/make permanent/havoc of little mistakes."

"one night a woman came home to her house/and locked its useless/locks, and buttoned her night dress and read//for a while, and slept till she was wakened."

You wake to death, literally or here, as a reader, become intensely aware of it, or die in your sleep, unaware and "unremarked".

Waterborne: Poems is a unique volume of Linda Gregerson's free-verse poetry written in an open, unfettered style and a unique verse structure that draws the reader into a personal vision daily life and the inner power that transcends ordinary experience. The river is a central theme in these moving, thoughtful, lyrical poems. "...to think that tethered in his crib is all/the safety she can give him. Not kerosene nor/coalstove shall destroy him, yet/there must/have been a fire, he did not freeze."