Poet Susan Ludvigson is the real thing. She is smart enough to keep her ego out of the way (which is the downfall of most poets of the last 50 years). Her swaths of craft are large-writ, like the brush strokes of Van Gogh, but the word paint is well-mixed. No need to look for intricate rhyme schemes here (though they are there), rather look for whole colors whose radiance can best be viewed like a mosaic. Ludvigson is a great poet in this style. Read her and lines will haunt you for days. She is an exquisite beauty. This is one of the finest books of American poetry in the last decade. It should have won a Pulitzer.

Her work makes the feelings of women especially breathe on the page. Anyone who has ever had an interest in Mary Magdalene will imagine her more deeply after reading this book. Few poets would dare to write in the voice of God talking to one of his favorite daughters (Emily Dickinson), but Ludvigson does so successfully, creating a God who is wise, witty and somewhat plaintive, trying to reconcile himself and us to His creation.

Susan Ludvigson is a genius, a daring genius

If you haven't read any of Susan Ludvigson's earlier books of poetry, this would make a great introduction to a wizard of words whose work moves from the mundane to the universal. Whether writing of sex and marriage, light and flight, or the terrors of modern life, Ludvigson is supple, smart and sly.

"The body is a boat gliding / down the river whose fragrance / spins us to the shady places / under apple trees / and into bedrooms" It is the subtle influences--fragrance, music, color, the sound of snow falling, and the gradations of shadow and light--that move us, body, mind, and soul, through Ludvigson's poetry and closer to ourselves: "More and more I see / how everything goes together / There is such grace in this reconciliation." These poems consider the usual fare, places and people, family, friends, and lovers, but are blessed with a kind of grace. For the author, grace is almost accidental,"--like geometry, / where right answers come through paths / we can never retrace," and the reader ends up, after daring leaps and odd connections, back where he or she began. This volume is a gift for those of us who have come to Ludvigson's poetry late, selecting work from six previous collections and throwing in 20 new pieces. Highly recommended.