Horses where the answers should have been

Twichell's first retrospective collection gathers poems from six previous books and adds nearly a book's worth of new poems, all in an accessible, plainspoken style of mostly free verse that renders poems as crystal clear as they are deep. Again and again, Twichell confronts the fact of loss and the transitory nature of life with acceptance and a melancholy hope spurred by close attention paid to the natural world: "Creatures are born from atoms, from air, / parentless, and drift like satellites/ out of a snowy tree," reads one early poem. One of Twichell's greatest skills is to depict nature as transcendent without making it seem anything but plainly natural, if mysterious: "Gravity draws down to me a halo/ whipped up of holy dust// or dust from outer space." Many poems also reflect Buddhist attitudes, reasons, perhaps, for their deep calm and acceptance. "Now when I can't sleep/ I say as a prayer/ the names of all the little brooks," she says. The new poems confront mortality with the same willingness: "A door blew open, and a black river/ flowed into my house."--Publishers Weekly.