After her near-fatal accident, chronicled in her remarkable memoir, Inside the Halo and Beyond, Maxine Kumin feared that poetry might have "deserted" her. This luminous, reflective collection proves her wrong, and it is a special cause for celebration. Themes of loyalty, longevity, and recovery appear here, and in a series of poems Kumin finds inspiration in addressing other poets, especially the eminent dead: "Skinnydipping with Wordsworth," "Imagining Marianne Moore in a Butterfly Garden," "Rilke Revisited." Especially intimate and poignant are poems about Anne Sexton, "Three Dreams After a Suicide." Finally, nature, both directly and metaphorically, continues to engage Kumin. "Inescapably," she says, "many poems come up out of the earth I live on and tend to."

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