[close] Sandra Alcosser's third book of poetry, a National Poetry Series winner selected by Eamon Grennan, rewards you with a walk through nature's mysteries and beauty--and the maze of human nature. Like nature, the climate of the poems is not always comfortable, but the language is exquisite and clear.

One of Alcosser's frequent themes is the cost of courage. In "Card Game Blind River," the speaker braves alligator gar and other swamp denizens to make camp. But when rattlesnakes awaken in the cabin's attic, she must steel herself so that her companions won't "hear the high 'e' of my mind." In the prose poem "A Warrior's Tale," Rachel, who is at a party, suffers through listening to the story of a young woman's rape and survival, all the while recalling her own assault. She breaks down, but only "in another room so that the men could not see her."

Spirituality waits in abundance in the natural world. The poem "The Anatomy of Air" explains, "when the world is too sharp / I walk toward the canyon" where "wind slicks back the needles" and sadness dissipates, "duffled, / by the palpitating air." In "Flame," a husband leaves his wife for a winter, after cutting and cording "the most resonant pines of our life" to keep her warm and to keep him on her mind. In his absence, "they would be / his bolt of news unfurling, my face flushed red / and red again by the hot inquiring tongues." Except by Nature invites you to return to its poems again and again. --Susan Swartwout