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At the very least, one gets a full sense of her concerns in the volume, which contains a section primarily considering heritage, a section considering marriage, a section considering poetry's whims, and a section concerning death and the blankness it imposes. I initially picked up the book because I was fascinated by its first four poems, all holding or conjuring images of white sheets of paper coming to colorful life in the form of memories or imaginings. As I read, this image reappeared again and again, soon dripping with rain and snaking through the flowers in nearby fields.

Less involving are some of her shorter poems on the art form and her reasons for tackling it--but even these pieces have snowballed so by the fourth section of the book that art becomes a tool of preparing for death, and life before death. Just like Pastan's other examinations, when I really think about it. She is a poet of deep thought of seemingly simple execution; on closer examination, Queen of a Rainy Country is more a collection of twilight thoughts than thrown together poetry.]]>