In this first collection of poetry, Susan Stenson appears before the reader as a fully realized talent, as someone who has been writing for decades instead of only a few years. Hers is a landscape that runs from the heart of Mazatlan to the damp streets of Dublin. Along the way she pulls us into gardens where infidelity grows wild, into hotel rooms and private schools, up the mountain slopes of Machu Picchu. We meet lucky drunks and dying men, pregnant women who drive taxis. We sit in bars alongside "winter's low paunch of sun," and we listen, because in this book a powerful voice is speaking. - Terence Young