As a hummingbird beats its wings so that it might be still to feed on a flower the poet concludes, The equation keeps balancing out, and / I m drawn to how it does not settle. Aware of the difficulty of loving the world while feeding upon it, the poems of "Dwelling Song" hope vision is levity as they press language to make sight and song. This writing is a form of mimicry yet an act of dangerous flight. Whether from the voice of a hunter, shepherd, farmer, or bugle-blowing boy on a city street, the song recognizes that moving forward necessitates turning one s back."

In Jennifer K. Dick's first book, "Fluorescence," very real places--Paris, Massachusetts, Colorado, Iowa, Morocco--mix into the imagined, into Breughelian villages where there's "a persimmon in the corner knitting." These places are inhabited by varied but always very real bodies, stretching outward from their own edges and encountering, or engendering, a certain luminescence in the process. What happens when we exceed ourselves? When fragments of dream are lifted to the surface and through to something beyond? Clues, keys, indications--all that once seemed certain slips off into code. These...