Terry Hermsen's new book ranges from bicycles to baseball, children to elders, Ohio rivers to the Strait of Magellan, offering "words like stepping stones" that lead us into a world gone deep and strange, redolent with memory, association, and feeling. Hermsen's mindful attention--intense yet delicate--yields crafty, loamy poems in forms from sonnets to shaped poems to riddles. The surprises--of language, imagery, and insight--are many, and the rewards are rich.

--Jeff Gundy, author of Abandoned Homeland