"These precise, plain-spoken poems are limned by a subtle music, not to mention a lyric grace that is never overplayed. For in a world as harsh as this one, a world delimited by war, beauty is as appalling as it is necessary. Hugh Martin's great achievement is to remind us of this necessity, and to assert the power of poetry as witness and as solace." --James Harms

"Tight and purposeful as a fable, The List of Dangers gives us sorrows and warnings from a world imbalanced by beasts and little beauties. The images are precise as a child's playroom--keyholes, miniature candelabra, the 'trebly notes' of wrens and gypsies-- but perilous in their tender transformations. Maggie Smith's rich lyric gifts produce here a poetry of balancing composure in the face of peril and pretty chance." --David Baker, author of Midwest Eclogue "In Maggie Smith's The List of Dangers, as in the Brothers Grimm, we learn early how hazardous life is and how eagerly our fate awaits...