Many of the poems in Naming the Stars are about the difficulty of balancing the desires of one self with those of another and the problem of solving the arguments between the body and the soul. The collection's perspective often shifts as the poet wonders how to tell a story that she is not certain she understands even as she lives it, but she finds solace in the sonnet and near-sonnet, giving the volume a recurring shape and a sequential thread. This is Sutphen's third book of poems and it is a change, both in style and subject matter: the poems here are more immediate and...