Thomas Reiter's new book of poems demonstrates faith in the ability of the human voice to shape memory -- its powers and boundaries, freedoms and limitations -- into enduring form. A variety of speakers and locales flourish on these pages, including invented, historical, contemporary, and familial figures, and settings in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, West Virginia coal mines and Idaho silver mines, prairies, Mississippi River Valley, and islands of the Caribbean. The voices herein, many of them marginalized, passionately define themselves in the face of elemental forces as well as a...

Thomas Reiter's Catchment abounds with stories brought to life. From memory, myth, and imagination comes a faith in the power of poetry to bear witness. Here we find a variety of personae engaged in dutiful labor ranging from gardening to tomb repair. The lore of occupations centers these narratives and dramatic lyrics, and the texts range widely in time and place, with settings in the Caribbean islands, with their colonial and postcolonial realities, their multiform history, culture, and topography; the Midwest of the pioneer era as well as of the poet's own childhood; and the New Jersey...