Transcendence can come in many forms. For Mary Rose O'Reilley a year tending sheep seemed a way to seek a spirituality based not on "climbing out of the body" but rather on existing fully in the world, at least if she could overlook some of its earthier aspects. The Barn at the End of the World follows O'Reilley in her sometimes funny, sometimes moving quest. Though small in stature, she learns to "flip" very large sheep and help them lamb. She also visits a Buddhist monastery in France, where she studies the practice of Mahayana Buddhism, dividing her spare time between meditation and...

In her new collection, Earth, Mercy, Mary Rose O'Reilley sifts through the debris of human habitation-pink thong sandals, curlers, broken televisions-looking for a kind of junkyard grace: "Holiness enters again / turquoise fins, and the Cessna's carapace / lifts on its wind." The first poem, "Genesis," locates the reader in Edenic time, "in that humid and green / arrival," while the last, "Watching the End of the World from Hovland, Minnesota," gives nature a final word: "Morels on goat prairie gloat / in their blue light. Spruce / speaking of green on green." Between these points, any poem...