This posthumous volume of poetry from Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson explores the suspended state of existence that illness imposes upon its sufferers -- what she calls the "impossible bottle." With a strong will and a self-deprecating awareness of the instinct to seek meaning in metaphor, she confronts the indignities, fears, and moments of grace in a struggle with cancer. Her poems forge unlikely connections between the present reality and memories of the past, such as an MRI scan conjuring up images of a June expedition through a tunnel under a Maryland mountain.

Rooted equally...