In her poem "Boardwalk," Sara Robinson describes, with her usual visual acuity and meditative suppleness, citizens of her beloved Elkton, Virginia, who are "keepers / of voices who sing of things they are / and things they are not." What is true of her generously imagined townspeople is true of Robinson herself. In this debut volume, she sings of what she is--keen historian of particular people in a particular place, a little girl growing up into visionary adulthood, sympathetic friend and family member, attentive observer of local flora and fauna, both animal and human--and of what she is...