Eschewing irony for direct statement, the poems in Tod Marshall's first collection imagistically, musically, and passionately articulate a faith in human transcendence. From the mud of our formation ("Choir") to the dust of our dying ("After Kandinsky"), Marshall's poems lyrically obsess over how the broken and violated can envision and speak a heaven of which we know.

Three long poems that shape the book are formative in this process. From the structured order of Bach's Goldberg Variations looming behind the opening poem, "Eclipse," to the clash of pagan beauty and traditional...