In It was a terrible cloud at twilight, Alessandra Lynch reflects on personal, social, moral, and historical terror. These ambitious, imagistic poems move through subjects of violence and loss that are both deeply personal and elegantly public. The elegiac poems in the final section are dedicated to the poet's friend, author Lucy Grealy, whose plight might also be said to embody terror. Lynch's poems are tactile and visual, coining wordsand phrases in surprising ways. They engage in intimate conversations that are both dark and whimsical. Selected by James Richardson from a field of more...