"On strands of light I am hanging poetry like garlands."

These first words of poetry from Nicole Brossard anticipate the vast body of work she has published in the last four decades. The poems in Mobility of Light were chosen by Louise H. Forsyth to elicit a sense of these whirling garlands and convey the intense energy--physical, creative, spiritual, erotic, imaginative, playful, ethical, and political--that has carried Brossard to a uniquely significant vision of the human spirit.

Poems are presented in French and English on facing pages, underscoring the...