Winner of the l996 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by William Matthews.

"This collection of beguiling poems . . . takes as its avenue into experience the palpable, quotidian objects of the intimate environment. A barometer, an arrangement of flowers, a vase, a carpet, a pyramid of oranges in a city marketplace are seen and then entered as one might enter the action of a film. . . . There is something of the child's wondrous way of seeing the world that electrifies." Boston Globe "Jeanne Beaumont's poems are smart and full of feeling, heartbreakingly in love with the snares and clarities of the language she writes in, and lit throughout by a kind of wry wonder." William Matthews "How rare to discover so sly and disarming, so luminous and compelling a debut." David St. John"