In Design Theresa Burns repeatedly proves her eye more than "just a muscle that records what it's seeing" as she constructs image after image in poems often informed by memory as well as by the richness of the natural world and all that is subject to erosion and decay, to make sense of the "sweet / but bitter" human experience, of seasons of plenty and seasons of lack. What the poet has managed here is a lively ode to the ordinary, to that which we should love and appreciate because it doesn't last. Finely crafted, richly textured, this is an exciting debut.

-Nathan McClain, Previously Owned

The poems in Design are uncommonly moving, steady, and unafraid to embrace the often-fleeting beauty of the world, even amidst the ugly, or just the everyday. To read Design is to celebrate being, all of ours, and to remember-in our chaotic hour-the grace that words grant us all. Theresa Burns has given us this gift of her perception, so we may further appreciate our own.

-Lynn Melnick, Refusenik