Accessible and wry, at times comic, and often mournful, Daniel Anderson's poetry is relentlessly attentive to the splendors of the natural world. But the poems collected here—previously published in such leading literary journals as Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, and Southwest Review—are not relegated simply to the realm of pastoral meditation. They give voice to the sorrowful and sometimes unfortunate things we say and think. They chronicle, with both precision and care, the many ways in which jubilation and lament frequently reverse themselves. Above all else, each poem crystallizes in its wake a freshly minted moment, one that articulates an experience that reaches beyond the poet's own time and place.

Sunflowers drenched in early evening sun; icy blue, explosive waves along the rocky shores of Maine; September cotton "like strange anachronistic snow" in Tennessee—Anderson forges these images into deep ruminations on love, shame, delight, loss, and estrangement.