Spokes of Dream or Bird

Poetry. In Patricia Nelson's poems, language is a vessel--sometimes a jeweled container to catch the ineffable, to harness or restrain its power like a djinni; sometimes a boat on the vast sea-surface, catching the winds of exhilarated flight or foundering in storms. This is the vessel with which the poet sets out, and we, her readers, are along for the journey. Through ancient Celtic forests, Dante's landscape of the damned, and the garden of wordless, singing light from which our consciousness exiles us, Nelson's poems offer a riddling map home--a way to reach one another, to counter the loneliness of our human being.--Terry Ehret