East of the Moon

Ruth Kramer Baden's poems are witty and with-it, but she is not playing around. These are the poems of a woman who has let wonder ripen into wisdom. Her capacity for empathy, for her earlier selves as well as for others, is rooted in the understanding that life is always a desperate improvisation. "Consider how all that grows/from mud or rock or shadow/ must find a way to live," she writes. With these poems as our guides, we do consider, and our appreciation of our own lives is thereby deepened. - Richard Hoffman