Finalist for the National Book Award

The mind in apperception is Swensen’s point zero. Readers will rejoice in Swensen’s blazing, molten effects.—Michael Robbins, Boston Review

But while the poems contain facts ("In the early 18th century, London hung some 15,000 lamps"), they are not, as has been suggested, arrangements of found materials. As Swensen relates in a recent interview, she does not "take other texts and collage or mix them"; rather, her method is to read and to write "in response to words that stand out on the page." Any facts the poems contain are diving boards for pools of rhyme and pun, distortion and song…—Erik Anderson, Rain Taxi

Swensen's lyrics, which, with elliptical phrasing and play between visual and aural, change the act of seeing—and reading—offering glimpses of the spirit (or ghost) that enters a poem where the rational process breaks down.—Overdrive

Link to the book