Before her death in 2009, Deborah Digges was composing and revising this, her seventh volume of poetry. Carefully adhering to the notes in Digges's manuscript, her editors made every effort to assemble and present the poems accurately. From "String Game":

the crossing over, or stepping half across
between the sea and fire.
The fire and sea. It doesn’t matter.

While one can detect a sense of liminality in the poems, as in the aforementioned passage, the poems also counter that unrooted space with profound awareness. Later in the same poem, Digges writes:

What woman won't look back

to her two cities burning,
the rooms in which she raised her sons,
the kitchens full, the hours preparing.

The emotional content of these poems is palpable, on the surface; the availability of Digges's experience through this final collection is a gift to her readers and admirers.

This book review originally appeared in American Poets, fall 2010, issue 39.