The Descent: Poems

"Black's poems, in their measured grace, have a quiet intensity, animated by her passion for a clarity of understanding, in the art as in the life."-Stanley Kunitz

I have not handled the ordinary well

And wandered into much time spent

Taking on the unfaithful,

Blunder and flaw. --from "Heaven, Which Is"

Sophie Cabot Black's anticipated follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Misunderstanding of Nature, describes a restless spirit at the crossroads of love and damage, rapture and disenchantmen...