Earth at Perihelion

The poems in Pamela Hobart Carter's Earth at Perihelion hold luminous visions of "our immense home." Earth itself is a leading character. The deep past-of geology, mythology, and cosmology-returns to the present as music and insight. Creeks mumble in their own language; persons sit among fat marmots. Family intimacies include a mother's love poem to her daughter and an aunt as entranced with polliwogs as the poet is. A wondrous book, a gift.

-Priscilla Long, author of Crossing Over: Poems an...