Mercury Hour - Maureen Alsop

In this book-length poem, Alsop writes beautifully distilled stanzas that intertwine passion and grief for the worlds within our world that are disappearing. Amplifying the book's graceful four-line stanzas are Alsop's drawings-moon phases, concentric circles, and astronomical diagrams-that deepen the collection's atmosphere of dream and meditation.

For all its attention to brokenness and counterpoint, Mercury Hour ultimately affirms poetry's power-through dream, trance, and mystical vision-to restore what has vanished.