Stone Milk

Anne Stevenson's highly engaging new collection opens with A Lament for the Makers, an experimental sequence based on medieval dream poetry that plays with a Dante-inspired yet modern, scientific vision of an underworld of poets. This is followed by a series of shorter poems, mostly related to ageing and the prospect (even the comfort) of dying. The Myth of Medea ends the book on a note both stoic and merry, despite its frank look at the reality of death. ""Three 'dedications' laud and celebrate living peers, and a satirically feminist take on Euripides' Medea concludes. Everything sings, with or without rhyme and in many emotional keys."" Booklist