50°

Fitzgerald has lived in Alaska since 1980. This collection of sixty-seven poems represents work drawn from a lifetime of experiences in the Midwest and Alaska. It is arranged chronologically, beginning with a poem about childhood set in Michigan in 1944 and continuing through "Mother Marries at Seventy-Three." "Solace," an elegy for a granddaughter, is perfection in its sparseness.

Fitzgerald really gets rolling in poems like "Jack + Judy," where similes pile up like sourdough flapjacks on a breakfast plate. She is as enviably comfortable writing about tending bar as she is writing about gardening.

Most of these poems are in free verse form, although the book closes with a sonnet and Fitzgerald shows she can render musical lines with such deceptively simple works as "June":

Solstice runs toward us,

Her feet and shoulders bare,

The smoke of wildfire tangled

In her golden hair.

She runs a steady circle,

I bend and crawl and lean,

Making up the garden,

Holding close the green.

Some of the poems in this collection previously appeared in "The Ester Republic," "Prairie Schooner," and "Seven Signs." The collection could have been a little stronger if some of the weaker poems, like "Teeth," had been weeded out of the bed. Overall, however, it works well - down to the visual pun afforded by the frosted wedge of chocolate cake on the front cover in contrast to the plate of crumbs on the back.