Robin McGrath's poetry is alive with the rhythms of speech and storytelling. Her work sings, shouts, cries. A wry humour escapes from almost every corner of the book, whose themes of community, loss and anger never fail by moralizing or sliding into the dotage of self-helpism. Arranged in four parts, these poems travel from Newfoundland meadows and the delights of rural living, to experiences and memories of the Canadian arctic. They then move to Jerusalem and to a portrait of the Jewish faith and circle back to examine domestic life with poems on home and marriage.