Constructed in two parts, the collection embraces secretly related worlds: the poetics of natural history and artistic discoveries of self-taught folk artists. Throughout, waves from one poem mark the shores of others. In natural history, an edge effect occurs where two communities, such as land and sea, overlap, that zone becoming more diversified than each of them. McPherson explores this effect in nature and art, questioning our notions of inside and outside, center and margin. Profound and moving, she recasts the very premises of formal understanding in poetry, accommodating at once the arts of nature and the nature of art.

SANDRA MCPHERSON is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and the author of twelve books, including The Spaces Between Birds (1996), The God of Indeterminacy (1993), and Streamers (1988). Her book The Year of Our Birth (1978) was nominated for the National Book Award and she has been featured on the Bill Moyers series The Language of Life. She is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

"McPherson is a distinctive stylist and a compassionate voice whose work continues to enrich and reward readers."-Publishers Weekly

"A fascinating, original, rich and appealing work that furthers McPherson's perspicacious examination of the natural world while entering new ground . . . McPherson's language ranges from the scientific to the meditative, her forms from the notational to the elegant and eloquent. This is a masterful and expansive book." -- Alison Deming