Pat Owen is that rare poet who witnesses the divine in actually-lived lives–in wrinkles and cafes, otters and baseball, vulvas and ferns. Here is a music as attentive and tender as the practitioner’s Zazen-breath, and like the Zazen master, here is a tenderness that is hard, sharp, quick. Set in the dangerous ecosystem of suburbia, that anesthetizing place, Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive offers the reader a striking wake-up alarm for the heart. –Rebecca Gayle Howell