Small, Rectangular, Reflected World

"When has love ever known / how to follow a map or behave?" J. D. Scrimgeour asks in this riveting collection, which journeys near and far - to the local thrift store, Red Sox game, and neighborhood as well as to Langston Hughes' Harlem, Chinese dissidents laboring in coal mines, and Thoreau petting fish in the Concord River. True to the book's title, these poems offer small rectangular reflections of the world, enabling us to see beyond superficies as we strive to understand and repair some of what we find broken. In the concluding tour de force, "Words, Days, Flames," Scrimgeour riffs from Virgil's Aeneid to examine how we might maintain our humanity in the late days of empire. This is a timely, highly crafted book from a poet tender in his terror and brave in his clear sight.

• Heather Treseler, author of Auguries & Divinations, Hard Bargain, and Parturition