Joan Cusack Handler writes of the body's unapologetic continuing and its admirable chug-along soul with a largesse that volleys between tender and roaring. Her lines blow wide, her metaphors tree-tall as she roots the whole oaken structure in her signature loamy sexuality-branches, fruit, trunk, every seed sacred. In fact, nothing and everything is shockingly holy to this poet as she re-visions rage and pain and their tenable/tenuous links to redemption in the traditions of both C. S. Lewis and her own contemporary, Molly Peacock. Handler's is the transgression of a woman febrile with discovery. She renders the psychological spiritual and back again. There have been few writers who have dared this kind of generosity, whose life and work have been seamless and, in a very real way, terrifying. But few, I think, have confronted Spirit with such fervent audacity and won.

--Maureen Seaton

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