Come, Thief

Early in her career, National Book Critics Award finalist Hirshfield (Given Sugar, Given Salt) became interested in Japanese literature. One can see this influence in her latest work, a collection of generally short nature poems with an epiphany in which the poet manages to get to the heart of an experience. The best of the poems examine the complex and often metaphysical relationships between the poet and her surroundings. In Zenlike tones, they notice telling details as experienced in ordinary moments that nevertheless seem connected to the transcendent. Take "The Supple Deer," for instance: the narrator watches deer gracefully jumping through an opening in the fence, noting in an especially resonate metaphor how the deer seem to pour like an arc of water. The poem ends wistfully as the poet wishes to be as "porous" as the deer, allowing the world to pass through her.