"Large-hearted, linguistically inventive, historically engaged-these poems have a disarming and daft magic, an unlikely mix of sophistication and folk tale-at times, Chagallian; at others, darkened by historical sorrow. In ruined olive groves, in long-deserted villages whose church bells keep tolling, on distant plains where the drumming of wild herds is the percussion of freedom-in all these, a world, fabled and for real, shapes itself, one that looks in time's two directions at once. By the volume's close, it is clear that what has taken root 'far beyond triage' is joy."-Eleanor Wilner This collection of deeply spiritual poetry explores the longings of the soul and tests the penetrable boundary between the living world and the ethereal. Sarah Lantz articulates complex emotions in a manner that makes her poetry accessible while still elusive, heartbreaking and yet hopeful, romantic and yet startlingly real. She creates a world in which small, ordinary moments possess elements of divinity and a greater purpose. Her poetry meanders through time as she writes of "all I knew before I was born" and explores her past and the pasts of her ancestors to help make sense of the present. Sarah Lantz has been published in the Denver Quarterly, The Marlboro Review, CALYX, Paris/Atlantic, and Sister Stew, among others. She is a secondary school teacher and has taught poetry as a Poet in the Schools in Oregon and Hawaii. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College and is a member of the Pearl Poets in Portland, Oregon.