From Kirkus Reviews Early on in this collection of short fiction and poetry， Wachtel sounds the keynote for what will follow: "What thing is too specific / to sing about or， simply / to recall." It is a Whitmanesque formulation， promising encomiums of the ordinary， life studies in miniature， raptures for the ant and the bee. But for Wachtel the interrogative is genuine: he doesn't intend to celebrate the simple and the small so much as to probe them for layers of feeling and significance. Three of his pieces involve people playing the lottery， a game in which ordinary people often win extraordinary amounts of money. Sudden wealth， in Wachtel's scenarios， ultimately brings its possessors no change at all， or at most small changes and ambiguous revelations. Wachtel's point here seems to be that the everyday has a certain recalcitrance， that it is often not a metaphysical condition but merely a habit. Another view on the ordinary is offered in a humorous series of three poems， the last two ostensibly serving as footnotes to the first. Sometimes， however， Wachtel seems to choose details that are genuinely superfluous， an art (or fault) one is more likely to praise (or forgive) in a novelist than a poet. There are several places where Wachtel nods， and the reader will too. But， just as often， the writing is meticulous and bemusedly scientific. In these texts， odd fragments of American culture-television programming， college football rallies-provoke bewilderment and a feeling of alienation in one's native place. Wachtel's contestable but hard-won belief is that explanations for our questions come from looking harder， so that even a "single blossom" might "speak the full name of our true environment if we simply held it in our direct gaze."A lucid and careful collection whose charm lies in the modesty of its claims. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates， LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.