Laura Allen

This is a beautiful collection, strange and powerful. Odasso's poetry uses the language of myth and story to address themes of transition, identity, and loss; fairy tales, ghost stories, and various mythologies are woven together with the mundane to create something new, something intensely personal.

"This is a dream of becoming, as all dreams are." From the opening poem, this line describes one of the main themes of the book. But not all dreams are happy dreams, and 'becoming' is not without its agonies; Odasso spends the rest of the collection exploring the ambivalent territory between what is real and what is hoped-for, between what was and what is coming to be. These poems are haunted by a sense of absent wholeness, sought but remaining always just out of reach.

A few of the standout poems include the haunting "Still Point of the Turning World," the harsh and lovely "Five Secret Selves," and the quietly beautiful "Touch." All in all, a very good book.