In the Flesh

This startling debut from a young British poet traces thepaths from past to present, the lost to the living, seekingfamiliarity in a world of “false trails and disappearing acts.”Here, relatives, friends, and other absences are coaxed intolife and urgently pressed on the reader as they surface, in theflesh. At the heart of the collection lies the sonnet sequence“Home,” a slant look at the lives of William and DorothyWordsworth, intersected by more recent, sometimes unsettling,personal portraits. Clear-eyed and sensuous, these arepoems linked by a strong sense of place and presence, ofhistory captured in an irrevocable moment.