The poems in Lisa C. Krueger’s Talisman interrogate the everyday expression of complex humanemotions. In psychological portraits stunning in their precision, Kruegerbrings her observational powers to bear on the domestic and itsdarknesses—childbirth, play, sex, and family picnics, as well as abuse,disability, adultery, and mental illness. We see how intimacy is laced withuncertainty, how the bonds between us can be a form of bondage. Life’s long arcis considered, from the early developmental stages of attachment andindividuation to the existential dramas of purpose and meaning in middle andold age. What emerges is a study in the mystery of survival, in how we move beyondthe broken places in ourselves. These poems magnify small, everyday redemptionsas signs—talismans—of human potential, and ask us to think about our choices,to use language as a force to press against truth.