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Each prose poem in this extraordinary volume is an impassioned letter to a nameless editor from a poet seeking publication for her collection about chess, sainthood, and the poet's lonely childhood. Taken individually, the poems display a dazzling originality; together, they form an exquisite exploration of memory and longing.

Road Scatter (as in tire-sprayed gravel) is an examination of breakage and survival, compelled by the decline and death of the poet's mother but engaged, too, by global encounters with the Iraq war, a rabid dog in Africa, and an at-large South American former dictator, for example. Though a book of mourning, it is also one of living, "rising from grief, returning light in all directions." --Jane Hirshfield