All the Hanging Wrenches

In the wry and tender poems of Barbara Edelman's All the Hanging Wrenches, we encounter creatures both wild and domestic; family, friends, strangers, and history, all deftly transfigured through poignant turns of phrase. Edelman's delight in wordplay is contagious. Time and the boundaries of memory are fluid amid adventures, reflection, and the glorious contradictions that are real life. "At the shoreline where waves flowed through windows in rock, we rode in and came out changed, our brains full of ocean," Edelman writes. With great good humor and sadness in equal portion, this is a book of quiet triumph in which all the ghosts abide.