This wide-ranging collection invites readers to explore realms near and far. Overture poems contemplate the pleasures and perils of compressing life into language. The poems then launch their investigations close to home, delving into intimate experiences, questioning identity, and questing for belonging and happiness. Then, restless to escape the confines of individual existence, the poems take flight via imagination. They skydive and scuba-dive, probing the minds of birds, fish, and whales. They visit mountaintops, oceans, and “star-studded skyscapes.” They travel through time as well as space, revising Greek, Roman, and biblical mythologies; they dance to the Beatles, banjoes, and mariachi. They ventriloquize multiple voices in language by turns lush or spare, but always vivid and accessible while never simplistic. The moods ranged from sarcastic to elegiac, antic to awed, angry to reverential. Everywhere they roam, these poems plunge in deep. 2022.