Winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, 2011 This debut collection includes love songs and prayers, palinodes and pleas, short histories and tragic tales as well as a series of ventriloquist poems that track the epiphanies and consequences of speaking in a voice other than one's own. Other poems speak to a Beloved and the highs and lows of parenthood and personhood-all with music and verve, with formal dexterity, with sadness and humor, with an intimate voice that can both whisper in our ears and grab us by the collar and implore us to listen.