It Does Not

Poetry. Times' thefts and compensations and how they shape people intrigue this poet. Her poems often begin in the center of the world, her garden, and lead her to the remembered gardens of her childhood, to family stories, to observations of the landscape and the seasons, to the people and the stories that connect them to the larger landscape of time, memory, and loss. They are both elegies and celebrations. "These poems by Julia Suarez triumph by demonstrating in fresh ways an old that in elegy, precision exhilarates. The inspiration, heart, fidelity, and informed work of the gardener; the same qualities in the poet--with these, Suarez presents her distinctive, gorgeous pageant of losses and restorations"--Robert Pinsky. "Rarely has the fact that mortality becomes the air we breathe been rendered with more force. This book is as close to perfect as a group of poems ever need come--a little masterpiece"--Frank Bidart.