Whether Aligned with the mechanismwhereby the spirit is borne aloftthrough song comes again the question: whether. And not soothedso much as opened by the boysoprano's Sanctus, what moves in the mind as the throat constrictsin sympathy, one note peeledfrom the last, fine as paper slipped from a garlic bulb, veined, translucent, is whether--as ifwound through the spiraling amplitude, purpled, fretted, one voice suspendedin concentration of prayer or terror wills itself above faltering, more perfect since time mustsoon break it. And made it. Whether and by whatever impossiblearrangement of stars, harmonies, correspondences through which the music finds the spirit and likea blade slits and releases, circulates the question through the phrase, the delicateengine--as if it matters: the songrises, everything goes with it. The poems in Crocus take as their starting points the interior universes created by myth, art, andmemory, and through the exploration of these terrains create new ways of understanding the ordinary.