Poetry. These are poems of a rare and exquisite composure. A sonorous, achingly precise cry from the heart, an antidote to 'mock the grotesque braggadocio.' Chris Tysh has drawn her sword, and it is a weapon of great beauty: razor sharp and shimmering, a thing that cuts to the quick--Paul Auster. The very fact that we call heraldic symbols 'devices' makes them vulnerable to another realm--the poetic--where prerogatives can (and, as Chris Tysh believes, should) be rethought and ultimately dispersed. Tysh's writing doesn't say we shouldn't be somewhere, but it acts out a being there in a different (gorgeous and unpunishing) way--Lyn Hejinian.