Night Snow

If Emily Dickinson were to work in a flower shop, you would have Sally Nacker. Her poems are often about nature, small moments; her talent is the quiet observation: "Gift me hope when grief is long; / grant me a little floating song" ("Prayer During Rain"). Subtly, Nacker readjusts our expectations with her more muted approach: "There will be no table in heaven, / I would think" ("During Stillness"). Although she has been through sorrow, she is content with life on earth. After all, "A poem's in a blade of grass" ("A Poem's in a Blade of Grass"). Like W. S. Merwin (whose epigraph frames the book, and whose preoccupations mirror Nacker's), Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman, Nacker indicates that "nature's Mass . . . awoke me to a holiness" ("A Poem's in a Blade of Grass"). Nacker's gift, along with her metrical skill, is that she brings the reader along with her. - Kim Bridgford, editor of Mezzo Cammin, and author of Doll In these quiet songlike poems there are moments, miracles, when language seems almost to become what it describes.