Threshold

The stages in Cary Waterman's career as a poet and teacher have been mile posted by the publication of a succession of fine collections dating back to 1975. She has now gathered together the best individual poems from each of these books along with a robust sampling of her most recent work into one attractive book. We meet up with a tension between the wild and the domestic again and again from a graphic scene of butchering pigs to decades later a lengthy poem sequence recounting Persephone's descent into the underworld. There are moments to set the reader on edge-a marriage blender set on chip-and plenty of quiet moments too and spots of sheer silliness. Making elderberry jam becomes both a heroic and an erotic experience an acupuncture treatment is transformed into a spiritual ordeal. Perhaps Robert Bly said it best: "As an artist she insists that she will not let a descriptive line stand unless an inner concern of her own has broken through it..." Cary Waterman is the author of six