Clare Goulet considers how things are and also are not what they seem, grounding her poems in the natural history of lichen, metaphor’s biological analogue. Though presented as a sort of field guide—to lichen, but also to metaphor—this collection is delightfully animated, buoyed by Goulet’s sense of mischief, rhythm, and sound. By nimbly shifting our attention from the supposed subject matter to the slippery matter of attention itself, Goulet daylights language’s symbiotic relationship with the world and the way in which it nurtures hope and love.