What will surprise you about Alison Smith’s poems is the tenaciousness that lies beneath their grace and wit, their unwillingness to concede the bittersweet complexity of human experience to either gross reduction or cowed silence. Exploring the domestic epics of relationships, childbirth, and parenting, as well as societal issues like patriarchy and justice, Smith discovers that often “we barely know how feelings think.” But if our stories sometimes elude us—like a skipping rope, where one end is “held slack / by skeptics, the other turned too fast”—Smith’s poems jump in and find expression’s rhythm.