Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters (Poets, Penguin)
Debora Greger grew up not far from the Hanford atomic plant in eastern Washington, where her father worked. In this arid landscape, she writes, "even the dust, though we didn't know it then, was radioactive." Much of this collection, her fifth, revolves around that landscape and its impact on her childhood. As always, Greger's verse is polished, playful, and highly allusive. And in "Nights of 1995," she pays tribute to the lateJames Merrillin a manner that does that verbal magician proud: "Profligate with loss, / the live oak wept the old leaves down; / one pine needle stitched the air / a shroud to enfold one last song."