Badgers at dusk, the dark bird of a dream or an omen, white-robed nuns--in this, the follow-up to her Walt Whitman Award-winning collection The Cult of the Right Hand, Elaine Terranova paints a world in chiaroscuro. Hers is a vision that moves from the shadows of everyday life to its brighter sparks of meaning. The central characters are ourselves and our alter egos, one whole and flowering in the world, the other damaged. Whether in narrative...