This collection begins with clear-eyed reportage on the heartbreak and devastation in the lives of women, historical and contemporary. The universal implications of their fate serve as "frame" for the rest of the book as the poet, in strikingly spare language, takes impassioned aim at the complexities of love, marriage, and society. "She has chosen to follow her own light and report what her vision discovers...with a dark mordancy that is tonic and...