The four parts of this highly accomplished collection showcase the different facets and wide breadth of John Wood's poetic talent. Displayed here are his ability to sustain a sequence, his adeptness with lyricism and the short form, and his sensuous feeling for this life and the life of the past.

In regard to the latter, Wood begins the book with his poetic account of the amazing life and adventures of the vigorous American utopianist Wilhelm Johannes Hoade. Wood's account reads like a novel as he weaves a fictional narrative out of lyric poetry, a narrative that is finally convincing and true in spite of its obvious impossibility.

The second section, “Homage to Dafydd ap Gwilym,” is a free but artistically faithful translation after some of the medieval Welsh poet's major poems, arranged in a way to suggest in a natural/supernatural mode his remarkable character and biography. The third part is a group of finely tuned, mostly lyric poems dealing with family, friends, and intellectual concerns; the fourth is a group of contemporary and historical “revelations,” quite striking in scope and variety. All combine to form a dazzling whole.

John Wood is one of the premier historians of early photography, and his books on daguerreotypes and ambrotypes are widely recognized as landmark publications. His other books include The Daguerreotype: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, named the outstanding book of the year by the American Photographic Historical Society; America and the Daguerreotype, named one of the outstanding academic books of 1992 by Choice; The Art of the Autochrome: The Birth of Color Photography; and In Primary Light, winner of the 1993 Iowa Poetry Prize. He holds dual appointment at McNeese State University as professor of English and professor of photographic history.