In this, Julie Hanson’s second award-winning book, the poems inscribe deep stillness on a world of harmonies in motion. Whether composed on modern objects, say a vacuum—"part pet, part sculpture/sprawled awkwardly, still shrieking”—that evokes a sudden onrush of sobbing, or the notional movement between a plastic bag, a lawn and a return from a France not yet visited, these poems circulate among the senses as moments that pass and are recalled. Hanson’s poems investigate interiority as they resonate in the ear to excite the eye. Together, her poems illustrate the movement between and among seasons and tasks, work and leisure, solitude and people, and all through the private life as it intersects with the products and noises of industry and nature. Hanson’s is a poetic realm that includes the head-splitting bright white screamings of an Indy 500 race into a zen garden, this realm we all inhabit where birdsong and squeaky water meters improvise together.

Julie Hanson’s award-winning collection, Unbeknownst, gives us plainspoken poems of unstoppable candor. They are astonished and sobered by the incoming data; they are funny; they are psychologically accurate and beautifully made. Hanson’s is a mind interested in human responsibility—to ourselves and to each other—and unhappy about the disappointments that are bound to transpire (“We’ve been like gods, our powers wasted”). These poems are lonely with spiritual longing and wise with remorse for all that cannot last.

“The Kindergartners” begins, “All their lives they’ve waited for / the yellow bus to come for them,” then moves directly to the present reality: “Now it’s February and the mat / is wet.” Settings and events are local and familiar, never more exotic than a yoga session at the Y, one of several instances where the body is central to the report and to the net result (“I slip in and fold / behind the wheel into the driver’s seat like a thin young thing: / My organs are surely glistening. This car was made for me.“). These poems are intimate revelations, thinking as they go, including the reader in the progress of their thoughts.