. . . Where is the point of no return? No one sees it coming or can tell you when. When love reaches a point of no return, how does one respond to a fractured landscape and its tumbling uncertainties? In this poetic cycle, respected New Mexico writer Anne Valley-Fox looks for clues to the meaning of intimacy and the provenance of corruption. ("What made you blind? Why did you woo oblivion?") In language by turns raucous, wry, tender and tough, these incisive narratives find voice in the mythology of the ordinary. The poems are sure, masterful, but not mere expositions of craft--they are made of passion and a willingness to risk. Her work resonates with a depth of metaphor that startles, delights and often exposes the raw facts of marriage as it actually lives. Theodore Roethke said that the poet's job is to lament & to praise--as this collection of poems surely reveals. "Both sensual and spiritual, [these poems] know of joy and grief, of loss and redemption, of the mystery that hovers always beyond our grasp. With unforced artistry and an appealing clarity of style they present a moving tableau of the transitory fragments that make up a life; they are poems to fill the day with new awareness"--R. W. French