The Quick is a book of essences. Katrina Roberts's large-spirited and exhilarating poetry is at once celebratory and elegiac, lyric and narrative, striving to divine what's at the quick of this fleeting existence we share. Anchored in many ways by the long poem "Cantata," which chronicles her pregnancy and the birth of her son, the book turns and turns its kaleidoscopic lens, settling now on origins and creation myths, now on Greek or Welsh gods, now on a painting by Vermeer or on an article from the daily news, all slipping together to illuminate our coming to consciousness, our coming to "be."

The poems ask how one might reconcile one's simple joys with the world's larger concerns. An inquiry of this depth cannot fail to encounter grief, but it is a grief tempered and transcended by the acceptance of ongoing life, as well as a consistently outward-focused eye and a passion for language. Sparked by Roberts's sharp imagery and daring cadences, this is a fresh and savvy collection, informed by science, myth, music, philosophy, and etymology, all braided within a sinuous narrative line that runs from sorrow to rich celebration.

Katrina Roberts is associate professor of English/creative writing and Garrett Fellow in the Humanities at Whitman College. She is the author of How Late Desire Looks, which won the Peregrine Smith Prize in poetry. She lives with her husband and two sons in Walla Walla, Washington.

I

Estuary

Self-Portrait as Flint, Dust, an Egg-Blue Truck, Memory of Arson & Signs

On Wanting a Child

Sfumato

Bright Cell

Scintilla

Dizzy with the Glow of What Might Dehisce

Dryope to Amphissos

Diplopia

Woman Holding a Balance

Auralia

Coda

Malleus, Incus, Stapes

Missive

Furculae

One or Two Things Sacred to Sorrow

II

Marina

Captive of the Mineral World

Residuum

University

Peepwillow

Cynosure

Signs of Life

Anima

Plumed Wings, Apposing Thumbs & Other Household Mutations

Midwinter

Saturnism

Omphalocele

Anamnesis

Bird of Consequence

Occurrence

News

Ceridwen to Taliesin

III

Cantata

Prelude

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Postlude: Madrigal

IV

Bread

Firstborn

Birthday

Grace Absentia

Partita

Thieves

Patia

Grasp

Integer

Io to Zeus

Canticle

Hypothetica

The Will: Mary Catherine Speaks Dockside

Clepsydra

Vision

Appoggiatura

Foxfire

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Poet