SNAKE AT THE WRIST

Poetry. Margaret Kaufman's SNAKE AT THE WRIST is a striking collection of contemplative engagement, at once celebratory and elegiac. Rich images convey a fine attention to the natural world and the inner worlds of a variety of speakers, a prairie woman, a nineteenth century physician, an artist's model, Lot's wife. "Psychologically acute," according to Eleanor Wilner, the poems combine "chastened experience with sensuous relish for the garden of the real." David St. John calls the volume "a gorgeous collection"; Joan Aleshire notes "Kaufman's keen eye, insights, and expressive grace give her work an implicit power, akin to that of the book's presiding spirit, the Minoan Snake Goddess with a "snake at the wrist."