Great Regulars: In the more intimate settings that make up

the bulk of this collection, [Maura] Dooley's fascination with what lies beneath shows itself more subtly as a bent for self-interrogation, a tendency that reaches its climax in "Stent!", in which the speaker talks directly to her own heart (" 'felt, 'rending, 'broken,/it's what I knew you by"). In general, though, the "you" to whom her poems are addressed is either unaware of the attention (as in the sweetly tender "Midsummer Lullaby", in which a child, "reaching out/for a lamp to scratch the dark" is "small enough still, to make do instead/with any little light my hand might shed") or a figure who exists in memory only: it's the speaker's relationship with her loved ones, rather than the loved ones themselves, that's being examined.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Ebb and flow

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