"Brilliant descriptive poet from the first, each touching detail of the outfit the world wears disclosed in unexpected reality by her metaphoric lights -- what more could the world want from her? Later collections broadened to light up human figures, the human drama, for these, too, so far, the world cherishes. But it was the East, the unfamiliar, that set her free to see, and the East that she saw for us. In Westward she takes on an extraordinary challenge: to illuminate her Iowa past, the rural backdrop, the stoic 'hinterland'... In poem after poem she returns to the scene that 'daunts' her, and her familiar guides rush to her assistance -- Keats, Coleridge, James, Chekhov, Emerson -- along with a deepening sense of history and a new 'spiritual widening.' The oats, the plantain, the people, the hard past, yield to their poet. Believe me, Amy Clampitt can do anything!" From the Trade Paperback edition.