"In her poignant yet pointed introduction, the prolific Hejinian (My Life and My Life in the Nineties), a real poet's poet, explains that while the pieces in this new collection are all 14 lines long, they are not, properly speaking, sonnets, which unfold logically. The poems here, occasioned by the death of a young family member from cancer, don't so much unfold as spill forth in strings of seemingly unrelated thought. Yet there's logic in a larger sense, a beautiful and bracing show of how uncertain life can be as it tumbles and turns onto so many different paths. "Every minute proves that reality is conditional," says Hejinian in a poem that moves from Abyssinia to a woman with a pink bag to an afternoon séance. Thus does she brilliantly articulate mourning. VERDICT: Not everyday reading but a collection connoisseurs must appreciate.".