In her third collection, A Play of Mirrors. Ann Holmes keeps surprising us with her way of looking at things and we enjoy wondering where her poems will take us next. They bear a touch of the surreal, as in "Visitor, " where "Jesus barges into a friend 's shower stall " or in "Snowbirds, " where "a red-tailed hawk dives out of an oversize/ page of my Audubon book. " Her poems deftly avoid sentimentality. In "A Slice of Moonlight ", we find her searching her "left forearm/ for the/indelible/ stain of/ invisible/ numbers " and in "On the Day, " she matter-of-factly foresees the "day when today/will not become yesterday. " Often, she plays with form on the page, as in "Wordless, " in which the words themselves contradict the title as they swirl down the page as if carried on a breeze. A painter as well as a poet, Holmes ' love of art, of shapes and words, shines through this collection as she explores the sounds and meaning of words. These are brief tight poems brimming with wry humor and a lively imagination.

There is no end to what interests this poet. -Peggy Heinrich, author, Forward Moving Shadows and Peeling an Orange.