The graftings of flesh upon flesh, of history upon time and memory, of the New World on the Old, of language upon silence, of faith upon doubt: These are the graftings that form this third book of poems by Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner Karl Kirchwey. Whether he is writing of the intimate moment, as in "Sonogram" (in which the poet first sees his son-to-be), or the painfully personal, as in "Barium" (in which he recounts a brush with mortality), Kirchwey reaches effortlessly across time to link us to our past, to the larger universe of humankind. From the deep sensuousness of "Amalfi" to the gently mocking "Syracuse," from the haunting echoes of the past in "Two Landscapes in Numidia" to the almost blasphemous bitter edge of "Twelve Epigrams for Passion Week, Ischia," he graces us with poetics of a high order even while weaving the threads that tie this collection into a stunningly integrated whole. These are indeed poems that reward rereading.