"Imagine a little girl at the beach with a third-degree sunburn. It is raining and she and has been wrapped in a wet sheet. Later she will recall that she as she walked over the dunes, the pain had rendered her 'awake in every nerve.' That phrase ends the opening poem in Claire Millikin's stunning new collection, and it sounds the key notes of a book that tells in sharpened lyric moments the story of a young woman's coming of age in the face of violence, violation, homelessness, utter alone-ness. But, as the episodes unfold, and the pain is recalled and endured, there emerges from the corner of our eyes an image of a woman who has all along been forging her own fully-realized self and the voice thereof. Keats called our suffering a 'vale of soul-making.' Down in that valley is where we find Ransom Street and this poetry of every wakened nerve.".