Poetry. This is a matter of perfection, over time,/ and complication. Did the orchid have the means / to think itself into seducing, to adapt as idea/ the perfect dress of reproduction,/ the female wasp// a bit of fur and soft petal/ curved like its soft parts (from Darwin's Unfinished Notes to Emma). Winner of the 1999 Beatrice Hawley Award, Amy Newman's second book of poetry has been praised by Barbara Jordan, Mark Irwin, and Tom Andrews. Newman's genius is of a particular and urgent understanding, i.e. that we are summoned, by Nature and Language, not merely to continue but to begin worlds . . . The Eden of her alphabet is new, is open -- Donald Revell.