The Fire in Hand

The Fire in Hand is a gorgeous, complex collection of poetry, and what an extraordinary eye for detail Karen Torop has. Whether she is praising the beauty of "two / high-seated tractors," exploring the essential contradiction of loving both her cat and the beautiful rose-breasted grosbeak killed by the cat--"the rose-red / on its breast a bib of blood"--or watching her mother approaching death, her "bones loosely covered, mean as spokes," Torop's gift to us is her insistence that we must pause, look beyond habit, in order to love the world in all its glorious contradictions.