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David Appelbaum's book of poems, The Earthworm Jar, is a ceremonial affair, a musical and imaginative exploration of memory and desire. Like the air we breathe, they inhabit the space between declaration and question, as if claiming the territory between the observer's consciousness and another reality. In a remarkable, demanding collection, the poet's awareness connects fragments of narrative history with the apparent randomness of present perception to yield a rich tapestry in which nature, intuition, and reflection together indicate a passionate truth "at the back of things."

Meditative and philosophical, these poems avoid rhetoric by cutting off their imagery midair. Here is a kind of natural surrealism at the service of balancing different ways of being. Appelbaum is a patient craftsperson, a thoughtful decipherer of his experience.