The publication of Anne Compton's first two collections marked the arrival of a major voice in Canadian poetry. In this, her third collection, she completes the island trilogy that those two books began, bringing her long, narrative lines into focus on the mysterious metaphysical nature of everyday life, family and literature. Spirit-haunted yet critical, Compton is intermediary here in a complex poetic argument, over which she presides with a confidence ruled by passionate intellect.