In her opening poem, “Dogged: No Speculation Is Idle,” Susan Terris offers “if I were a Stepford Wife, I might be able / to fit my round body, into the square of this life.” But we are grateful that her round peg does not fit the square, and instead generates this new collection crafted with Terris’s usual panache. In “Fire: All Poets Are Liars” Terris stipulates:

And all poems are opaque. Some maxims are so true/

false it’s hardly worth putting pen to paper. 

Challenging a host of generalizations, even some we have forgotten are in fact generalizations, Terris’s wallop does not spare the poet herself nor her dear readers, yet somehow the end result is a welcome reality check.