The poems in Mary MacGowan’s new collection are beguiling memory portraits, etched sharply, with the insistent resonance of a bell whose note lingers after its music has ceased.

Into the water’s algae opulence 
we dip our feet, nature’s designs 
on a rowboat floor 
laid out like fortune-telling leaves
as we bail: The doors of summer 
will open and close around you.

  --excerpt, "Doors of Summer"