Robin Robertson’s fourth collection is an intense, moving, bleakly lyrical, and at times shocking book. These poems are written with the authority of classical myth, yet sound utterly contemporary. The poet’s gaze—whether on the natural world or the details of his own life—is unflinching and clear, its utter seriousness leavened by a wry, dry, and disarming humor. Alongside fine translations from Neruda and Montale and dynamic retellings of stories from Ovid, the poems here pitch the power and wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human. This is a book of considerable grandeur and sweep that confirms Robertson as one of the most arresting and powerful poets at work today. "Robertson's fourth collection is astonishing in its eclecticism..." Publishers Weekly "There's a drama and majesty here that also teaches us a lesson: That a writer, a poet especially, has the power to make an act of recovery. In "Leaving St. Kilda" Robertson recalls all those unique, old names (and who, by the way, first named them?) before they're lost — before the clouds stream over them, as they do over Mullach Mòr, and they're forgotten. Elsewhere in this somber, beautiful collection, Robertson does the same with smaller, fleeting moments of insight as his speakers confront the passing of time — how, for instance, in "Landfall," the "crates that once held herring,/ freshly dead, now hold distance, nothing but the names/ of the places I came from, years ago." Los Angeles Times Praise for The Wrecking Light “Robertson’s lines have the luminosity of myth. The Wrecking Light is a work of extraordinary visionary power, its music bleak and beautiful, spare and unsparing.”— Guardian (UK) “Breathtaking, utterly and heartbreakingly breathtaking.”— Globe and Mai l Robin Robertson’s fourth collection is an intense experience: moving, bleakly lyrical, and at times shocking. These poems are written with the authority of classical myth, yet sound utterly contemporary. The poet’s gaze—whether on the natural world or the personal—is unflinching and clear, its utter seriousness leavened by a wry, dry, and disarming humor. Alongside fine translations from Neruda and Montale and dynamic retellings of stories from Ovid, the poems here pitch the power and wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human. This is a book of considerable grandeur and sweep that confirms Robertson as one of the most arresting and powerful poets at work today. Robin Robertson is the author of three previous books of poetry, A Painted Field , Slow Air , and Swithering . He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. “At Roane Head,” in this collection, won the 2009 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem. He lives in London. ROBIN ROBERTSON is a 30-year veteran food writer, cooking teacher, and chef specializing in vegan and vegetarian cooking. She is the author of 20 vegetarian or vegan cookbooks, including Vegan Planet and 1,000 Vegan Recipes , and is a regular columnist for VegNews magazine and VegCooking.com. She operates a vegan-focused website and blog at RobinRobertson.com and lives in Virginia. I SILVERED WATER ALBUM I am almost never there, in these old photographs: a hand or shoulder, out of focus; a figure in the background, stepping from the frame. I see myself, sometimes, in the restless blur of a child, that flinch in the eye, or the way sun leaks its gold into the print; or there, in that long white gash across the face of the glass on the wall behind. That smear of light the sign of me, leaving. Look closely at these snapshots, all this Kodacolor going to blue, and you’ll start to notice. When you finally see me, you’ll see me everywhere: floating over crocuses, sandcastles, fallen leaves, on those melting snowmen, their faces drawn in coal – among all the wedding guests, the dinner guests, the birthdayparty guests – this smoke in the emulsion, the flaw. A ghost is there; the ghost gets up to go.   SIGNS ON A WHITE FIELD The sun’s hinge on the burnt horizon has woken the sealed lake, leaving a sleeve of sound. No wind, just curved plates of air re-shaping under the trap-ice, straining to give; the groans and rumbles like someone shifting heavy tables far below. I snick a stone over the long sprung deck to get the dobro’s glassy note, the crying slide of a bottleneck, its tremulous ululation to the other shore. The rocks are ice-veined; the trees swagged with snow. Here and there, a sudden frost has caught some turbulence in the water and made it solid: frozen in its distress to a scar, or a skin-graft. Everywhere, frost-heave has jacked up boulders clear of the surface, and the ice-shove has piled great slabs on the lake-edge like luggage tumbled from a carousel. A racket of jackdaws, the serrated call of a falcon as I walk out onto the lake. A living lens of ice; you can hear it bending, breathing, re-adjusting its weight and light as