This is a somewhat curious poetry collection. While it invokes such goddesses as Rhiannon, Inanna, Coatlicue, Brigid, Aphrodite, Cnanging Woman and Eve, the poems themselves are more often personal and, perhaps, somewhat confessional. There are a number of poems meditating on the experience of being a new mother and a wife/lover and some exploring a difficult mother/daughter relationship. The poet employs both open and closed forms -- her best poems are fitted within a formal structure and sometimes invoke a Biblical or mythological allusion. "Daughter" is Salome's repudiation of her mother -- she consents to obeying her bidding to seek the head of John of Baptist, but it is the last request of her mother that she will fulfill. "Pearl" is a villanelle that explores the how the encasement of a girl in the wrappings of social expections leads to the development of a woman who encases the world with her own power.

"Reaching with eyes, they covered her as a girl
leaving a grain of gaze, the irritant stare
women must cover everywhere, with pearl." ( )