Giacometti's Dog

Celebratory or eligiac, these poems record the author's "two-headed journey" to root herself - geographically and emotionally - in the world. Becker's poems are from remote and familiar outposts: the watery evanescence of Venice contrasts with the desert of the American Southwest; we lean with her over the rim of a canyon or stand back to study a Giacometti sculpture. From such settings arise poems on the death of a sibling, the consoling power of painting and sculpture; others celebrate the erotic and the capacity of the female body for pleasure and pain.