Laurie Brinklow''s long-awaited first collection of poems beaches the reader on the shores of contemporary womanhood. Strewn with memories of the tumultuous journey through childhood to adulthood and the detritus of relationships chanced and abandoned, finally being "here" brings to devotion to daughters and friends and an Island place. Brinklow''s book contains the tidal pull of loss and renewal, departure and arrival that keeps a lover of islands so close to the edges of life and death. That''s the here. But what she is "here" for is both more magical and more pragmatic: the music. It''s the music of language and the dance of human relationships, the sex and love melodies that bewilder and beguile. Brinklow brings this music down to us where we live, with the earthy touch of the "angel-in-charge-of-things-as-they-really-are."