From Circus Town, USA

In her first collection of poems, Vivian Finley Nida shows us how much the smallest moments hold. She says, "There's beauty in the bond/between elephants and humans/especially during daily bath." Raised in Hugo, Oklahoma, winter quarters for several circuses, Nida's childhood stories are funny, intuitive, and heartrending snapshots. "One percent of my income/is from lemonade/the rest/from charity," she says.

Always, Nida invites us into nature. Whether at the family cabin in rural Oklahoma on the lake, her elegant observations abound. "We breathe/secure as dry leaves/shaking on branches," she says. Nida understands how the ordinary and transcendent mesh in the pain and pleasure of everyday life.