'How long had it been . . . since Id seen it, really looked?' Again and again, the speaker of these quiet, lovely poems asks herself versions of this question, ackwledging her kinship with 'the partially blind.' In this book about looking, about truly seeing what is before us, we are given such gifts of observation as 'the chuckling dove,' 'a bittern and one green heron / hunched in the wind / as if in shabby old topcoats,' the moon described as a 'nubbly doubloon,' a peach as a 'tennis-ball [with] okra-leaf fuzz.' But finally--and in their careful, surefooted way,--these poems point to the hidden as well, the ineffable, the 'chorus unseen.' Hope Coulter has written that rarest of things: a book that is as mysterious as it is clear. The Wheel of Light is a beautiful, deeply satisfying collection. -- Davis McCombs