Julie Carr's second collection explores the elements of chance and mystery that determine human identity and relationships. In delving into the human fascination with the self's story and the boundaries between the self and others (including family), these poems pose often unanswerable questions, but the reader delights in the wit and artistry used to explore them.

From "House/Boat":

. . . The night soon lost its head. I said, I'm here. Pulling up now,

parking, as it were, looking for something to eat, to redeem.

The wind shook the seedpod but the seedpod wasn't moved.

And though I thought I'd done the damage I was born for,

there was still so much to step through, so much to mar.

Julie Carr's first book, Mead: An Epithalamion, won the University of Georgia Press' contemporary poetry prize for 2004. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Volt, American Letters & Commentary, Pool, Verse, The Iowa Review, Boston Review, and TriQuarterly. She earned an MFA in poetry from New York University and a PhD from UC Berkeley. She lives in Denver and teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder.