At a time when the human ravages on the planet seem to be reaching a crescendo, the poems in Bloom and Laceration offer lamentations to a fragmented world and celebrations of beauty's fierce persistence. Here are lyric poems on the vicissitudes of family played out against wild (and domesticated) nature. Here are long meditations on passing through, on glimpsing, on transience and transcendence. From Southern California to Louisiana's Gulf Coast, to the south of France, and especially to the hills and woods of Upstate New York, Black's poems are full of wonder and ferocity, exuberance and sorrow.