Wrecking Light

Robertson's fourth collection is astonishing in its eclecticism... Publishers Weekly There's a drama and majesty here that also teaches us a lesson: That a writer, a poet especially, has the power to make an act of recovery. In Leaving St. Kilda Robertson recalls all those unique, old names (and who, by the way, first named them?) before they're lost -- before the clouds stream over them, as they do over Mullach Mòr, and they're forgotten. Elsewhere in this somber, beautiful collection, Robertson does the same with smaller, fleeting moments of insight as his speakers confront the passing of time -- how, for instance, in Landfall, the crates that once held herring, / freshly dead, now hold distance, nothing but the names/ of the places I came from, years ago. Los Angeles Times