Poetry. "How refreshing to come across a book like Katherine Hastings's marvelous CLOUD FIRE, rich and verdant in formal experiment and range. Mixing lyrics, narratives, curses, blessings, spells, and unabashed love poems, the work is hard-won and honest, generous and rigorous. In poem after poem Katherine Hastings casts her ever-vigilant, observing eye, sharp as it is poignant. Her deepest concern seems our perilous locale and planet: 'My city whose streams are rock doves and parrots / whose bright arm is a spring board for love and suicides' and yet 'we breathe here better than anywhere, distressed.'"—Gillian Conoley