Beliefs and Blasphemies is the stunning successor to the triumphant debut by Virginia Hamilton Adair. (There are more than 34,000 copies of Ants on the Melon in print; Alice Munro said of the poems, "They never miss", and Sharon Olds called them "sensual, wise, amazing".) Greatly celebrated in the media, Adair is our best-known literary poet.

The diverse poems in Beliefs and Blasphemies-which have as their subject religion in all its forms, from animism to Zen Buddhism -- will reaffirm Adair's position among our leading poets and confirm her stature as a national treasure.

Making Truth

What stories of your birth night came to you?

Any of those details our childhood knew?

We loved Luke's version, and the legend grew.

Such long believing makes a story true.