Description: Some poets stand where they cannot be seen, hidden behind the words, or by them, whereas the sort of poet Halpern is takes up a post where he is open to view, the words furnishing him as they do with the stagemaker bird, the field his difference, the longing that sets him apart from all others, may be pushed out against. It is Halpern's design to disclose himself as himself -- in these poems and in those that have established him in the national literature -- but in the present book, the poet's daughter, or what must in fact be a simulation of this child, joins her father, stands with him, takes up an irreplaceable place alongside the man who summons her into being, well in front of the words, where the two of them are illumined by the backscattered light issuing from utterance itself. It is, as utterance, imperfect, laboring, frustrated, human, especially as time and incapacity must be its undoing. But love is untroubled by such impediments. It is the transcendent instrument, the sole means of rescue. In our grief with the given, as Something Shining everywhere witnesses, the song -- Halpern's calling out to heaven in the words -- is scant consolation. Nothing helps; nothing can help. Pure ruin, all loss of all one has had, lies unalterably -- almost, for this very reason, merely -- ahead. But if the way can be made bearable, then it will be a work only the grace of love can do. That such a deed be achieved is the brave prayer of this rapturously heartbroken book.

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