Inspired by a voracious curiosity about humans and other subjects, the poems in Heather Christle's What Is Amazing describe and invent worlds in an attempt to understand through participation. The book draws upon the wisdom of foolishness and the logic of glee, while simultaneously exploring the suffering inherent to embodied consciousness. Speakers play out moments of bravado and fear, love and mortality, disappointment and desire. They socialize incorrigibly with lakes, lovers, fire, and readers, reasoning their way to unreasonable conclusions. These poems try to understand how it is that we come to recognize and differentiate objects and beings, how wholly each is attached to its name, and which space reveals them. What Is Amazing delights in fully inhabiting its varied forms and voices, singing worlds that often coincide with our own.

The Seaside!
Self-Portrait with Fire
Teamwork Should Come from the Soul 3
If You Go into the Woods You Will Find It Has a Technology
People Are a Living Structure Like a Coral Reef
Moss Does Not Love Other Moss
No Light and No Hands
An Activity
How Like an Island
More of Form Is More of Content
It Is Like Surgery But It Is Not Surgery
Talk Radio
Taxonomy of That November
Way out in the Country
I'll Be Me and You Be Goethe
More Swans and More Women
Such a Lovely Garden
Wallpaper Everywhere Even the Ceiling
We Are Not Getting Anywhere
The Small Husband
Bash
Saturday
It Feels Like It Is on Purpose
Up Again with the Night
The Angry Faun
In Accordance
The Spider
Difficulties
I Am Coming Over
A Very Remarkable Story
And Then We Clap Ourselves Together
What Is Amazing
What Will Grow Here
Happy and Glorious
Parking Lot
Go and Play Outside
Some Combinations
I will Know You by Your Red Carnation
Ladies a Basket
Last Time I Wore This Sweater
For Henri
To Do
Infinitives
Route 109
Classic Hook Shape
Under the Moon the Knocking
Directly at the Sun
A Long Life
Basic All Things Bright and Beautiful
Acknowledgments