Mariani's first new collection in nine years takes as its major themes death in all its forms and the quest for new life. If the images here are simple, the emotions are not. "Wasn't It Us You Were Seeking?" addresses the refusal to mourn a mother 10 years dead, while "Solar Ice" describes the rituals of the Catholic Mass. Others are about memories of fleeting childhoods over sooner than one would have thought, of Saturday night first dates, of fathers worrying about keeping food on the table, of the unexpected suddenness of death sweeping down on a clear September day in 2001, and of patients who never appeared at hospital doors. Recalled, too, are early university teaching days, when, discussing death and dying in Hemingway, Mariani learned of President Kennedy's assassination. But renewal is celebrated, too, in the coming of spring to New England, the way light strikes a pitcher, a wedding, and the cycles of life, so that this luminous collection is finally about what it means to live. June Sawyers Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved