Laurie Sheck is the author of five books of poems, most recently Captivity (Knopf, 2007). She has been a fellow at the Ratcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and a 2006-07 Fellow at the Culman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The excerpt in this issue is from her newly completed hybrid work, Archangel. She lives in New York City.