On Todd Hearon

"Ancestors" shows the quiet virtues for which he is becoming known as a poet. It has subtle imagery (the wasp, transposed into the ghostly shapes of the ancestors; the loaves of phantom bread); it has narrative momentum without being tediously anecdotal; most of all, it is alive in its various iambic rhythms, never coercively regular in its metric but never straying out of earshot of the master pentameter. Hearon uses repetition knowingly and expressively to create a dreamlike atmosphere for this oneiric tale: the key words that repeat, "mine," "past," "here," and "loaves," gather mesmerizing force as they turn and return. It is a lovely and delicate poem, and I recommend it heartily.

—Rosanna Warren, author of three collections of poems and a verse translation of Euripides. She is Emma MacLachan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University.